What’s it like to leave everything and try to make a life in a new country, fully dependent on God for your every need? Joshua Geiger doesn’t know from personal experience but considers himself blessed to fellowship with those who do.
“To see people live through that and to walk with them in that is a real privilege,” Geiger says. “It inspires me and it grows my own faith. I have a lot to learn from people in that situation.”
Geiger was the organizing pastor for Cristo Rey PCA Church in Dallas, Texas, and he’s now the executive director of Casa Del Lago, a nonprofit born out of the church’s ministry in the city.
He first arrived in Dallas in 2002 hoping to plant a church to serve Dallas’ Latino population, and God quickly drew his heart to the needs of the Bachman Lake Community.
Bachman Lake is a manmade lake in northwest Dallas, and also shorthand for the neighborhoods near the lake, a low-income Latino section of the city with one of the youngest demographics in the Dallas area. The majority of immigrants in the area come from Mexico, with many also originating in the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala and recent arrivals from Venezuela in South America.
Geiger knows that immigration, especially illegal immigration, is a contentious issue in the U.S., particularly during an election year. As he guides a ministry that helps immigrants meet Christ and navigate a new life in America, he hopes he can also help American believers think Christianly about the issue.
Geiger said many Americans have questions about immigrants from Central and South America, why they have come to the U.S., and whether their presence is a good thing.
“One of our ministries is to speak to the broader church and to our donor community about why people come, about how the Scriptures call us to respond to their presence here,” he said.
He personally feels called to welcome and serve.
Meeting a Need
What is today Casa Del Lago has its roots in Cristo Rey’s attempt to reach the community. In Cristo Rey’s early years, Geiger saw that the church could meet a community need by offering ESL classes. He noticed that residents were lonely because of their physical separation from friends and family, and the language barrier made the problem worse.
Those immigrants found community in the ESL classes, and Geiger also saw a spiritual hunger that was bearing fruit. Many ESL students were coming to faith, and while the church itself didn’t grow exponentially, Geiger believes they were making an eternal impact.
The ESL classes continued to grow, but after about six years, Geiger recognized the demand was outpacing the resources of the young church.
“I wanted us to do more, not less, of this work, but at the same time I was looking at my budget and recognizing, as a church, on church offerings, I’m not going to be able to continue this, certainly not expand it,” he said.
And so he sought counsel from others in the PCA and came up with a plan. He decided that Cristo Rey needed to start a separate nonprofit to bring resources to Bachman Lake that could more effectively carry out the English classes. In 2014, Casa Del Lago was officially established.
Coming Back
In 2015, Geiger left Cristo Rey to join the pastoral team at a Los Angeles church, but a couple years later, through some challenges in his own life, he found God directing him back to the Dallas area.
“I tell people my Jonah experience is getting vomited up on the shores of Bachman Lake,” Geiger quips.
In 2018 he stepped into the role of executive director, where he has found joy watching the ministry expand to serve in various capacities. In addition to ESL, Casa Del Lago offers early childhood education, elementary school literacy, adult education, and pastoral counseling.
The early childhood education is a preschool for two and three-year-olds. Through this, they prepare children for school, and help parents understand how they can help their children.
Education data indicates that a high percentage of students in the Bachman Lake area do not meet grade-level reading standards. The elementary school literacy program is an after-school reading intervention program which runs four days a week and helps children in grades 1, 2 and 3 improve their reading.
In addition to the after-school reading program, each year Casa Del Lago holds a summer reading camp, which Geiger describes as a “mash-up between an academic reading camp, reading enrichment, and VBS.”
Bible stories are intermingled with phonics and fun activities like swimming lessons.
Adult education remains the largest portion of Casa Del Lago’s ministry and served more than 200 people last year. The adult programs include everything from language skills to pastoral counseling to financial and computer literacy.
The computer literacy program has been particularly popular lately. Students learn how to type, set up an email address, and eventually use word processing programs. The goal is to prepare people for navigating life in 2024.
Geiger said pastoral counseling is a vital aspect of the ministry, and Casa Del Lago has a professional counselor on site.
“We find that for a lot of the people who immigrate to this country, there was often trauma back home that was pushing them to immigrate. And then, of course, it’s also true that the experience of actually immigrating, the actual journey, or the experience of living in the United States is also often very, very traumatic.”
In addition to its many volunteers Casa Del Lago has about 17 paid staff members who make all the programs a success. Betsy Cantu is the director of children’s programming at Casa Del Lago and has been involved in the ministry from the beginning.
She said the preschool program, which now has about 22 students, was created because the staff and volunteers saw the need to help kids who weren’t prepared when they arrived at school. By intervening early, they knew they could set these kids up for success.
“We try to work all their fine and gross motor skills and give them the opportunity to explore with different textures, with different activities, using all the senses,” Cantu said.
A sensory box is used to introduce the children to new things each week. One time the box might hold sand while another it could contain shaving cream or even a small animal.
Cantu explains that this is important because many of the children at the preschool live in small apartments, and because of the family situations, they get little exposure to the outside world. These new experiences play a vital role in a child’s development.
In October, staff at Casa Del Lago will bring in pumpkins and open them up for children to have the chance to feel what the inside feels like. Then they will have a chance to learn how pumpkins grow and sample food made from pumpkins.
“They’re touching, smelling, trying,” Cantu said.
While small, she knows this will have a great impact on them as they transition to school. According to Casa Del Lago’s most recent annual report, the 24 children who completed the preschool program were ready for kindergarten.
She believes an important aspect of the programs is also teaching parents to find ways to help their children learn at home.
“The moms come, and we provide workshops talking about the developmental stages – where their kids are and how can they help their little ones at home with things that they already have at home,” she said.
For example, she encourages them to invite their children to help cook or wash dishes to gain more experience.
While all these programs are happening, friendships and community are formed, which opens opportunities for Cantu and others to share with these families about God.
“They learn that there is hope in Christ and that he is there with us in whatever situation we are,” she said.
Over time, she’s been able to witness the academic and spiritual impact of the ministry. At the end of last year, Casa Del Lago surveyed its students, and 53% of the adult students surveyed indicated that the ministry had helped them put their faith in Christ.
For Geiger, it is a privilege and great joy to minister to this community.
“We get to extend the welcoming love of God to a group of people who do not experience welcome in many places in our society,” Geiger said. “To be able to do that, and to see the community they build with one another, to see the encouragement and the hope that they begin to find in the Word of God and in the gospel, is just tremendously exciting and rewarding.”
To learn more about Casa Del Lago, visit www.casadelago.org.