Praise God for the opportunity to get to know and minister to Eric’s family… even under these tragic circumstances. Please pray specifically for them, since although his death actually occurred a few months ago, the family is still struggling — both financially and emotionally…  Pray particularly for Eric’s mom, who also has another daughter missing due to capture by drug mafias… and five other young children at home.  She is still in contact with the church and has interest in getting involved in things, but seems to be somewhat withdrawn.  Pray that God would give us further opportunities to minister to her if it is His will.

Praise God for our friend Roberto… and for saving Roberto’s life. We believe that there is no other explanation for how he survived, given that he was shot at directly by various mafia hitmen using machine gun rifles.  And even though we don’t understand why these men had apparently mistaken him for their victim, we do know that God was protecting Roberto… since despite the fact that he’s got four different AK-47 explosive lead bullets in him, he is still on this side of things…

… And hanging on.

So praise God.

And finally, please pray for the congregation of our home church, the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Spring, and particularly for the family of Charlcie Phifer, in their time of loss.

We also praise God that there have been several recent sightings of Mario. Please continue to pray for his protection, and for him to be released in God’s timing.

Note:  If you are interested in meeting any of the financial needs due to hospital bills for either Eric’s or Roberto’s families, please contact us.

Thanks.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

Thank you to all of you who are praying for Mario and for all of your words of encouragement to us. We are eternally grateful to have you working with us for God to be glorified in this situation.

We want to ask you to please continue fervently praying. We believe that God is going to have the victory in this situation and bring many people to salvation through it.  But we haven’t won the battle yet – we still need to be faithful in prayer, and cry out for God to set Mario free and do everything else He wants to do.

• Praise God that we have word of Mario – He has been forced to sell narcotics in our city through a network and has already been seen by several people at a number of obvious points…  This is actually good news, since many of the youth who are kidnapped are either killed or exported to work in other areas, and are never heard from again.
• Praise God for the strength that Mario’s mother, family, and wife have shown in the face of this trial…  They are choosing to trust God daily and even finding words of comfort to say to us.  Pray that in the city which they have fled to they would find a church congregation and continue to seek His presence.
• Praise God for this trial (James ch 1) and for the way we can see His hand in it, working at any cost to refine and mold Mario.
• Please pray that if it’s God’s will we would have wisdom to be able to get some sort of communication to Mario… This would be extremely dangerous, but we do feel we need to somehow let him know that his family has fled from the city and are safe.
• Pray that Mario would somehow be able to have access to a Bible and read it.  This would be a miracle, and we are asking for a miracle.
• Please pray for God to provide safe places for us to meet with the other youth, and for Him to raise up native people who have the courage to take the risk of working with them.
• Please pray for the family of “Alejandro” and his brother “Cha-cha,” two other young men who were kidnapped from our neighborhood just days after Mario…  As of this moment we have received no word of them.
• Please pray for Mario’s protection at the selling points… Since he is forced to do business out in the open it is extremely dangerous, as it makes him an obvious target for the bullets of the opposing cartel’s gunmen…  This is probably the main reason why the drug cartels often force third parties to sell for them.
• Please pray for us to be able to pick up the pieces of our youth ministry after all that has happened.  As we wrote to you in our last newsletter, they are dazed and confused.  … And so are we.

