...for EFCtIE's 3rd anniversary publication...

Mexico Missions 1994

"Queremos invitarles a un programa de payasos, dramas, titeres, y musica para todos empieza a la una a el Templo de Monte Carmelo."
That was the sentence (if I remember correctly) each missionary in our group had to say as we walked around the dirt roads of the poor colonias in Mexico to invite people to our miniature evangelical services. Continue reading, and you'll find out soon what the phrase means.....
Just last summer (1994) our local church of the Inland Empire sent eight people from our youth group on the EFC summer Mexico Missions, and even though the experience was a very short ten days, we were all very intimately blessed by being used as God's instruments in the missions field surrounding Tijuana, Mexico. We are especially thankful to God for His faithfulness, for the way He ministered in us, to us, and through us.
Perhaps you're thinking, "why did this guy italicize the words 'in', 'to', and 'through'?" It's because God ministered to us in different ways. I think you'll get my drift if you'll just read on.
Praise God for His ministry in us! Before we even set foot across the border, we went to the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) base in Sunland, California. There He gave us time to meditate on why exactly we were going on missions. He taught us that since "God so loved the world" (John 3:16) and not just us, we need to follow His commission to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). There is still desperate need for the Gospel in what the YWAM staff called the 10/40 Window (portions of Asia & Africa between the 10th and 40th parallel, which happens to include Taiwan). At that base and even while we were in Mexico, He taught us how we should always depend on Him through prayer. On a personal level, I learned that in our evangelism we need to be humble, being careful of the attitude that "we Americans are coming in to tell you about our Gospel, so you poor, ignorant people just listen and accept it." God showed us that we could learn a whole lot from the people we ministered to; yes, we Americans, for example, could stand to be more content with little and hospitable with others. Indeed, God is faithful in ministering in us!
Praise God for His ministry to us! You must have heard stories about the conditions in Mexico. Some of those stories are true, especially in the poorer sections which we visited. Sanitation in food preparation, drinking water, and bathrooms is pretty bad. Housing conditions are pitifully meager and inadequate. Many streets are still unpaved and uneven, which makes for plenty of dust (and fun rides in our church vans!). Despite all of this, God kept us safe and secure. We did have some gastrointestinal abnormalities (some were fairly severe), but nothing was truly unbearable. Perhaps this is another case of God's ministry in us, in that He was showing us one of the hardships of missions to help us decide if we could handle long-term missions. (Besides, through our experience we added new meaning to the words related to "missions"!) Other stories include His fixing our van troubles and helping us get past language barriers--I'll let you ask the team to tell you about them; writing about them here would make this article too long. But let this be said: God is faithful in ministering to us!
Praise God for His ministry through us! Most people think of missions as merely an exercise of evangelism. And our focus was on evangelism: We held miniature services in parks and in churches. The services included translated testimonies, and presentations of the various non-language-based ministries we learned from YWAM. All of us were involved at least one of the following: dramas, music, clowns, and puppets. One time at el Templo de Monte Carmelo (a church we visited several times), at least twenty grade-school-aged children responded to the minister's altar call to receive Christ! Jesus truly loves the little children! In all of our services, we believe that God planted seeds, to which He will be faithful to cause to bear fruit according to His will and timing (I Thessalonians 5:24). Sharing the Gospel of love implies that we not only tell people about Christ but also show them what His love is all about. Within the short time we stayed in Mexico, we were able to build a small house for a family and help in the construction of a church. Now, we may finally declare: God is faithful in ministering through us!
So what have you learned from reading this article? I hope by now you'll at least know that GOD IS FAITHFUL (I Corinthians 1:9)!!! And though our faithfulness to Him could never match up to His faithfulness to us, let us always strive to be faithful in serving our Lord, particularly in the area of evangelism. By the way, the sentence at the beginning of this article means, "We invite you to a program of clowns, dramas, puppets, and music for everyone at one o'clock at el Templo de Monte Carmelo." Basically, we were inviting people to meet God. It is our prayer that you do the same, for we should all be missionaries, sharing the Gospel with everybody we know, wherever we are.