MEETING OF PASTORS

April 30 twelve pastors across several denominations met in a donated meeting room in the Las Flores Hotel in Nuevo Progreso. They met to pray together and discuss future opportunities especially among the youth. Pastor Gerardo was asked to be the speaker at this meeting.

Besides being excited about pastors uniting together to work for the Lord, we saw this as another opportunity to distribute Spanish Bibles. Since we didn't attend the meeting, we supplied Pastor Gerardo with some cases of Bibles and New Testaments along with salvation tracts he shared with attendees at the meeting. Lloyd is shown here transferring cases of Bibles to Pastor Gerardo.

LUNCHES ON WHEELS

For months Apolinar has supported his family by selling lunches and cold drinks to truckers waiting in line to enter the United States. But now the current produce season has ended and there are only a few trucks in line instead of hundreds. This family will have to find another way to make a living for awhile, the steady stream of traffic past their house has disappeared. We promised Apolinar and Carla we'd be praying that the Lord will continue to meet their needs. There will be another time when crops are ready for transport, but it may be months.

As you can see from the picture, Apolinar used his bicycle equipped with small coolers to carry homemade lunches and drinks for sale.

CARLA

Carla is a tiny little woman barely five feet tall and seven months pregnant with her fifth child. She is from central Mexico where she still has family. Carla has a distinctly Indian appearance with her thick straight black hair and brown skin. She's quiet, soft spoken and serious and she's also a very good cook!

When we said goodbye to Carla and Apolinar until next November, they both said, "Mi casa es su casa!" My house is your house.

UNITED FOR PEACE IN MEXICO

This sign was painted on the side of a building in Nuevo Progreso. It says fifty thousand youth united for peace will meet May 1st in Mexico City. This meeting is sponsored by the Catholic church. People from every denomination are gathering to pray that the killing will stop and peace will return.

Let's join our prayers with churches throughout Mexico that the Spirit of the Lord will sweep over the people and their evil ways will be changed. "And their eyes were opened and they knew Him." Luke 24:31

We have learned that the Church is not a building, it's a body of believers serving Christ and then reaching out to others who need to be saved. The Church is in the "highways and byways."

CLOSE CONNECTIONS WITH VIOLENCE IN MEXICO

Our friend from McAllen Church of God supports a children’s home in San Fernando, making frequent trips to the home with food and clothing. Those trips ended because of news that 150 bodies were found buried nearby.

Yesterday she received a phone call from the ones who operate the home. They own a ranch three miles outside of San Fernando, but because they were afraid to travel they hadn’t been to the ranch in months. They decided to check things out and they forced themselves to make the trip.

Before they got to their property, they smelled something overwhelming. They discovered wide open pits where evidently bodies had been removed. Their ranch had been used to bury many of the bodies recently found. At last count over 150 bodies were taken from there and returned to the morgue in Matamoros. Many were passengers killed when cross country buses were hijacked.

In another report, our friends John & Dorothy have a house in Ciudad Victoria, where they have lived for many years. Because of troubles there, they decided to return to Texas. Friends now live as caretakers in their house.

John & Dorothy got a phone call from them last week saying there was a gun battle in the house next door. They were awakened in the night by heavy gunfire, shouts and sounds of explosions near their bedroom window. They slipped out of bed and crawled on hands and knees across the floor and into the other part of the house where they hid all night on the floor.

A six year old child was caught in the crossfire and killed. John & Dorothy’s house is near the police station. San Fernando and Ciudad Victoria were places we went through often when we took Bibles into Mexico. And in San Fernando we spent the night in a motel on two occasions.

On the other hand, revival meetings started in a large church in Ciudad Victoria. Over forty people were saved on the first night!

Deuteronomy 20:3 & 4

"Let not your hearts faint, fear not and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them. For the Lord your God is He that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies to save you."