Mario’s Precious Family

Mario’s little brother Ismael, his daughter America, and his son Chuy

• Praise God that Mario not only received Christ but that he’d also begun to develop a strong intimate relationship with Him before being kidnapped.
• Pray for Mario’s protection during this time…  And that the unimaginable trials he’s going through would only drive him closer to God.
• Please cry out to God for Him to fulfill the prophetic prayer that was spoken to Mario just days before he was taken: that the forces of death had been following him, but that the angels of God were stronger, and that God would eventually raise Mario up to preach powerfully to his generation.
• Pray that both we and the church would have great faith about Mario’s situation. After all the things that have happened here, the natural tendency is for people to lose hope.  It is hard not to assume that, like so many others, Mario will be forced to work for the drug lords indefinitely -  or get killed off…  But we believe that God has a plan for Mario and that he will be set free, no matter how impossible it may seem.
• Pray for us as we continue to minister to the youth in Tierra Blanca… Again, after everything that has happened, they are terrified, dazed, and confused.  Please pray that God would use us in order to bring supernatural encouragement to them.
• Pray for God to be glorified in the life of Mario.  May his situation be an example of God’s victory over all the powers of darkness, and may he be an inspiration that transforms the entire community.
• Pray for Mario’s family. They, like Mario, have grown in their faith in remarkable ways over the past few months, and are showing amazing strength as they trust God to have control in this situation. But it’s still difficult emotionally, especially since Mario’s brother Jorge was killed just a few months ago.  On top of everything else, they also had to leave the city because Mario’s father received a threat a few days after Mario was taken.

God is so awesome!

In our regular Thursday evening service, a group of 5 of our friends, some of the youth involved in the local gang, came in and joined us for the sermon/Bible discussion!

This is an awesome breakthrough, because they’ve shown a lot of interest when we talk with them and pray for them out in the plaza, and they’ve come when we do special stuff to invite them, like a movie night. But the only one who has come before to a regular service on his own is Mario. And this time a whole group of 5 of them came!

It was great, because God worked so beautifully through it all! Gera (Gerardo), a young man with a real passion for God from another church who God has called to work with the Vineyard for about the past 6 months, shared his testimony with them and talked about the amazing call that God has for them to join with Him in serving and reaching out to the other youth. And everybody else at the service had words of encouragement and wisdom for them.

Please pray with us for these youth, because the enemy will definitely attack them, but greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world, and we know without a doubt that God will have the victory in their lives! He is fulfilling His Word, rescuing those without hope, and giving them new life and a worthwhile purpose. And He’s fulfilling the vision that He had given for the Tierra Blanca Vineyard, that it would be a church that would raise up powerful radical lovers of God who would go out to transform their neighborhoods, their families – and only God knows what more? the city? the nation? … with the power of God’s redeeming love!

Praise be to the Name of Him Who Is Worthy!

• For our friend, Ivan, about whom we sent our last emergency email… As far as we know he has managed to stay off drugs for the past few months.  Praise God.
• For water.  We’ve had some rain over the past few months! (Nice job prayer warriors!!:)
• For generous financial support, which has allowed us to anonymously bless some families in need during the recession that Mexico is facing…
• For the Expo congregation, which is now independent and growing.
• That God has been faithful to raise up more leadership in all three churches…
• For a recent widening in the scope of our ministry… For God’s grace in allowing us to minister not only to congregation members but also to their unchurched families. Praise Him.
• Again, for the continued move of the Holy Spirit, who is so faithful to minister to our people in all of our services.
• For all of our friends and family who faithfully support us in prayer… We do not know what we would do without you, since you literally pray the prayers that we do not have time to pray.

• For water.  It is very scarce nowadays and in the afternoons we have had to bathe with a bucket more often than not, but we are at a point where we’re truly thankful for every bucket that comes out of our tap.  Praise God for them and in His faithfulness may He keep sending them !!
• For NINA’S Husband, Tavo – Do you remember him?  He’d been working in another city for some months now, but when he returned on a visit he shared with us about the restoration of his marriage and his involvement in one of the local churches there. And as we talked about the scriptures over dinner, Tavo listened this time with all of the wide-eyed intent that we love to see in a new believer.  Tavo is still struggling with his addictions so we do ask you to continue to pray for him …
• For “Pancho”, who, coerced into selling drugs for one of the dominant trafficking rings here, was able to escape the attack of an armed group of vehicles sent to his selling site by the opposite ring. Miraculously, he was able to walk through the bullets, hail a taxi, and ride home. His sister, who is a Christian, heard the shots from blocks away and started praying and claiming the promises of Psalm 91.  Please pray for the families of Pancho’s friends, since as we understand it all of his comrades died from the bullets of the attacking vehicles that day.