Updates!

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

Update April 25, 2008
 

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 is in San Diego in April, 2008,  helping to streamline operations at the roaster in Tijuana and to promote sales on the West Coast.  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

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 stolen – Late 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. 

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

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.