Hello again brave readers, and to our family, and friends…

It is a joy to be able to contact you again.

As usual, we have some good news and also some very hard news. We write to you again with our hearts undone, since after our last newsletter we’ve had to see yet another bloody, brutal death among the youth that we work with in the church neighborhood.

But at the same time we could not resist sharing with you the fruit of your prayers.

So, without further introduction, we will let you read the events below. (psss – Don’t miss the photos at the end!)

This newsletter focuses on the results of your prayers for Mario’s younger brother, pictured here.

“…I promise I’m going to try harder from now on.”

Leonardo’s eyes peered back at us from between steel prison bars. We could smell the stench of his jail cell even from where we were standing.

In response to his comment, all we said was, “We hope what you say is true.”

With that, we turned and left.

No bailing him out this time.

This was not the first weekend we had spent most of our time stopping by the foul-smelling prison center to visit youth from our neighborhood, many of whom tend to wind up in jail almost every Friday or Saturday night.

Leonardo in particular had been spiraling further and further out of control in terms of his hard drug use.

After losing one of his brothers to a violent gang stabbing some months before, this young man had been just barely hanging on. But when his other brother Mario was kidnapped at gunpoint by a truck full of hit-men from one of the area drug cartels, Leonardo had started going down fast, turning more and more to intense drug use to numb his pain.

…And when we were just beginning to wonder how we could possibly talk about the love of God to someone who’d been through so many things, tragedy struck again.

What we are about to say next is shocking, so we’ll just have to come out and say it: In May of this year, one of Leonardo’s closest cousins was killed.

Leonardo’s cousin, “Luis”

… Luis Vazquez Triana was a very dear friend to us, and he will forever hold a special place in our hearts.

He was normally a very peaceful fellow, not the kind of guy who´d go looking for trouble… But unfortunately – and like so many other youth — he was caught one night off-guard, in the middle of the wrong neighborhood. At the wrong time.

… The gang fight was brutal and we will spare you the details. But again, the worst part was that this young man was not just like any normal cousin to Leonardo.

In a seemingly horrible coincidence, Luis was actually one of the two cousins whom Leonardo had grown up with.

He was the cousin who had been like a brother to him.

… And so it was.

After this last shocking incident, we tried to continue working with Leonardo, but to be honest we have to tell you that we had no words left.

And it wasn’t until this young man had pawned his mother’s stereo, our DVD player, stolen money from the offering, and even taken our camera in a desperate attempt to get more money for drugs that we realized we had only one recourse in order to continue touching his life…

… Prayer.

Larry told Leonardo that we could not continue seeing him until he showed a marked interest in change for himself — an interest which could only be demonstrated by paying back at least part of what he owed us from all he had stolen.

Leonardo seemed to feel bad and understood what we were saying, and yet he knew it would be hard for him to have any money at all in his hands without being tempted to spend it on drugs again… So not knowing what to do, we decided to stop seeing him entirely for a time.

But no one could stop us from praying.

…As it turned out, avoiding this young man was not as difficult as we had imagined. We noticed that after we talked to him, Leonardo stopped going to the gang site altogether. And though we were tempted to try and look for him, we thought it was better to follow through on what we had said, knowing that if anything serious was happening the family would let us know.

But that didn’t stop us from praying.

…When we finally called Leonardo’s mother it had been a couple of months since we had seen him. As always, we were afraid of what we might hear.

To our surprise, his mother responded calmly: “Leonardo is fine. We thought you might be worried since you haven’t seen him out on the park benches. I know you’re not going to believe this, but the honest truth is that since your last conversation with him, Leonardo has taken himself off of hard drugs… and he’s decided to spend more time with us as a family.”

And it was true. Since that time, we have had the chance to talk to Leonardo some, and we have both seen and heard that he is doing much better… So clearly, God works better in the lives of people than we do.

And as for us? Of course we feel completely humbled, and reminded again that the ministry we are taking on is much bigger than we can handle.

But even so, as we watch the life of Leonardo, we are learning.

In fact it is not at all stretching the truth to say we are learning more from him than he is from us.

