Two days ago, pastor C (my pastor), his son Carlitos (8 years old), one of our mutual friends Elias, and I drove about 2 ½ hours up into the mountains to spend some time with a dear friend of pastor C. We traveled to a small indigenous community up in the mountains of Chiappas, Mexico where a new Baptist church has been built. In the little “town” where the church is, there are only about 100 people but within about a 2 hours walk there are about 2,000 people. There are many people that attend this Baptist church (which is a fairly large structure for this area of Chiappas) but there are also many lost people in the area that need to hear the good news of the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We left Teopisca about noon on Wednesday and arrived there around 4:00pm after making a quick stop to meet up with Senor Vicinte, a deacon in the church, so that he could show us the way up to his community. There was a good welcoming party there to meet us when we arrived and we unloaded our gear into the church and then we went out and began visiting with the people. As it turns out, the men above 25 years old can speak Spanish and 1 or 2 other dialects but the women and children seemed to only be able to speak their own dialect. SO communication was a little difficult for us, especially for me since everyone was just speaking a hundred miles an hour and I was only getting about 60% of what the men where saying (although by the end of our short trip the men realized that I could understand much more if they just slowed down a little and spoke more clearly).
Wednesday night we sang some worship songs and then pastor C preached to probably about 70 or 80 people. The message was translated by Gregorio, the pastor of this church, into the dialect of the people and at the conclusion of the message, many people confessed their sins and prayed to the Lord for forgiveness. Please pray with me that these people have truly seen their need for a Savior to pardon them and free them from the sin that has kept them in bondage for all these years. And pray that they would be transformed more into the image of Christ day by day and that they would begin to hunger and thirst for the righteous that is found in the only true and living God of heaven and earth.
After the preaching of the word of God, we showed a movie about the life of Hudson Taylor, a missionary to China in the mid to late 1800’s. It was a great movie about the faith, dedication and perseverance of a servant of the Most High God that was used to bring the saving word of the Lord to many in China before it was “Big Red.” If this movie did nothing for anyone else in the room, I can definitely say with all truth that I was further encouraged and strengthened by what I saw and heard from the life of this faithful man of God, Hudson Taylor. What hardships this man encountered throughout his life as he sought to see men go from death to life, darkness to light, hopelessness to full of hope and misery to joy and peace. One of Hudson’s favorite passages (a passage that the Lord used to give him strength to continue fighting the good fight of faith) was John 15:5 which says, “I [Lord Jesus] am the vine, you [Christians] are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” What a word of exhortation and encouragement to our lives today…whether we are missionaries to the uttermost parts of the world or a teenage student in school in the good ‘ole U.S.A. We must remember that we can do nothing in our own strength but rather, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
All in all we had a good, and I hope, profitable time with our brothers and sisters. We discussed with the pastor about maybe visiting this community on a more frequent basis so that we could do more bearing of one another’s burdens and share in each other’s joy. I think we have decided that maybe a bi-monthly trip would be best for everyone involved. I pray that this will be the case as I truly enjoyed my time with these people of another tribe and tongue.
BUT, one thing that I did not mention in my report above was what we encountered about an hour from this small community. The night before (Tuesday night) this area had very heavy rains, which caused many landslides and “hole sinks.” These rains also caused havoc with the roadways as you can see from some of the photos below. The biggest problem though was that it washed away the biggest bridge that we had to cross in our route up into the mountains. I remember the strange feeling I had when looking at where the bridge had once stood and thinking that just 15 hours before, there was a bridge here.
In order to get our gear across to the other side of the bridge and into the “taxis” on the other side to complete our journey, we had to carry all of our gear downstream about 300 yards where the river became more narrow. That morning, 4 large trees were cut down and laid across the river for a temporary bridge for transporting all the products that the people of this area took into San Cristobal and Tuxtla Gutierrez to sale in order to make a living. It wasn’t the safest of bridges as there was a vary thick layer of mud built up on the logs which were constantly being splashed with water and new fresh mud from the continual stream of people crossing to the other side.
But we made it across to the other side with no problems (including our return trip) and made our way back up the hill on the other side for another 300 yards to where our transportation awaited. I know I did this kind of stuff 10 – 15 years ago in the military but it has been a while since I did so…and besides I was in the Navy so it wasn’t like I did this everyday like those in the Army or Marines.
Take a look at the photos below and please pray for these people and the salvation of many.
With much affection,
Lance and Sarita
This verse came to mind as I saw the great struggle of these brothers and sisters as they live from day to day and also when I saw the movie of the life of Hudson Taylor:
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Romans 8:18
These 2 photos show what the heavy rains did to the roads while traveling up to this small community. As you can see from the first photo, there is really not much left of this road and i would think that in due time it would all fall apart.
These 2 phots show the where the bridge should have been.
These 4 pics show us carrying the gear those 300 yards to the temporary bridge where the trees were placed across a narrow part of the river. (don´t be fooled into thinking that i wasn´t carrying anything since i have nothing in my hands in the photo crossing the bridge...i got stuck with carrying the 55 pound speaker/amp...or should i say, i was a willing servant of the most high god and graciously volunteered to carry it) :)
These 2 pics show the ¨taxi¨that took us another hour or so up into the mountains. As you can see from the photo below, the roads got smaller and smaller as we traveled further up into the mountains.
3 photos of the new church that was recently constructed.
This first photo shows how many of the men still dress in this area He is the father of one of the deacons in the church. Most of the men that dress this way are older men as the younger men have stopped wearing their traditional dress and now where slacks and dress shirts or tee shirts. The other photos show the everyday tribal dress that the women wear. In one of the pics below i am playing a game of marbles with the kids...except they are so poor that we were playing with rocks...even in Teopisca where Sarita and I live the kids use actual marbles.
Pics of pastor C preaching and photos of the congregation. As you can see from the second photo, all the men sit on one side and the women on the other...Sarita and I don´t abide by this so every time we go to church in many parts of mexico (including where we live), Sarita is the only women sitting on the mens side.
NADA MAS !!!!
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