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

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.

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.

Hi, everyone.  Well it’s a relief to finally be able to sit down and write this…  As always a lot of things have happened since our last article, and since there are so many critical situations here we have made up our mind to try to stay in more regular contact, though we’ll have to see how often we’re able to write.

For those of you who have been following the story of our friend and former gang-leader, Mario (who was previously known as “Clawfoot”), we felt like we should update you on something without waiting any longer.

To start with, we should mention that a few days ago we were planning to write you about the radical changes we were seeing in Mario. To our knowledge, he had been totally drug-free for several weeks.  He was regularly attending church meetings.  He was even refusing to fight with the opposing gang members who had murdered his brother, although they’d provoked him on two occasions.  (And despite the fact that for self-defense purposes he was always able to lay them out with one punch, he did express a couple of times that he actually felt bad afterwards…!)

In his free time, this young man was looking for work – an honest job, as he put it, and was also taking unprecedented care of his wife and family.  Indeed, Mario had even wanted to change some of his alternative clothing in order to dress more conservatively, and so since he didn’t have much money Larry let him borrow some of his button-down shirts!

Mario’s “new look,” together with the fact that he often carried his Bible with him and talked to the other gang members about Jesus, had earned him another nickname in the neighborhood… “Brother Clawfoot.”   And at times the youth in the gang even jokingly called him “Pastor Clawfoot.”

… However in the midst all of their joking these young men were also listening to their former leader, and probably secretly hanging on every word that he said… Many of them were even starting to attend our Sunday services themselves.

… But then something happened.

One afternoon Mario was just sitting down to talk with his cousin in the neighborhood plaza.  Suddenly, a double-cab pickup pulled up and 5 men with automatic rifles stepped out and ordered them face-down on the ground.  Mario’s cousin wanted to run, but luckily Mario stopped him so he wouldn’t get shot.

… Witnesses say that both Mario and his cousin were held at gunpoint with their faces to the pavement for about half an hour while the armed men hurled insults at them.

Then, in an instant, they ordered Mario into the truck.

…And in the blink of an eye, he was gone… “Clawfoot” Mario, even though he’d refused friendly invitations to work for the cartel on several occasions (and offers of the chance to take revenge on his brother’s killers), was finally recruited by force into the mafia that had long been courting him.

That night Mario’s family chose to join us at the evening church service, and the congregation prayed for them. While praying, one person felt strongly that within the week the family would have news about Mario.

Six days later,  the family did in fact receive news.  And though we can’t give you any details, we do know that for the moment Mario is alive and well, but that he’s still in a very dangerous situation.

So to close we just simply want to ask you to pray.  Though we have received news about Mario we also know it’s no secret that in a moment of anger the drug cartels often torture and brutally kill their victims… Please pray with us for a miracle, since there are very few precedents of the young men who are captured being released.

As for us, our hearts are breaking, but we know that God is still with us.

…And certainly, we’ve no doubt He’s with Mario.

So thank you for your prayers and bold faith.

In Him,

Larry and Kim Flathmann

Hello, friends.

Yet again, the months have flown by.

As usual, we’ve been extremely busy. We wish we could tell you an upbeat story of how things are going…  But unfortunately a story like that is not on the agenda for this time, since, as some of you know, our lives have been deeply touched by tragedy these past few months, and we thought we shouldn’t let more time go by before we gave you some of the details…

To start with, we should tell you that our friend and gang-leader, “Clawfoot” Mario, whom you may remember from our last newsletter, had been doing pretty well these last few months.  He was not totally clean, but had significantly reduced his drug use and was gaining interest in talking with us and in hearing about the things of God.

…But then one night our cell phone went off at around 3 a.m.

It was Mario.  He was crying.  It turned out that his brother, ‘Jorge,’ had wandered out of his gang’s territory and been caught by members of an opposing gang a few hours earlier.

Mario told us that his family had gotten a call and then rushed to the local emergency room… But by that point it was too late… Jorge had died from internal bleeding due to the knife wounds he’d received that night.

