Yeah! You did it!

We live in a little concrete house in a poor neighborhood (colonia) on the East side of Mazatlan, Mexico. Our colonia is named Villas del Sol, but the church building where we work is 3 blocks away in a colonia named Doña Chonita.

We are planting a church. We hope to grow, from the people living around us, a thriving, self-sustaining, community-changing, life-giving church where people all around us can enter a 2 way, living relationship with Jesus Christ. We hope to see his power and love transform the poverty all around us.

Yes and no. Mazatlan has been rocked by extreme violence between rival drug gangs and police. Most of the violence remains targeted and specific, although some civilians have been affected. While we would recommend against participating in the drug trade or hanging around certain areas at night, we actually feel safe in our neighborhood and home.

We have different activities planned each day. Besides our own church plant, we are also involved in the larger main Spanish speaking church in the Golden Zone, as well as the English speaking church, and the smaller church plant in Villa Union. We organize events, visit homes, lead small group, have Bible classes, run a children’s feeding center, meet with people, write sermons, and organize English classes.

We raised support before we moved to Mexico. We do receive some money from our sending church and the Mexico Vineyard Partnership, but 75% of our salary comes from individual monthly donors.

Mexico is a majority Catholic nation. However, Catholicism in Mexico carries totally different connotations than in the United States. The Catholic Church has deep roots intertwined in the history of Mexico. Most Mexicans associate the church with power and politics. Spanish Conquistadores, in order to “convert the natives” often simply gave Aztec Gods the name of a particular saint, encouraging the local idols to remain under a Catholic guise. Many hardened and cruel drug lords are devoutly Catholic, hoping that their devotion to particular saints, especially the Virgin Mary, will aid them in their crime and protect them from being caught or killed. For many other Mexicans, their Catholic faith carries more cultural significance than anything and impacts their daily life very little. In our experience, we’ve found that a relationship with Jesus is life giving and empowering. We hope that everyone around us will come to know him in a real, relational way, whether Catholic or not.

We’ve given this a lot of thought. Mexico, while still being a poor nation, has enough to eat. In fact, Mexico is the 2nd most obese nation in the world after the United States. Yet, Mexico has a lot of specific advantages that still make it an ideal target country for missions organizations to invest in. First, Mexico is very accessible. Most churches can afford to send short term mission teams to Mexico. Driving is even a possibility. This ignites the passion of the people on the team, and encourages the church to get involved. Especially small churches may not be able to raise the funds for regular trips to more distant countries. Also, Mexicans make ideal missionaries. For many dangerous areas of the 1040 Window, Americans are unwelcome, and stick out like a sore thumb. Mexicans, on the other hand, can become quickly accepted into the main stream. A young couple we know are planning to move to Pakistan as missionaries. Even without speaking the language, when the young man visited, his taxi driver didn’t believe that he wasn’t Pakistani! We hope to be able to impact some of the more marginalized areas of the word by inspiring and encouraging Mexicans to reach out.

Not as much as we should! Something about living relatively close to the beach makes all the sand and sun less appealing. We usually only go when we have visitors from other places.