Pueblos Hermanos has planted three churches in Tijuana and works closely with the Northwest Border Presbytery (Presbiterio Fronterizo Noroccidental) of the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico in carrying out evangelism by Presbyterians in Baja California. Mission teams that work with the Baja California Presbyterian churches usually are helping with this sharing of the faith and growing in their ability to share their faith.  We have also sent teams to help U.S. churches do evangelism with Spanish speaking people in their communities (Tacoma, WA, Tucson, AZ, Los Angeles and Ukiah, CA). 

The National Presbyterian Church of Mexico has always had a strong emphasis on sharing the faith toward people accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and growing in that relationship within the community of the church. 
 

The Nueva Vida congregation, along with a six-person mission team from Lake Grove Presbyterian Church of Lake Oswego, Oregon, hosted a fantastic evangelistic campaign the weekend of October 18, in which 12 adults and youth and 8 children accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior. It was a breakthrough in reaching adults in the neighborhood (20 new adults came to the event) and the congregation’s participation (more than 20 church members worked at different tasks to make the event a success).

 Results: Saturday one adult and three children accepted Christ for the first time; Sunday, with a smaller attendance of only 50 adults plus children, six adults, five teenagers and five children accepted Christ.  All of them said they would welcome a visit from someone from the church and to have someone help them understand the Bible better.  Now the challenge is to visit .follow up and disciple these new believers.  (Totals for campaign: new believers – 12 adults and youth, 8 children, who are being visited by the pastor and church leaders.)

Isn't Mexico a Catholic country?  Aren't they Christians already?  Why evangelism? 

These are questions many North Americans ask of missionaries and church people in Mexico. The answer is that there are vast numbers of Mexicans, baptized Roman Catholic, identifying themselves as Roman Catholics, who never go to mass and know very little about Catholic beliefs and practices.  They are Catholic or Christian in name only.  It's a tradition of their family. (And of course there is a lot of superstition mixed in with Catholic beliefs in many families and communities.)  And there are other Roman Catholics whose religion is only a matter of ritual and form. Yes, there are some very devout, practicing Roman Catholics in Mexico, many who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and live out their faith, but there are huge numbers of "unchurched" Catholics, people with no personal relationship to God or Christ, people who's idea of God is the mean policeman in the sky just waiting for them to make a mistake so he can punish them, or some other caricature.  It is to these that we are sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. 

Home Bible Studies Reach New People:  Early in this year, Pastor Enrique started a series of home Bible studies or cell groups, meeting in people’s home, discussing current problems that people face in light of the Bible.  Four different families volunteered, or responded to Enrique’s request, to host an meeting, each a certain night of the week.  Panchita, who is also the supervisor for the congregation’s self help t-shirt embroidery project, is very out going, very sociable, and everyone for three blocks around her relatively spacious (they must have at least 800 sq. ft) home.  So people came, enjoyed the light refreshments, and many became involved in the discussions, and began to see that God might have something for them.  More than 30 people came to know the Lord as their personal Lord and Savior out of these meetings, happily for Panchita, several were her family/relatives.   And several started coming to church. 

New Christian brings her neighbor to evangelistic meeting:  One of the women who had just accepted Christ at the evangelistic meeting October 19  had Gina at her side.  Gina had just begun coming to church this year, after resisting the invitation to events there for ten years – she let her children go to the Vacation Bible Schools that the church presented, five or more times a year, but she herself would never go.  Then something happened in her life, she couldn’t take it any more by her self, and she showed up at one of the church outreach events.  And then she just kept coming back.  “You know, Pastor,” she told Pueblos Hermanos Co-director Enrique Romero, “I’m not coming just to be polite because you all have been inviting me so patiently for so many years, it’s that I’m really getting something out of this!”  What she was really getting is Jesus Christ living in her and giving her new life and new hope.  Weighed down with problems (how do you support three children after your husband abandons you), depressed, malnourished, she had the saddest face.  Now she glows.  And here she had brought her neighbor and friend, and was helping the friend come forward and encouraging her friend to open herself to Jesus Christ.