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Updates!

Newsletter Fall, 2009 (pdf files)

Update April 25, 2008
 

Update October 30,2006
Update September 11, 2007
Update December 31, 2007

El Pipila (Nueva Vida Congregation)
  2007: New Pastor, Evangelism bears good fruit, new "temple guard" house
  

Pastoral Changes mid-2009
 
 The Dios Es Amor Mission in the La Planicie neighborhood of Tijuana has a pastor again after another two years without one. ESM (Estudiante al Santo Ministerio) Beimar Santizo and family moved from the Cristo Viene Church of Mexicali last July, to be received with joy and open arms by the congregation of Dios Es Amor.  Beimar had pastored Cristo Viene since he and wife Laura graduated from seminary seven years ago.  This past summer Pueblos Hermanos missionary Bill Soldwisch witnessed him doing some very fine work with two mission teams, and he was welcomed to Dios Es Amor with the youth mission team of St. Andrews, Pleasant Hill, CA the first week of August. The men of the congregation had been fixing up the manse, but with the St. Andrew's youth they were able to put in a beautiful tile floor over the motly concrete one.

Pueblos Hermanos Co-coordinator Rev. Enrique Romero was commissioned by the Presbytery to pastor the Monte Sinai Mission in Tres de Octubre neighborhood of Tijuana, along with his work starting home Bible studies to plant a new church.  Rev. Job Alameda, President of Pueblos Hermanos and founder of the Dios Con Nosotros Church on the Otay Mesa of Tijuana, was commissioned by the Presbytery to pastor the Monte Sion (Mount Zion) Mission in the Villa Urrutia neighborhood of Tijuana. Both missions, about 1.2 miles from each other, were started by the Korean missionary Luis Lee and have now been turned over to the Presbytery in anticipation of his retirement next year.  Both missions are peopled primarily by immigrants from the south, the State of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, who have come to Tijuana to work in the maquiladoras, factories and construction.  

Just Coffee roasting in Tijuana and push to build sales in the West.

Tommy Bassett, the businessman-coordinator who helped organize the Just Coffee cooperatives, tells us that the effort of the Just Coffee cooperative to roast coffee in Tijuana and distribute from Tijuana/San Diego is moving forward, after many problems and road blocks, mostly from both the U.S. and Mexican governments.  They have received a grant to have a sales representative on the West Coast who will soon be contacting people to generate sales of the new harvest which begins in a bit.  It's been a long saga, trying to get the Tijuana/San Diego processing and sales point going; we hope to see real progress real soon.

(Changes in Mexican law require exporting the coffee through a formal arrangement with a customs agency and minimal payment of $500 for each exportation (no matter how much coffee is involved).  So it is essential to build up enough sales to be able to ship 300 to 500 pounds at a time.  For more information or orders contact Tommy at tommy@fronteradecristo.org or cafetommy@mac.com (yes, he has a new Mac laptop) or calling (520) 249-1692

Or contact Just Coffee directly at www.JustCoffee.org , or toll free at (866) 545-6406.

October, 2007: Coffee drinkers who want to have a more just relationship with coffee growers can now purchase organic, shade grown, high mountain Arabica coffee from Chiapas, Mexico, roasted by the coffee growers themselves in a Presbyterian facility in Tijuana.  The Just Coffee Aguila Cooperative has been receiving green beans from the El Aguila community of Cacahoatan, Chiapas to roast and send on to consumers in the U.S. and Mexico for two months now.  Efren Hernandez, a member of the community, underwent six weeks training at the Just Coffee facility in Agua Prieta to learn to work the high tech computer controlled roaster as well as manage the record and book keeping.  Jeremiah Howe, former Pueblos Hermanos intern, has taken over the promotion and marketing.  Coffee can be ordered with Jeremiah Howe, 619-805-9001 or email jerobety@yahoo.com.mx

Just Coffee Office Equipment and PH projector stolenLate Saturday night, August 25, 2007, thieves managed to remove the security bars from the 15 foot high window behind the Mt Horeb Mission complex and break into the Just Coffee offices, stealing all the new office equipment they had just installed – computer, laser printer-copier-scanner, DSL modem, and the digital projector of Pueblos Hermanos which had just been used in a presentation there. 

 

La Planicie (Dios Es Amor Mission)

Pastoral changes in mid-2005,

 

Home Televised Evangelistic Campaign November 9-11, 2006

Most churches in the Mexican Presbytery are preparing their members to host evangelistic meetings in their homes November 9-11.  Called Mi Esperanza the campaign sponsored by the Billy Graham Association has purchased time on the Television Azteca network to broadcast two half hour and a one and a half hour program.  The churches are training their members to invite friends, relatives, neighbors, work and class mates to their homes to see the programs, and then share their personal testimonies and invite folk to accept Christ as Lord and Savior.  In the Nueva Vida Congregation in El Pipila, pastor Efrain Romero has 12 families (although a few are single men) preparing to host these events.  Then Sunday, November 12, the church members will bring those who have opened their lives to Christ to church with them.  This type of evangelistic campaign has been tremendously fruitful in different South and Central American countries. Please be praying for the church members and pastors as they prepare and carry out this outreach.

Pastoral changes in mid-2005

The Northwest Border Presbytery of Mexico moved several pastors in July, 2005, to help invigorate both churches and pastors with new blood and new vistas.
Pueblos Hermanos Co-coordinator Rev. Enrique Romero moved from the Nueva Vida Congregation in El Pipila, Tijuana, to the Dios Es Amor Mission three miles north in La Planicie, which had suffered another set-back as their student pastor was removed by the Presbytery a year earlier.  Pueblos Hermanos Mission Team Coordinator Efrain Romero finished our Tijuana extension seminary and was made pastor of the Nueva Vida Congregation he had helped his father build up the past eight years.  After a few months the congregation has been able to make the transition of accepting him as pastor instead of pastor's kid, youth leader, music minister.  Rev. Devir Perez finished his three-year term at the Jesucristo el Buen Pastor Congregation in San José de Cabo and became pastor of the Dios Con Nosotros Congregation in Otay, Tijuana, just in time to preside over the construction of its new sanctuary, which Rev. Job Alameda had prepared as he left this church he had planted and developed to become pastor of the Bethel Congregation in Tecate, 25 miles east of Tijuana.  Rev. Francisco Juachin, finishing his three-year term at Bethel was commissioned by the Presbytery to the Buen Pastor Presbyterian Church in Aleman, Tijuana, the oldest Presbyterian church in Baja California. 

The pastor commissioned by the Presbytery to go to Sam José de Cabo, the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula, was unable to go, and a third Romero, Benjamin Romero, recently graduated with his masters from the Presbyterian Seminary in Merida, Yucatan, was called in September of 2005.