Last week I joined the crew from To Every Tribe in Oaxaca, in the Coicoyán region of the mountains. It was an interesting trip getting there. The first day was spent traveling to and through the mountains to Oaxaca City, The second day I drove in the mountains to the town of Juxtlahuaca,. Upon arrival I went to the house of missionaries Martín and Karen Arroyo, and enjoyed playing a bit of music with their girls, who are learning guitar, and then went with Martín to the local jail for a bit of ministry before joining the To Every Tribe team. It was fun to tell them, “I would have been here sooner, but I had to wait for Martín to get me out of jail.”

The next day we drove over the mountains to the village of Jicaral, where we’ve done medical and dental clinics before. This time there was no hesitation on the part of the local folks to get in on the dental services we were bringing; they were waiting before the clinic could even get set up. We were grateful for the local translation help, because in this region we need double translation: from the local Mixteco dialect to Spanish, and from Spanish to English. We had enough Spanish speakers that we translators could spell each other off, and on the second day I had a good spiritual conversation with a man named Victor. I’ve never seen such spiritual receptivity there.

The third day the team split up, and Kirby Myer, Kevin and Jennifer Davis and family, and I went to the village of San Martín Pérez, where Raúl and Emily Castro are working. The next day Kirby, Raúl, Emily and I went on to the next village, San Juan del Rio, where Emily did a medical clinic, Kirby put in a long day fixing teeth, and I served as chauffer, translator, and dental assistant. We finished about 10 o’clock by candlelight, and then had a 40 minute drive up the mountain.

The last day we ran the clinic in San Martín Pérez, and while dental assisting and translating I had a great conversation with the mother of a 6-year-old; she said that her life had begun changing about 8 months back, and now she wanted to read and know more about the Bible. That evening we and some Bible school students from Ensenada were invited to a local home where Raúl is beginning to have Bible studies. The music once again was a universal language. The evening at the home ended with some really tough beef which had been soaked in a blazing hot chili gravy, as the Bible school students were telling riddles whose answers hung on puns in Spanish. I understood all but one, so there may be hope. (Why is Oseas [Hosea] the most “freso” book in the Bible? If you know, help!)

The Isuzu Trooper had its mountain trial, and was a real blessing to the team and to me. While we were doing the first ministry trip ever in San Juan del Rio, the rest of the team was opening up a new village, La Trinidad, several hours beyond Jicaral. The district medical official in San Martín Pérez gave us a formal letter of invitation to come back with whatever medical and dental help we might bring.

Above all, I’m thankful to God for the new openness and willingness to talk about spiritual things in those mountains. It is no doubt the work of God. He has laid it on the hearts of some few to live among the Coicoyán, others of us get to visit and minister, but I know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of His people praying that God will open the hearts of these people to the grace of salvation that He has for us through Jesus Christ. All this medical effort is just a means of “making friends through mammon” (Luke 16:9), using the temporary skills and blessings that God has given us with eternal ends in view. We pray that, in That Day, many of the Coicoyán will be there with us in the eternal dwellings. Thanks for your prayers.

God’s grace sometimes comes to us in unusual ways. In the last 7 months I’ve gone through two cars. The Buick station wagon had three brake failures last year on trips to Oaxaca. It had been purchased in 1998 for the Lord’s work in Mexico, and was a good servant. It deserves an obituary.

The Chevrolet spent its last six months in Mexico, no doubt the hardest of its life. In its last week here in Querétaro it served as partial transport for a group of young people, but we had to park it and all pile into trucks for the last few miles of trips into the villages we were visiting; the roads were just too rough.

The next Thursday, as I was driving through Iowa to visit mom, the combination of Minnesota rust and Mexican bumps took their toll. The structural member which holds straight the rear wheel on the driver’s side broke; the wheel was free to caster in any old direction, not merely to follow along. For the next several moments, from 75 mph. to zero, the direction the car was pointed, the direction it was actually going, and the direction in which I was steering it became only very loosely related. It nearly left the freeway on the left side, crossed and went more than a car width off on the right, had the rear window smashed by something as it skidded back toward the road, and after a couple more wild careens came to rest partially off the right shoulder.

There are a lot of blessings to count. No one was hurt, and no other vehicles were involved. I had just passed two semis, and had come back to the right lane before passing a third. The car came to rest at the entrance ramp for Osceola, Iowa, and it was a short walk for help. I had canceled the Mexican vehicle permit (unlike the trip in February), so there were no obligations to the Mexican government. And, during the wild ride, the Lord had given perfect calm, clear and concentrated thinking, and assurance that all was in His hands, whatever the outcome.Four days later, after I’d completed the trip to mom’s by bus, Pastor Dennis called and said they had heard about the car, and some folks in the church would provide another one for service in Mexico. Three days later I was presented, by God’s grace, with a 1991 Isuzu Trooper, a car with high clearance and 4-wheel drive, quite suitable for out of the way places in Mexico. Dennis said he’d been told that because of the car’s history it probably  wouldn’t have much resale value, “but it would be okay for someone who wants to drive it until the wheels come off.”

The car went into immediate service. Within minutes I left for south Texas. The next day I joined with a group from Christ Covenant Church in Warsaw, Indiana, and we crossed into Mexico for a week of Bible clubs in two fishing villages, La Poza and La Media Luna. After that week, I returned to Querétaro on Friday for an activity in the San Felipe area here on Saturday.

This is another example of how the body of Christ serves together, and how no one member can do without the others. There was no way I could have secured a vehicle, let alone such a suitable one, in time for what we had planned here in Mexico. But Christ, who is the head of the body, had other members in place, with a will to serve Him by providing a car. I just get to be the one who reaches from GBC into Mexico, in the name of Jesus Christ. But we’re all in this together.

In 2^nd Corinthians 10, the apostle Paul wrote about the foolishness of those who tried to measure themselves  by one another (implied: that Paul did not measure up to them spiritually), then went on to show that the Corinthians could evaluate him by the more objective measure that God had planned for him: that Paul had actually come as far as Corinth first with the Gospel. And Paul’s objective was “to preach the gospel even to the regions beyond you, and not to boast in what has been accomplished in the sphere of another.” And that’s the goal of To Every Tribe: to take the gospel where it hasn’t gone before.

God preserved my life when He could easily have taken me out. He has provided a car that can go beyond where I could ever go before. Maybe He has plans.

I can hardly wait.