If you’re worried about our safety…
We don’t want to sound like we’re just taking things lightly, but the truth is that we feel there’s not a whole lot to worry about in terms of our personal safety. As we’ve said before, the only time that we’ve had a direct encounter with the drug terrorists was a clear mistake on their part and could be explained by the fact that our truck strongly resembled the truck of the guy they were after. To avoid further problems we have painted and sold the truck and are now driving a slate blue (and totally unsuspecting) Ford focus.
But even with that said, the more important point we’d like to make here is that it is totally unlikely that any real harm would come to us precisely because of the fact that we’re Americans. Let us explain…
Though you may have heard about crimes committed against Americans in places like Mexico City, the most probable thing is that they were actually random crimes and not a result of the drug movement. We feel it’s fairly obvious that since President Calderon has started his crack-down on crime, the last thing the drug lords want is to get more bad press or risk any more involvement on the part of American authorities by threatening the security of Americans in Torreon, which is not even a border town. In fact, even the people that we’ve talked to who’ve been forced into the drug mafias confirm that there’s a penalty of death for anyone in them who accidentally “gets the wrong guy,” which as we think about it is corroborated by the fact that we ourselves were able to drive away from our encounter, since all of the bullet damage to our truck indicated they were only shooting at our tires.
And as if that weren’t enough, we should probably also say here that we are fairly well-known in most of the neighborhoods where we minister, and that the drug traffickers in these areas (if we don’t already know them or their families) most certainly have us ear-marked as people who are last on the list to be bothered by them and who are most certainly not to be confused with other people in the area. So in short we feel it’s safe to say that the people who are in much more danger than we’ll ever be are actually the Mexicans all around us, who in fact are being exploited on a constant basis and who for that very reason need our continuing ministry…
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