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  She is still in contact with the church and has interest in getting involved in things, but seems to be somewhat withdrawn.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.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

• For a second vehicle – something larger, which would better enable us to minister to youth.
• For creative, yet effective ways to reach young people… For wisdom to find a balance between accepting them where they are, and speaking the truth in love to them. For supernatural patience and stamina.
• For Larry’s job, which as you can probably imagine is not going very well right now, since he works on commission for a hotel in Mazatlán.
• For time and for self-discipline to be able to get physical rest.
• For our friend Ivan, who we believe is still in nothing less than grave danger.
• For Mario’s safety, as his life has been threatened on multiple occasions.
• …For the family of ‘Jorge’

We just wanted to ask you to pray with us since we have a somewhat critical situation on our hands.  It turns out that yesterday members of one of the drug terrorist factions arrived to take pictures of the neighborhood where our church is and expressed their intentions to try to set up a selling point there… So we would like to ask you to pray that this plan would somehow notgo through.  Pray that God would spare our neighborhood from this, if it be His will, since it would make things considerably dangerous for us, not to mention much more difficult as we continue the effort to work with the youth.

With that said we also wanted to tell you that probably the most heartbreaking thing which happened yesterday was that in a moment of weakness our friend, Mario (“Clawfoot,” see last newsletter), actually agreed to start working for these drug terrorists.

So… please pray.  We do believe that Mario is still at a point where he can get out of this, but it will require tremendous, supernatural, will power on his part… And these next 72 hours will be critical.

Thanks so much for praying.

We will try to get more details out to you soon…

Love,   Larry and Kim

We’ve got some pretty heavy prayer requests for you. It’s a good thing God is the one who’s going to make it all happen!

• For the Tierra Blanca area – That it would not be dominated by the drug lords.  That people would not live in fear.
• For Jani’s family.  For those of you who read our newsletter about Jani, we should report to you that she did eventually die of cancer this September. We do praise God however, because the cancer was detained long enough in order for some deep emotional wounds in her family to be healed.  Please pray specifically for Jani’s sons and daughters who have had a hard life and lost their brother only about a month after their mother’s death.
• For Ivan’s family, as Ivan’s uncle was killed recently in a violent run-in with the drug cartels.  Please pray for the safety his family, as they are still being threatened.
• For Patrick Guy’s family.  Patrick was a long-time friend who also died of cancer just a few days ago.  Please pray for Pat’s wife, Esther, that she would somehow find strength to go on and that more than anything she would be ushered into all that we know God still has for her
• For Kim’s grandfather, “Buddy” Hamblin who is struggling with congestive heart failure and other health issues, and for Kim’s grandmother Doris.
• Again, for our time – that in the midst of all our responsibilities we would be able to find the kind of time and energy it takes to really be able to minister to the kind of youth we feel lead to reach out to, and that we would also have time for one another.
• For Mario, who is still searching, and for so many others like him…

Hi Everybody,

We just wanted to send out a quick prayer request for our friend, Ivan. He has been struggling for some time with serious addictions to several kinds of drugs.

Though it has been hard, Ivan has been working to gain victory over his drug habits, and we’re happy to report that he’s stayed totally clean during these last few weeks.

The only problem now is that we’re worried about his immediate safety due to the fact that he’s trying to drop his contacts with the particular drug-trafficking group he used to give business to.  Ivan was not a seller, he was only a client, but even so it’s hard to get out.  We are especially concerned because a friend of his was shot and killed a few weeks ago, less than a block from Ivan’s house, apparently because he’d been trying to buy from two different trafficking groups.

As for Ivan, he has told us that recently some of the group members from his neighborhood have made threatening comments to him and seem to be going out of their way to drive by his house.  So, Ivan and his family need God’s protection. We know beyond a doubt that God is able to protect him, but we do ask you to pray that Ivan would have the wisdom and the will power to handle his circumstances,  and even more importantly that they would drive him to continually seek God.

Please also pray that the church (the Expo Vineyard) would continue to minister boldly in the neighborhood, sharing God’s love, shining God’s light, breaking the power of the darkness, and continuing to transform the spiritual atmosphere there…