A Pastor, a Motorcycle Accident, and a Ministry Born in a Hospital Hallway

When I crossed the border into Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, I was going to visit a pastor I had heard about through a mutual connection — José Verástegui, a man who has become a bridge between our two communities. What I found on the other side of that bridge was a story I was not expecting.

Pastor Jordan Paredes leads Templo El Esfuerzo Cristiano, a church in Ciudad Acuña that is approaching its 60th anniversary. Jordan has been its pastor since December 4, 2021 — but his road to that pulpit began long before that date, and it was anything but straight.

When I asked him how he came to be a pastor, he did not start with a seminary degree or a church program. He started with his grandparents. "My grandparents were pastors for more than 50 years," he told me. "My grandfather planted 13 churches in his ministry. Everything about his life is a pastoral model." His uncles are pastors. His family has carried this calling across generations, and Jordan grew up watching it — feeling it stir in him even as a child, through the words of preachers who seemed to be speaking directly to something already burning in his heart.

The moment that settled it came on a Saturday — November 23, 2013. Jordan was in a motorcycle accident. In the aftermath of that collision, he accepted the call he had been carrying for years. The following year, 2014, he enrolled at Instituto Bíblico Magdiel in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, to study for ministry. It was there, during a mission trip to the institute, that he first met José Verástegui. The two men crossed paths briefly and then went their separate ways — Jordan to develop his ministry, seek out pastoral mentors, and begin planting a mission in Coahuila in 2018. Years passed. Then, in what Jordan describes as a blessing from God, the two men found each other again in Ciudad Acuña — and that reunion became the foundation for a collaboration to bless families on both sides of the border.

But what struck me most about Jordan was not his origin story. It was what he has built inside a church that had grown comfortable.

"I arrived with a passion for evangelism," he told me, "and that caused problems." The congregation at Templo El Esfuerzo Cristiano had decades of history — Sunday services, familiar rhythms, a settled routine. Jordan wanted to go out. He wanted to reach people. So for a year and a half, he led the church to bring meals and prayer to patients in the local hospital. That is where the vision for something larger began to take shape.

The hospital, Jordan explained, is the one place in Ciudad Acuña where people of limited means receive care — and where most of the city's babies are born. He saw mothers delivering without support. He saw newborns going home without the basics. And he saw an opportunity that was also a responsibility.

What grew out of that vision is now a structured maternal care ministry. The church assembles and distributes three types of kits: a maternity kit with clothing for pregnant women, a newborn kit with a blanket, diapers, and wipes, and a postpartum kit with personal care items, gentle soap, shampoo, feminine hygiene products, and a Bible. Volunteers — many of them people from outside the church who came to serve and stayed to believe — pray over each newborn and present them before God.

Families who receive those kits at the hospital are then invited into something ongoing: Centro Maternal Esperanza de Vida, a weekly program where the church provides formula, diapers, and wipes to support young families through the early months of a child's life. The name means Maternal Center Hope of Life — and it is exactly that.

Beyond the hospital, Jordan's team — what he calls Manos a la Obra, Hands to the Work — rotates through kindergartens, prisons, military barracks, and other hospitals. The ministry is not built around a single program. It is built around a posture: show up, serve, and trust that God will do the rest.

I thought about this on the drive back to San Angelo. The families I work with here are navigating their own hard places — children who have experienced trauma, parents doing their best with limited tools, educators who want to help but do not always know how. The challenges are different. But the underlying conviction is the same: that showing up consistently, with something real to offer, changes things.

What Pastor Jordan Paredes has built in Ciudad Acuña is not a program. It is a culture of presence. And it started with one man willing to cause a little trouble for the sake of reaching people. If you are interested in what cross-border connection looks like in practice — through CETUSA or otherwise — I would be glad to talk. Visits like this one remind me why that work matters.