Reformation Ministries International Corp

Introduction

In 1961, during my first year of college, my wife and I decided to visit our good friends Victor and Gloria Richards, founders of Vino Nuevo, who were new missionaries at that time, working in the border town of Juarez, Mexico. We had no idea what lay in store for us as we drove our young family of three, to El Paso, Texas. Our first daughter Jennifer was 13 months old at the time.

Later that fall, after spending every day and most evenings visiting in hundreds of Mexican homes and participating in dozens of meetings, we had a vision and a dream for Mexico and we decided to come back to Kansas City, Kansas, the town of our origins, pack up our belongings and return to Mexico. I tell you this to ask you two questions:

Understanding the value of our dreams

1. Can you imagine the value of that dream?
2. Do you think that we knew the value of that dream?

The correct answer to both of those questions is NO. No, you cannot imagine the value of that dream and neither could we. To illustrate just how much the dream is worth today I need to share some of the developments that have occurred since the dream began.

By way of introduction I must tell you that our leadership focus in missions has always been to train native Christians to fill every leadership position possible. Also, we dedicated many resources and time to educating the hundreds of Mexican orphans and abandoned children that we raised in several different vocational skills. Lastly, we spent three years grooming our senior assistant director, Josue Lopez, (See trailer of Emmanuel Ministries video documentary) to take over the mission and to continue the ministry as God would lead him to do. Our first missionary tour there lasted twelve years. During this time we were blessed with outstanding financial success in raising the necessary funds to accomplish the vision we had set out to do. I cannot tell you how many thousands of miles Marilyn and I traveled with our children to reach out to the Christian communities to which we were introduced during our years as full-time missionaries. Later, after our children were old enough to go to school and needed to stay home, I traveled alone, mostly by commercial flight. Then in 1965, four years after starting the mission in Juarez I became a private pilot and began to use a small airplane to reach out to more congregations in the same amount of time. This was so dynamic; that the first year we used a small airplane to do our mission promotions efforts we doubled the mission income. It is a testimony to God's faithfulness and unmerited favor that during those first twelve years we were able to raise over $5,000,000 million in 2004 dollars. More importantly, the native ministry leadership continues at those same levels today.

Later we returned in August of 1989 to continue a different work of missions, one of consulting and encouraging those that we had left in leadership positions, such as Josue Lopez, Jose Compean and also many other native Christian leaders in the Juarez, Mexico area. It was during this later period that we were able to assist the men's ministry outreach of Promise Keepers among the Spanish speaking men and Pastors in El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico.

When Marilyn and I left Mexico as full-time missionaries in April of 1974, it was late. We four adults, Josue & Soledad Lopez, Marilyn and I, surrounded by our five children, had been sitting together in a major truck stop, just off of what is now called the Patriot Free Way, North of El Paso, Texas, for over three hours. We were saying our good-byes, for how long we did not know, but this was the culmination of three years of preparing Josue Lopez to take over the full management and leadership responsibilities of the mission work we had started and worked in together, for so many years. No one wanted to get up and signify the end of our interlude—the memories of the past and the dreams of the future—and offer that last embrace before departing. The inevitable finally came and we loaded our five children into a car, which had been loaned to us. We were making our way back into the American culture, we had left thirteen years previous. We had no idea how much growth would occur, how many new frontiers would be conquered and how many lives would be touched by the efforts that we had put into our dream—only God could know. Does that remind you of something you may have also experienced?

Today there are dozens of churches throughout Mexico that have either been founded from the seeds that were sown and that were cultivated by those we left in leadership positions or that have been greatly assisted by the work of those same leaders. There is now a fully functional medical center at the mission, directed by local doctors and nurses. There is also a fully functional dentist service with two modern suites directed by Dr. Armando and Karen Urive. The local medical team came from the roots of the native leadership, born and educated in Mexico. The young couple who are now in charge of the Dentist ministry are native to Juarez and as you can see, both husband and the wife are doctors of dentistry, educated in some of Mexico's finest schools. Over a thousand short term missionaries, many of whom are complete families come every year and use the mission facilities as a staging area for their short term mission activities in the local and surrounding areas of Juarez, Mexico.

This same mission point also has several economic centers that provide work and entrepreneurial training for local individuals in the Torreon, Coahuila area of Mexico, who desire to make a change in their lives from a labor based existence to a capital and more residual income based existence. It is all the more significant when one realizes that Torreon, Coahuila is 600 miles to the south of Juarez. This is a tremendous commitment to the Juarez mission to support and minister to this large and very needy central agricultural area of Mexico.

Also, in the Torreon, Coahuila area the mission sponsors farming activities with several independent Christian farmers in the Rio Nazas area of the state of Coahuila, which runs southeast from Torreon, Coahuila. The mission also supports a broom factory located on the ranch La Victoria, about 30 miles east of Torreon, Coahuila. All of these centers of activity are open for short term missionary visits and for evangelization work in the areas impacted by these Christian examples of ministering to the whole man.