Throughout our time here, we've heard our fair share of stories from the villages of what it was like for the first believers in the villages: many of which came only 20 or 30 years ago!
Some villages beat people who turned to Christ. Others doused them with alcohol for not drinking with them during their fiestas. Some got thrown in jail for days without reason.
Even worse, one village burned down the only evangelical church in the town and killed all the believers in it! This is the remnants of that church:
Sound familiar? "Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea." (2 Corinthians 11:25, NIV)
This is the persecution the early church endured, and this is the same persecution the early church in rural Mexico endured not too long ago.
Luckily, we haven't experienced any persecution to this magnitude in the villages, because people have gone before us and paved the way for the gospel of God's grace.
We have been blessed to serve under local churches in many of the villages we have been working in. However, the village that burned the church down several years ago still doesn't have an active church body, to our knowledge.
Pray for this village, that God would raise up Christians to bear his name.
Pray for the other villages, that their churches would reach others in their village with the message of God's love.
Pray for those coming after us, that our work would pave the way for them, just like others' work had paved the way for us.