Searching for how to Help

Today I plan to pick up a church member and head over to the other side of town. Her sister (Reina) lives over there, close to the train tracks. I met her sister in church on Sunday. She doesn't normally attend our church but she does come once in a while.
It turns out she is trying to minister to some desperate people and I would like to see if the Lord is leading us to help in some way. The desperate people I speak of come from all parts of Mexico and beyond. Some as far away as Central America. Why do they come you ask? For a chance to make what they think will be, a better life in the States. Our city Hermosillo, is a stopping point for those who travel by train. They must get off their train here and walk (I am not sure how far) to catch the next one. Most of them travel illegally and will attempt to enter the USA illegally as well. They come hungry (some of them haven't eaten for up to 2 weeks), they come dirty, they come bloody (stowed away on a train is a dangerous form of travel and assaults during ones sleep are apparantly not uncommon), and most of all, they come desperate.
In their transfer, they walk very close to Reina's house and she sees them every day, 6 to 8 or more. Most of them are men although sometimes families with children to come by as well. All of them are in search of a better life that they think will be theirs if they can just cross the border.
How can we help? How can we make a difference? With so many different needs that exist, how do we know if this is one that God is calling us to get involved with? We can offer food, we can offer hope through Jesus. For this reason I am going today.
I am also going with something else in mind. We have a team of youth coming from Canada in a months time and one of my responsibilities is to find a morning ministry for them while they are here. The goal is to find a venue where they can reach out to needy, even desperate people. We also desire that God would reach out to the youth group through these needy people as He has done in my life, and continues to do. That these kids would go home changed people for having reached out and touched hurting and desperate people and in so doing, would have had the privilege of serving and touching none other than Jesus himself- "For what you have done to the least of these, my brothers, you have done to me".


Please pray for guidance, pray for understanding, pray for compassion. Perhaps this particular need isn't one to be met by a youth group from Canada, but by your prayers for guidance and understanding, we will see that. There are lots of needs here, we just need to find the right one for them, the one God wants. He simply wants us and them to be His hands and feet in a hurting place.

"Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion for the world is to look out;
yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good;
and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now."

Saint Teresa of Avila