Most of all, we are learning that in spite of the “mass” graves found here, that death, and mass killings, are not just something you can “get used to” over time.

Leonardo could certainly testify to that.

But yet like him, we ourselves can also promise that we are going to “try harder…” as we go forward.  And we know that as we keep trying, we are going to win some for our cause… even as we lose others.

The good thing is that Leonardo has taught us that it’s not as much about trying…

… As it is about praying.

Leonardo: Before …Drugged and confused See more photos: Leonardo History

Leonardo Now … At home with his family See the web album for more photos of Leonardo & His Family

Leonardo, Luis, and Mario

These three young men are pictured here in May of 2010.  They were in the car with us on the way to an evangelistic campaign, where Mario reaffirmed his faith and Luis prayed to receive Jesus in his heart. About 2 months afterwards, Mario was kidnapped and forced to work for the drug cartels… And within a year, Luis was killed.

For more photos of our friends from the gang at the evangelistic campaign, see the web album: Breakthrough – May 2010

Mario, Leonardo, and Luis

on Mario’s birthday, a month after the evangelistic campaign

• Praise God for the miraculous upturn in Leonardo’s life — Praise Him once more with us that Leonardo has still not resorted to any violence in order to take revenge on those who have been violent towards him and his family, though at times he has threatened to do so.  Please continue praying that Leonardo would turn his life totally over to Jesus…  We know that until he makes a real decision to give his life over, we have nothing.
• Praise God for some recent news that we’ve received about Mario… We cannot give details, but we do know that he is still o.k.  Keep praying for God to preserve his life… and for him to be released as soon as possible.
• Please continue to pray for Leonardo and Mario’s family.  Their mother, now having lost a nephew who was like a son to her and two of her own sons, has shown herself strong at times and yet in other moments she seems to be just barely surviving.
• Praise God for a small wave of “healthy” young people who have started to gravitate towards our church.  Pray that if it is God’s will we would be able to retain them in our congregation, and that He would enable us to equip them in helping us minister to more troubled youth.
• Praise God for the ties He has enabled us to develop with some local drug rehabilitation centers who have interest in working in our neighborhood.  Please pray that God’s will would be done in these ministry relationships… If it is God’s will, we could certainly use some help.
• Praise God and please continue to pray for Kim’s health.  She is fighting hard to stay well, and is slowly recovering from a series of issues that plagued her.
• Pray for time for us:  We are still only spending about 20 percent of our time in ministry working with youth, and we would like it to be more like 60 or 70 percent…  Our prayer is that God would raise up the pastors and the people that we are working with quickly.
• And in general, please keep praying for us:  We are discouraged.  Again, working with gang youth is hard.  We apologize for not having written to you sooner about the last death incident, but we didn’t know how to tell you.

…Most of all, please pray that we, along with the youth, would somehow find the courage to live, to laugh, and even to dare to love… yet again.

“I have become all things to all men so that by all means possible I might save… some.”    1 Cor. 9:22 – emphasis added

Thank you.

… The some are worth it.

We wanted to thank you for your prayers for us and our ministry, and just share a bit of encouraging news.

Mario with two of his kids and his younger brother – about a year ago, shortly before he was captured.

Several of you have asked for updates about what is happening with Mario, the gang leader who made a radical conversion to Christ, and was then kidnapped by the drug cartels soon afterwards. Over the last few months we’ve had to say that there were no reported sightings of him, which would normally mean that Mario was dead — his body waiting to be identified as one of hundreds buried in hidden graves.

…However, we have kept the faith, and we know that you also have continued to pray.

We’re glad to report that this week we were told that he has been seen, and though he’s still under the power of his kidnappers, our friend actually appears to be all right.

Please continue to pray for Mario. It has now been almost a year since he was captured, and he has almost always been seen in areas where the fighting is fiercest. This has led us to believe that, like so many other youth, he was captured only to be used on the front lines of the war between drug cartels.

But God has a greater purpose for him, and we’re continuing to pray for God to use him to touch people within the cartel, and for him to be miraculously released as soon as God sees fit.  (The fact that Mario has been allowed no contact with his friends or family since the time he was kidnapped assures us that he is still being held against his will, and has not yet been “brainwashed,” or fully indoctrinated into the cartel.)

