All articles in category Mexico

Missionary Spotlight – Things we wish you knew

By Manfred Koehler

September 2008

Mexico

Missionary Spotlight – Things we wish you knew

Things we wish you knew I never dreamed my missionary calling would involve wearing so many hats – preacher, carpenter, translator, mechanic, linguist, plumber, photographer, solar electrician, conference speaker, dental assistant, grave-digger, airstrip maintenance man, and rodent extermination consultant. I’ve donned them all. On top of that, Beth is a pharmacist, schoolteacher, editor, nurse and a social worker specialising in battered women. Since arriving on the mission field in Mexico, we’ve felt the scorn of many who choose evil and the suspicion of those who question our presence among them. We’ve had our home broken into. We’ve lost our only child to...

Missionary Spotlight-Reformed literature in Mexico

By Wayne Anderson

February 2005

Mexico

Missionary Spotlight-Reformed literature in Mexico

I was converted around the age of 12, having grown up in a pastor’s home and known the Scriptures from a young age. When I was 15 the Lord began to deal directly with me regarding a call to preach his Word. On the recommendation of my father and pastor, I enrolled in Bible college to prepare for the Christian ministry. I graduated in 1980 and for the next nine years laboured with my father in teaching and preaching. Tragedies In the autumn of 1985 my wife Debbie and I were commissioned to go to the mission field and in June 1989 arrived in...

Missionary Spotlight-Fact File

June 2003

Mexico

Missionary Spotlight-Fact File

Area: 756,066 square miles. Neighbouring countries: USA, Guatemala and Belize. Environment: Mexico has high central mountains (highest peak 5,700m) and plateaus, and low coastal plains especially in the Yucatan peninsula. Its climate is hot desert in the north and tropical in the south. However, most of Mexico lacks adequate rainfall. The coasts are exposed to severe storms and the interior to volcanic and earthquake activity. Population: 104 million. Infant mortality: 24.5 per thousand live births. Life expectancy: 72 years. Capital: Mexico City (22.5 million). Major cities: Guadalajara – a mining centre (4 million), Monterrey – a heavy industry centre (3.5 million), Puebla (2 million) and...

Missionary Spotlight-Within a bullet’s breadth of hell

By Manfred Koehler

June 2003

Mexico

Missionary Spotlight-Within a bullet’s breadth of hell

Tall and gangly, Ernesto had a quick smile – especially for the ladies. His light skin was the envy of every Pima girl. Isidra, Ernesto’s wife, was the first female believer of the indigenous Pima people, and mother of his four children. She loved him dearly, but Ernesto felt he needed several women to fill his cup. More than once, Isidra found him in the company of yet another mistress. Late one night, a Mexican dance band drowning out the noise of drunken laughter and shuffling shoes, Isidra searched for her man. She had walked six miles from her ranch, suspecting the worst. She sensed...

Missionary Spotlight-The Protestant Church in Mexico

By Wayne Andersen

June 2003

Mexico

Missionary Spotlight-The Protestant Church in Mexico

The birth pains of the Protestant church in Roman Catholic Mexico came shortly after a time of great political upheaval the 25 years of turmoil and bloodshed that followed Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821. By 1848, Mexico had lost half her territory to the USA. Riots Little is recorded of Protestant missionary work in Mexico prior to the 1850s, when John Butler of the British and Foreign Bible Society came to the Mexico City area to sell and distribute Bibles from door to door and teach his converts to do the same. These efforts sparked mob riots incited by local Roman Catholic priests, resulting...

Missionary Spotlight-Baseball

By Kent Philpott

December 2001

Mexico

Missionary Spotlight-Baseball

Sometimes I ask myself ‘What are you doing here, Philpott?’ Playing baseball at San Quentin Prison consumes about fifteen hour of my time each week. Some days are dusty and hot, surrounded by ugly yellow brick. Other days a cold, stinging wind blows in from the Pacific Ocean. That wind picks up the dirt and drives it into our eyes and noses. Surly, angry convicts shout taunts and wander through the outfield while games are in progress. ‘Lock-downs’ disrupt practices. Epidemics of chicken pox, tuberculosis, hepatitis C (two players are HIV positive) pop up now and then. One guy says he used to pitch for...

Real Missionary Work

By Pat Horner

November 1999

Mexico

Real Missionary Work

What Evangelicals commonly call ‘missionary work’ (admittedly, a very broad field) involves much that does not meet the biblical criteria for missions. Let me tell you some things which have happened on the mission field and which, in my estimation, are an abomination in the eyes of God. Ice cream Several years ago, a Baptist missionary in Mexico gathered a crowd of people on a hot summer day with the promise that, if they would listen to his message, he would give them all ice cream cones afterwards. Very quickly the crowd increased to about six hundred expectant people. Pictures were taken, which would...

A visit to the Yucatan

By Sandy Gladfelter

June 1999

Mexico

A visit to the Yucatan

Walter and Betty Groover came to Merida, Mexico, in October 1964, with three small children. After thirty-five years of faithful service, travelling almost every night of the week to one of the many pueblos (villages) in the state of Yucatan, this veteran missionary and his wife are just as excited about the Lord’s work among the Mayan Indians of the Yucatan as they were when they began. Like Caleb, Walter’s strength has not abated; and his vision has not grown dim. Four years ago, the Groovers’ oldest son, Cody, was also called of the Lord to the work of the gospel. Cody, his wife Winna,...