DUSTY ROADS AND HIDDEN CHURCHES

Highway through western Mexico frequented by donkeys.

Someone once said that we are always driving down a dusty road looking for a lost church! And that is a good description of what we have done for almost 20 years, distributing Spanish Bibles to churches in Mexico.

There were no lists of churches and no instructions telling us where to look. We would drive for whole days down dusty roads without finding a single church, but there were days when we stumbled on several small churches in heavily populated areas. We roamed back streets and narrow lanes and we climbed steep hills, always on the lookout for small buildings with signs saying something like "Rosa de Saron," Rose of Sharon or "Liro del Valle," Lily of the Valley or "Buen Pastor," Good Shepherd. Sometimes we'd see an emblem of Assembly of God, Church of God, Baptist or Methodist over the door. It didn't matter the denomination! What mattered was that they needed Spanish Bibles! In one place we forded the Rio Grande River in our yellow Jeep. We had heard of a small town on the other side of the river and thought we might find a church there. There was also a tiny church built on the edge of the Matamoros city dump and one on Playa Bagdad (beach) on the Gulf of Mexico. It was fun to give Bibles, Sunday School literature and gospel tracts to these remote churches. The people were always amazed that we found them, and we always emphasized to them that God knew exactly where they were! We have taken over 8,000 Spanish Bibles into Mexico since we started in 1995, and many thousands of tracts and teaching materials. There's no record of how many miles we drove or how many churches we found, but Bibles were left in every state in Mexico and also in Guatamala. It's no longer safe for us to drive down lonely and isolated roads in Mexico with Bibles, but there are still little churches hidden away there that need God's Word. Now we must pray that the seeds that were planted during those years will continue to grow.

In the Big Bend area of Texas we forded the Rio Grande River.  There was no bridge into Mexico, but there was a town on the other side where there was a church.   The water was shallow but swift.  Lloyd had been instructed where to drive so we wouldn't be swept downstream!