…So thank you, brave readers… for praying.

Once again, your efforts have paid off.

…And God is still working.

Hello dear readers,

We hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year… It is certainly a joy to finally greet you after such a long time. And of course as always it has been longer than we would have liked… but to be honest, it has not been a very easy few months for us.  We have been challenged in many ways as we’ve tried to find the thread of what we were doing with the youth in the church neighborhood before the unexpected wave of kidnappings came sweeping through.

And working with gang members is not easy.  But as we’ve tried to think about how to capture what it has been like for us as we’ve continued ministering in the church neighborhood, our thoughts turned to a young man there named Rolando, and we just wanted to share his story with you.

… Rolando had visited our service almost every Sunday for at least two months, though no one in the congregation had ever dreamed of seeing him sober.

Falling down drunk, he usually stumbled into our service about halfway through the sermon, shouting in a loud voice and looking desperately for Larry to see if he could bum a few pesos off of him, though he never could.

Nineteen years old, Rolando had already been in the hospital from a near-heart attack due to alcohol poisoning.  In moments of weakness he would often cry to us about his wife and daughter, who had left him a year ago because of his drinking. Sadly, they had given him absolutely no word of where they were going.  And as Rolando cried we would always listen, and then encourage him to take refuge in his parents, who were allowing him to stay with them just a few blocks away from our church.

… But strangely enough we noticed that in spite of his parents’ apparent support of him Rolando almost never wanted to go home.

One morning in particular, this young man was too drunk to go to the bathroom by himself.  So when he stumbled into the church begging to use the toilet for an “emergency,” Larry decided to help him out, and then insist on taking him home.

By that point Rolando was unable to resist, so Larry put an arm over the young man’s shoulder and promptly “helped” him into the back of our car.

Shortly after we knocked on the door of his house, we saw someone open it and quickly snatch Rolando in.  We then saw the door close in our faces, and heard the shouts of women and children crying.  We were just wondering what to do when suddenly the door opened again.  We saw Rolando on the floor.

It was then that we realized Rolando’s father was beating him up.

Rolando’s mother seemed anxious for us to do something, so we quickly agreed to take the young man back out for a drive in order to prevent his father from calling the police to throw him in jail, where something worse might happen to him.

After about a minute of being in the back seat of our car, Rolando passed out.  We weren’t sure if the broken blood vessel in his eye was mainly from the hard liquor, or from the blows to the head he said he’d received from his father…  What we did know was that we noticed it on him just after the exchange that had happened behind the closed door.

Checking frequently to make sure that Rolando was still breathing, we drove around for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do.  Since he seemed to be relatively stable, we decided to let him sleep for a while and then wake him to see if he would like to check himself in to an alcohol rehabilitation center.  When we approached him about the idea hours later, he said that he wanted to talk to his parents first, and so we decided to take him back home and talk to his family.  But unfortunately, Rolando’s father was not in agreement, and our efforts to convince him fell totally through.

…Driving away, we felt extremely discouraged.

We were also more than a little worried about Rolando, so we decided to do the only thing we know how to do in order to begin to break the cycle of violence and abuse in a home.  We began planning to start a Bible study there.

Now the first couple of Bible studies in this household all turned out to be pretty interesting and about what we’d expected.  Not surprisingly, Rolando’s father was the one who wound up being falling down drunk, in addition to several others in attendance (who for the record provided a lot of comic relief, which we will not go in to here…).

And just when we thought our series of Bible studies was starting to take shape, one night we had something happen.  It wasn’t until we got home that we realized that Larry’s favorite sweatshirt had been stolen, along with all of the money from a month’s worth of fundraisers for the church.

Now there had been things missing from when we had spent time with Rolando before.  Namely, we knew he had once stolen a guitar tuner from Larry – or at least we thought it had been him… since about half an hour later (after we’d bought it back from the guy he’d sold it to), Rolando had actually come back and asked for prayer.

Certainly though, it was much more difficult to secure blame in the current situation.  To be sure, we had also noticed several of our things missing which had been stolen from other gang members, but Rolando had always been the one who was most well-known for his stealing.

