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

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

• 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.

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.

• For the healing of Mario’s arm, which for reasons we will not go into here had a bullet buried in it, and now doesn’t.  Praise God.
• For Mario’s mother, who has shown amazing strength.
• For the miracle of the fact that to date no one in Mario’s family (including brothers, uncles, and cousins), has yet taken revenge into his own hands…
• For the miracle of the fact that Mario did not go to work for the drug lords, in spite of the fact that they invited him to do so on several occasiones.
• For God’s supernatural and amazing protection and provision for us.

• 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’

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.

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

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.