(ABP) — Three Texas churches have their mission eyes looking steadily southward, and they've banded together to reach a people group that years ago fled to the isolation of Mexico's mountains.
The Tarahumara Indians live high in the Sierra Madre mountains a day's drive south of El Paso. Most of them have never heard of Jesus Christ. They are polytheistic with a wide variety of spiritual beliefs that include some hints of Christianity but nothing of personal salvation available through the life and death of Christ.
“It is a different world,” said Tony Garza, a member of First Baptist Church in San Marcos.
In the few years since a smattering of Texas Baptists started reaching out to the Tarahumara, Garza estimates there now are about 100 believers in the people group that numbers 50,000-70,000.
Bacon Heights Baptist Church in Lubbock and the First Baptist churches in San Marcos and Athens are leading the missions effort. In early June, 40 people from those three churches and the First Baptist churches in New Braunfels and Lewisville spent several days with the Tarahumara people.
Steve Akin has served as minister of music at all three of the lead churches, and he now is at Athens. He first learned of the Tarahumara while at Bacon Heights Church several years ago. He contacted Garza at San Marcus First, and the two of them made contact with a Mexican Baptist pastor, Ernesto Santiago, who lived in Creel, Mexico, and ministered to the Tarahumara.
Through Santiago's guidance, Akin and Garza began taking small groups of Baptist volunteers to minister in the mountains. When Akin moved to Athens, his concern for the Tarahumara people remained behind at Bacon Heights and spread to the Baptists in Athens, as well.
“Steven is the one who got all of this started,” said Brad Pettiet, of Bacon Heights. “And it's infectious.”
Bacon Heights became involved because “there wasn't anybody else working with this people group within the Southern Baptist Convention,” Pettiet said. And, at a practical level, believers who cannot take longer, more expensive trips overseas, including teenagers, can participate in Mexico missions.
Ministry to the Tarahumara seems to draw these Texas Baptists southward as surely as a magnet draws metal.
The Texas group divided and worked in four villages – Samachique, Pamachi, Baborigame and Guaguachique. They provided a variety of services – eye exams and glasses, medical treatment, dental work, construction materials and manpower for a school bathhouse, haircuts, a vacation Bible school and hot meals for everyone.
The villages vary in size, but they are basically gathering places for the people who walk in from the surrounding mountainsides and the caves where many of them live.
It takes three hours to drive the 18 miles of rugged road from Samachique to Pamachi. There, the road ends. It gives way to foot trails.
The Tarahumara Indians have lived there for hundreds of years, having fled from pillaging armies to the isolation of the high country of the Sierra Madres, Garza said.
They are not used to outsiders. At first, they kept their distance. But the ministries and the food brought them closer. A drama illustrating the history of God's relationship with mankind and showing the “Jesus” film on an outside screen conveyed the message behind the Baptists' ministry.
The Texas Baptists wanted to offer an invitation; but Myra, a Mexican missionary nurse who lives in Pamachi, advised otherwise. “Among the Tarahumara, you have to do your discipleship before they ever get to that point because they don't understand anything,” said Margaret Gowan, a retired missionary and member of Athens First Baptist.
Myra has planted her life among the Tarahumara. She lives alone in a two-room building that has no electricity. One room is her clinic.
“Her dedication and commitment to what she's doing and what the Lord has called her to do just overwhelmed me,” Gowan said. “It reminded me of how the Lord can get a hold of a person's life.”
He certainly has gotten hold of Texas Baptists from three churches. They saw a need and moved to meet it.
“We just began out of ignorance,” Akin said. “In that ignorance, God has blessed and grown up things.” After a while, “you kind of know what you're doing.”
And as they've worked and learned, they've involved others.
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