Even so, nobody had ever taken an amount of money as large as this one.

And unfortunately the greater concern for us in the moment was that Rolando might do real damage to himself, or even overdose, with that kind of money in his hand.

So at the first opportunity we decided to go and talk to him… And gathering our courage, we started walking towards his house, not knowing what we would find there, or in what condition we could expect him to be.

To our surprise, Rolando’s mother answered the door calmly.  We went inside and immediately saw that he was sober… sitting by the fire and talking peacefully with his family.  When we asked him about the money, he denied ever having taken it, suggesting that another friend of ours had been the one who’d stolen everything… But the accusation seemed odd to us since we hadn’t known the person he blamed to ever take anything.

Not knowing what to do, we decided to continue the Bible study.  Certainly, everything that had happened was extremely suspicious. But at the same time we felt we couldn’t compromise the changes we were seeing in Rolando’s life, since he had stopped drinking, and our presence in that household seemed to have stayed the hand of abuse on the part of his father.

Surely enough, not more than a week later we saw God do a total miracle in Rolando’s life.

One afternoon he stopped by the church, sober… and with his wife and daughter on his arm!  Shyly, he informed us that they had come back to find him (apparently a total coincidence!) — on their own initiative.

And when Larry began asking Rolando what he thought of the miraculous things that God was doing in his life, all he could do was smile sheepishly. Then he said,

“Tomorrow I’ll give you your sweatshirt back.”

…Now to be honest with you, we haven’t ever seen the sweatshirt again, except for the time another gang member turned up wearing it, but when we asked him, he seemed offended and said “Hey! I paid good money for this thing!”

So of course this all leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

…And what happened to the money is even more of a mystery.

But what we do know for certain is that Rolando didn’t drink with it.

And for a changed life, it’s a small price to pay.

• We want to praise God once more for the youth van, since after all its repairs( ) we think it will be a good van, and a lasting vehicle not only for our youth, but also for the ministry in general.  Praise God for the mechanic, who donated countless hours of labor, and for the supporter who donated the van.
• Praise God for Kim’s health.  For those of you who have heard of how she’s been struggling recently we wanted to say that we feel the Lord has been faithful in leading us to the right kinds of doctors and medications for her.  Please continue to pray for complete healing, and for protection from any further illness.  She is tired of not feeling right… and her heart’s desire is to continue ministering at full speed.
• We want to thank God for all of you and again and for all of the many generous donations that we received from your year-end giving.  The extra donations have helped us to seal the final repairs on the van and to allow Kim to receive the medical attention that she has needed.
• Praise the Lord for a small but steady growth spurt that He has brought about in the Tierra Blanca church.
• Praise God for the miracle that He has done in Rolando.

• Please continue to pray for our friend Mario, and for all the youth who have been kidnapped from the church neighborhood.  More have disappeared.  You can pray specifically for a young girl named “Brady” — not more than sixteen years old.  As far as we know there have been very few sightings of her.  We do praise the Lord, however, since some of the others that we asked you to specifically pray for have been sighted…  We know that this is due to your prayers, so please keep praying… Mario himself has been sighted some since our last newsletter, but as of right now it has been about two months since the last sighting of him.
• Again, please continue to be praying for the church neighborhood of Tierra Blanca, and for the other surrounding neighborhoods. We want you to know that we have seen a real difference in this neighborhood since some of you have been praying — It has been a relative oasis in the midst of the violence, so to those of you who are praying: Good work.  …And keep it up!
• Pray for Rolando — He is still at a point where he’s afraid to open up to us… Like many of the youth we work with, he is afraid to dare to believe that God might actually be doing something good in his life. Pray that we would find the right moments – and the right words — to help him understand the depth of God’s love for him. Please pray that he would not drink — since he seems to have back-slidden some while we were visiting our families in the states…  So again:  Pray that Rolando would not go back to drinking, or do any drugs… at all.  Period.
• Please pray for Mario’s family and for us as we continue to work with them.  His mother has had a series of health problems — probably related to the stress of everything that has happened this year (having her son Jorge killed in an act of gang vengeance, and having Mario kidnapped by the drug cartel)…  Her health has made it a real challenge for their family to attend church services, but she is trying.
• Pray for Mario’s younger brother – also in the gang… We feel lead to begin to work with him, but quite frankly we are terrified.  We know that working with him would be an impossible task… and so we thought we’d better get you praying for the “impossible.”