…The next day turned out to be sort of a blur,  as have been most of our days now since then.

First, there was the wait for several hours at the Justice of the Peace while the officials finished preparing the body for burial. Then sadly, there was no funeral, since due to the high number of homicides in our area local authorities are now hesitant to allow public mourning. And even though Jorge’s death was not specifically drug-related, they thought it better not even to allow a wake for him that evening.

… So instead of a ceremony that day the only thing we saw was the angry fists of Mario shoved into the dirt over his brother’s grave, where just moments earlier his family had buried the young man with a wheelbarrow, in haste.

…And when everything was over, and the people at the graveside finally managed to pull Mario up from having collapsed in the spot where his brother was lain, the only person he was willing to have take him home was “Larry…”

…So we walked him to our car.

What ensued from that moment on in the life of Mario has been harrowing.  We ourselves have been in contact with the family in some form or another almost every day for the past three months. There have been nights of wrestling Mario into the car, or bailing him out of jail… Nights of restraining him, taking him home “high,” confused and crying…

Nights of trying to find words for a mother who’s been left without a son.

But even in spite of all this, the hardest thing by far has been avoiding the constant, daunting temptation for “Clawfoot” Mario to take his revenge on the other gang members, who, due to the slowness of the justice system, are walking around scot-free just blocks away.

…One evening was particularly hard.  It was one o’clock in the morning. Our assignment, as usual, was to take Mario home in accordance with the pleas of his family.

But for some reason that evening Mario had fixed his gaze on the direction of those few blocks… Unfortunately there was no talking him out of the fact that he stood within walking distance from his brother’s murderers. And he’d been staring that way for hours… Completely unwilling to move, talk, or even look in any other direction.

Larry, unable to physically control Mario by himself if push came to shove, stood only with a hand on his shoulder, not saying much.

Two a.m. – After another hour of silent staring, and of considerable coaxing, Mario finally collapsed into our car.

The ride home was quiet as Mario continued to stare coldly out the window.  And when we got to his house and he stumbled out of the car, all we could do was look at each other in despair.  In terms of keeping Mario from taking revenge, we wondered how many more nights we could manage like that one…

It wasn’t until the next day that we found something strange in our car… It caught the light as Kim moved the passenger seat… Big, blunt, and shiny – it was a knife... Several inches long.   It was just sitting there where it had been laid on the back seat the night before.

Now… We feel it’s important to say that before then we didn’t even know that Mario had carried that knife on him, so it was impossible for us to have asked him for it….  It’s also impossible that something that big just sort of “fell” out of his pocket.  So the only other explanation we have is that without saying a word, Mario had left it there… On purpose.

To be sure, we would be lying if we told you that there haven’t still been many hard nights…  But since that night we’ve somehow gained a new sense of assurance… In the unspoken language of Mario and his gang, he has let us know that he’s given up something…  Indeed, it seems that “Clawfoot” Mario has given up his rights to revenge.

…And as far as the knife goes?  Well, right now we’re actually using it to cut vegetables in our children’s feeding program… Technically, it’s still Mario’s, so for a long time we had it just sort of stashed in a compartment of our car…  But since surely enough he never once said a word to us about it, we actually don’t mind coming across it in the kitchen from time to time.  In fact, seeing it there has oddly become a symbol of hope…  Certainly, there still are nights when we’re glad he doesn’t have it.

“Put your sword back in its place…
for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”
Matthew 26: 52

Mario Before:  (November 2009)

Mario before he gave his life to Christ…

Mario now

Mario, now clean, with Daniel Fonvielle, an evangelist friend of ours, after a special service that Daniel did while visiting Torreon.

Facts on Crime in Mexico

• In the Mexican city of Juarez there were well over six hundred homicides related to organized crime from January to April of this year.
• The city of Gomez, in the middle of our metropolis area, ranked 5th overall in the nation for number of homicides from January to April, with a per capita rate similar to that of Juarez.
• There have been over 3 thousand homicides in all of Mexico related to organized crime this year so far…

Three thousand lost…

… One saved.