Thanks.

Mario’s Baby Boy

Mario’s latest edition, a baby boy born just weeks ago,
in the arms of his mother, Carmen. Unfortunately, Mario’s baby has never seen or met his father.

Hello friends and family,

We just wanted to take a moment to write another brief update for you.

First of all, thanks so much again to all of you who donated towards our “new” van.  We enjoyed getting to visit our families in the states while we were getting some of the repairs done on it.

We also wanted to share with you some breaking news on Mario and on the situation here in the area where we’re working, since we know that most of the information we’ve sent this year has been a bit frightening, to say the least.

To begin, we have to admit that we did have a few difficult moments during our visit to the U.S., which caused us to reflect on the value and direction of our ministry.

As many of you may have imagined, a number of our family members took full advantage of our time with them to beg us, with tears, to come home.  Matters actually came to a head at Kim’s house, when, towards the middle of our stay there, the area where we’re living made the headlines of the Houston paper, due to another tragic ‘mass’ shooting which occurred, wounding 17, and killing a total of 18 apparently innocent people.  After reading about the incident, Kim’s father set the paper down in front of her at the breakfast table.  He waited only a few minutes before he informed her that this was the moment he’d been waiting for to ask her “formally” to come home.

And in addition to all of our family issues, we were also having trouble with the ‘new’ van — in that Larry found himself stranded on the side of the road, just fifteen minutes (and $1200!) after picking it up from its “final” repairs in the shop…  And the really low moment came when, after towing it back to the mechanic, we got a call informing us that they didn’t know if the latest problem was fixable, and at what price…  Yikes.

So… since we were unable to answer our families (or the mechanic), we decided to start praying for some clear signs about whether or not we should actually continue our ministry in Mexico…  On faith, Kim kept on writing thank-you notes to the supporters who gave towards the van, telling them that we had done the repairs on it – since it was technically true, and she wasn’t sure quite what else to tell them…  But it’s important to note that she was also praying (“Lord we need this van…”) with every stroke of her pen.

…And then, thankfully, God began to confirm that His hand was still with us.  Within just a few days, some signs of His will for us started coming.

The mechanic called us.  He was willing to donate the labor on the van (in addition to our supporter who offered us the van giving something), in order to get it finally working.

More importantly, the area of Torreón (where we live) came out again on the front page of the Houston paper… Only this time there was a big exposé there, which reported a major bust of the drug ring which was behind all of the mass shootings here, and the arrest of several of the key people involved.

… Now that’s a pretty clear sign.

And not only that, but now that we’ve returned to Mexico, we’ve noticed that everyone is still talking about the exposé – In fact not only are they talking, but we can literally see that things have changed a bit…  At least in the neighborhood where we work a lot of people are actually going out on the streets again!  It seems that while we were gone the gunmen from the drug trafficking movements actually moved their focus out of our neighborhood.

Wow… Thank you, Lord.

And not only that, but when we visited Mario’s family (they have gone to another city), we actually found them still strong in their faith – even though Mario has not been released yet. And though it is difficult for them to attend church services because of their situation, they are definitely still reading their Bible…  What’s more, they are now able to begin witnessing to their entire family in the place where they are staying… And of course we also got a chance to be sharing the Lord with them as we visited…!

So…

Praise God.

Truly, we can find no better words than these…  And so it’s  from the bottom of our hearts that we give thanks to Him for the miracles He´s done as a sign of His love for us, and of His faithfulness towards our ministry.

• Pray for the van– We left it happily in the states to be worked on for another month in our trusty mechanic’s free time…  Pray for the mechanic, that God would bless him… Pray for the gracious supporter who donated not only her vehicle to us, but also some of the funds to finally get it working.
• On a more serious note, pray for the people who’ve been wounded in the various mass shootings…  Even though things seem to have calmed down here since the exposé after the last incident, there are still many families who are forced to live with the aftermath of what happened… including young men and women in their 20’s and 30’s who have been left unable to walk due to the bullets that have rendered them paraplegic.
• Pray for Mario, who’s still in captivity… We wish we were able to say more about him, but unfortunately since his baby was born we’ve heard very little news of him…  We would like to think that this is because the higher-ups in the ring where he’s working realized that the presence of his new child would be a distraction to him, and a temptation for him to try to escape and see his family…  So for that reason we hope that the lack of word we have received on him reflects only some kind of decision on the cartel’s part to simply move him to another area… But we can’t be sure.  The only thing we do know is that after the baby was born the sightings of him went markedly down – from two or three times a week… to zero.  We are still praising God, however, since we can see His hand in the situation, and trust that He is continuing to move… especially for the sake of the safety of Mario’s child and family.
• Pray for Mexico, and particularly for our metropolis – Though most people agree that the violence has calmed down somewhat, we do not want to trick you into thinking that everything is totally o.k. in our area.  Of course the good news is that the gunmen from the dominant cartel do seem to have changed their circling routes out of our neighborhood. This is hugely significant, since it is the first time in years that we have not seen them circling.  The bad news, however, is that the other day two more young men were kidnapped out of an adjoining neighborhood, just blocks away…  In fact we think the only explanation for why our youth are not being kidnapped is probably due to your prayers…

  And so we ask you to please continue praying for the young people in all of Mexico.

Thank you.

Dear Friends,

As you know, during the past year or so of our ministry here in Central Mexico, God has been leading us to work more and more with the youth in our surrounding neighborhoods. Unfortunately, these young people have been the main object of the drug-terrorist movements that have suddenly overtaken this country.

As the months have gone by, we’ve come to realize that the area where we work has become one of the most dangerous places in all of Mexico.

But through it all, God has consistently opened the doors for us to have opportunities to speak into the lives of these youth, and we believe it’s no mistake that He has placed us here from the beginning.

Right now, the young people that we work with are facing a very difficult situation…  To give you an idea, they are literally afraid to go out of their houses – since they are being held at gunpoint almost every day, and since six more have been kidnapped from the area since we wrote you our last newsletter.

In light of the situation, it is not only unrealistic, but also extremely dangerous to try to minister to these young people by conducting open-air events, or even regular church or youth meetings within our neighborhood.

But we have a very unique opportunity.

As you may remember in our last newsletter, we sent out a request for you to pray that God would provide us with second vehicle that would be big enough to enable us to take groups of youth at a time to special functions or activities.

Less than a day after we sent the request, one of our prayer supporters responded, offering to donate a ’97 Chevy Astro van to our ministry, with the only condition that we were able to pay for repairs on it to make it driveable – which would cost an estimated total of $1,000.

In short, we believe this vehicle will be a practical help to us in the fight to keep our youth safe and off of drugs, and an instrument in the effort to share with them about how Jesus Christ can change them.

And so it is with tears that we thank you in advance, for considering how you might donate to help us take advantage of this opportunity in order to help touch and save the lives of youth here in Central Mexico.

Thanks also for your continued monthly donations to our ministry, as Larry has all but quit his secular job here in order to give more time to the needs which are rapidly arising around us.

Finally, thanks again for your prayer support. It is truly the foundation of everything we do.

Bless you,

Larry and Kim Flathmann

Donation info:

Please send your donations (which are tax-deductible) to:

Project Friendship
P.O. Box 90669
Houston, TX 77290

Checks should be made out to Project Friendship with Torreón Missions on the memo line.

*Note:  Extra donations may also be used to fund more special activities with the youth, daily living expenses, and Bibles (we would like to get around 150 Bibles – about $500 – because we’ve run out and people continue asking for them everywhere…)  Thank you.

In case you wonder why we need a bigger vehicle…

this is how the youth cram into the back seat and trunk of our hatchback right now!
(In this photo we were on our way to a life-changing crusade at a nearby church)

Evidence of changed lives

Mario, with his Bible, his Christian music, and his son… One month before he was kidnapped.