Note: Please pray specifically for the families of “Voty,” “Guero,” “Panchillo,” and “Gera,” who are four other young men whom we’ve lost in the area of our church neighborhood, just in the space of time that it’s taken for us to get our thoughts together and write you about ‘Jorge…’ …Thanks for your prayers.

Kim wrote the following letter to our friend Jorge, who was killed on Feb. 13, 2010 by a rival gang.

Mario and his younger brothers meditating on a photo of Jorge days after his death

April 2010

Jorge… We miss you.  We know that in some ways death is definitive…  At least from this side of things.  And though it may seem easy to say that we did the best we could with you, in our hearts of course the truth is that we wish we could have done more.

Our last words to you were about God’s plan for your life and about making a decision.  At the time you weren’t ready, but we know that you were listening.  So we hope you prayed the prayer of the thief on the cross in your last moments, two days later.

We also wanted to tell you that we’ve been quite busy lately, taking care of your family… So busy, in fact, that we haven’t had time to grieve ourselves over losing you…  We’re doing all right, though, because we know it has to be that way.  Our only prayer is that one day… maybe one day, it will finally hit us that you’re not coming back.

You…

…And so many others.

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!

Greetings!   …Well as usual so much has happened since we’ve last written to you that we hardly know where to start… The following account is actually from a while ago, but we thought it was good enough to go ahead and share with you anyway… Hope you enjoy it… 

Well, brave readers, without any further adieu, let’s begin: Our story opens at a point in time about six months ago, when our Tierra Blanca pastor, Fili, had the idea of starting a youth group in the church neighborhood… Now that sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? And in fact you might even be asking yourself why, after seven years of working with the church in Tierra Blanca, hadn’t we started a youth group before…?

And of course that’s a very good question. We don’t actually have a good answer, except that one of the main reasons was probably, um… fear, since the closest contact we’d ever had with the youth in Tierra Blanca was to cower inside the church building as we watched the fighting gangs throw rocks at each other outside…  There were also other reasons, though, like the fact that most of the young people in Tierra Blanca have at least one child by the time they are 17, or the slightly daunting reality that the majority of them spend their evenings ‘high’ under the influence of some drug or another… Yes, and in fact we should probably also say that the Tierra Blanca area has even become somewhat notorious in the area for its gang members… To put it bluntly, many of our friends from other neighborhoods just ‘don’t go there.’  Even the local taxi drivers tend to hesitate when you ask them to take you in… And of course we’ve lost track of the countless comments we’ve heard from people such as “Tierra Blanca!!? Oh my GOSH just watch your BACK…!!”

Now to be sure, we should tell you that there are already at least two other evangelical churches in the neighborhood, both of which have been there longer than we have. We’ve noticed that these churches are not lacking in members, but that not surprisingly nobody has attempted to do anything with the young people involved in gangs.

So… What could we possibly do to get the attention of the youth in this neighborhood…?

After thinking rather intensely, we decided that instead of doing some sort of cheesy pizza-party debut sort of thing (PARDON THE PUN) that it would work much better to actually venture outside the church and start “hanging out” with these kids in the neighborhood plaza… So, we all took a very deep breath one Sunday evening… and wandered out…

Youth from Tierra Blanca hanging out in the plaza at night

The response we received was surprising.  Most people were ‘high,’ but other than that, incredibly friendly, so we spent the next few Sunday nights just sort of chatting with folks, or praying for them, buying them hamburgers, and not least importantly, helping them to stumble repeatedly on and off of the park benches.

One of the guys present in some of our interactions in the plaza was named Mario, also known as “Clawfoot,” a notorious neighborhood fighter and gang leader.  We ourselves had actually heard of him and had seen people go to the emergency room after fighting with him on more than one occasion, but after getting to know this young man we developed a real affection for him.  So one night when he showed up with several large cuts on head from his latest adventures, we were moved and decided we were going to try and dress his wounds.

At first we couldn’t figure out why no one was willing to help us clean and bandage Mario’s sores…  After a lot of cajoling somebody finally went and got iodine, but when we asked who would like to help us put it onto the cuts, we were surprised to be met only with comments like “Hey, go ahead. No, really. We’ll just WATCH…” But even so, there was no talking us out of doing it.  So, thinking happily about the actions of the Good Samaritan, we didn’t notice as most of the neighborhood stepped back in fear as we innocently prepared to pour iodine on Clawfoot’s gaping wounds.

Now the events that followed were actually quite surprising, to everyone but us, that is, since Clawfoot did not actually beat anyone up or even so much as leave anybody with a black eye!  We do have to confess that he thrashed a little, but that was quickly put to a stop, since Kim wasted no time in catching him in her arms and crying “Poor baby!!”

When we had finished all our doctoring, we finally glanced up from a now-whimpering Clawfoot. At that point we noticed many of the other gang members, who had long since been just sort of staring at us in shock…  It was then that we appreciated the magnitude of what we had done, since the only comment they made to us was that nobody from that neighborhood had ever tried to cure Clawfoot’s wounds and had it go so, um… well for them… J

So, to make a long story short our reaching out to the youth in Tierra Blanca has had a number of implications.

One is that we can almost no longer drive through the neighborhood without our car being stopped as we are surrounded by gang members…  This may sound rather frightening, and for most people it would be, but in our case it is only because they are asking for peanuts…, in little packages which we keep in the trunk and have started giving away for free in order to establish a better rapport with the youth. J  (And in fact it seems to be working…  So far we’ve only had 200 pesos and a camera stolen from us…!  That’s pretty good!!!)

Another implication was that in a sudden burst of inspiration we decided to offer “Movie Night” out of the church building once a week, which actually proved to be rather interesting, since we didn’t have enough chairs to seat all of the gang members at once, and found ourselves to be quite unprepared for the fighting which broke out over the popcorn and potato chips…  J

Another defining moment came during a medical missions visit from our ‘old’ college friend, Dr. Minh Han, who, in the midst of conducting free clinics in poor neighborhoods to treat over 400 patients also had time to talk with some of our youth about the effects of drug abuse…  Most of our guys were very disappointed to find out that smoking cigarettes could affect their sexual virility!

Indeed, some of our church members have even tried playing soccer with the gang members on occasion, which is the closest we’ve ever come to being in any real physical danger (except for witnessing a few hold-ups), since some of our church brethren are a bit out of shape and we’ve wondered whether any of them might go into cardiac arrest.

Ah, yes… but probably the most important implication of all this is that, slowly but surely, these guys are actually starting to darken the door of our church during some of our service times.

…And “Clawfoot” (now Mario) has been one of the most regular attenders so far.

Mario at the end of a church service, with his kids

We should clarify here that sometimes Mario comes ‘high’ to the services, but at other times he seems to be O.K…  Either way, though, we’ve noticed that he’s always eager to participate, and even to turn to the right verses in his Bible.

In closing, we’d like to say that our efforts to reach these youth so far have been just overflowing with fruit, but the truth is that the results have been very inconsistent and disheartening at times. The saddest thing of all was when Mario showed up at the Sunday service a couple months ago with his entire wrist and palm split open through several layers of skin, apparently as a result of a knife-wound from the Zetas… Yes, and in fact it’s been rumored that they’re looking for him, probably to force him into selling drugs for their network.

Unquestionably, the fight for these kids is real.  We know for a fact that over eleven people have been killed in the Tierra Blanca area during the past month or so in the different battles of the drug lords…

So the reality is that if we want to win today’s youth over to our side we’re going to have to fight, and fight hard… harder than the Enemy.  This is a huge challenge, and as of yet we’re not sure how of to go about doing it…  Certainly, though, what we know is that we will have to stop cowering inside our church building.

Indeed, we will have to stop hiding from them and be bold enough to seek and find them…

Bold enough to reach them, that is. …

And to dare to cure their wounds.

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…