The Village Global

I wanted to briefly share with you an email that I recently received from a friend we’re preparing to work with in Mexico.  He and his family have been working tirelessly outside of Mexico City for about 20 years ministering to and planting churches in small native villages and setting up The Village Global; Kingdom centered villages to rescue orphaned children, drug addicts, girls sold into sex slavery, etc.  Theirs is an amazing story of God’s Kingdom coming to the broken.  There is much work still to be done.  The following is one story among many…

A few days after we arrived and were settling in, Sed and I accompanied some of the brothers and sisters to a hospital, to pass out hot coffee and bread to the people who were standing outside and sitting on the sidewalk- so different than what we would experience in a first world setting. As we were speaking hope to them through a small speaker, a beat up bus drove up and pulled a young man from between the seats, groaning, his right side covered in blood. Apparently he had just been shot and for a moment time stood still as we had been interrupted by the reality of a Mexican hell. Everywhere I look there is filth and injustice, and the Mexican church has little power to put substance to their words waiting for the kingdom to come.

As we drove back from the hospital in their old beat up Volkswagen van there were former drug addicts with us. There was also a 13 year old girl whose name is Maru. I did not know her story, as everywhere I go there are stories that need a happy ending, that will depend much on whether we lay down our lives and by grace overcome the world. She had been brought to these loving brothers, Aurelio and his wife, Pilar, after escaping from her house- where her mother used her for prostitution. Maru had run away from the abuse and had been living three weeks on the streets- drugged up, cut up and unbathed. When I met her, she was clean, smiling and felt at home crammed in that sputtering van.  

 

Maru, on her way to play soccer with the family last week.

Yesterday we found out that Maru was taken by force by her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, being protected by corrupt Mexican law. She is again being trafficked to appease her mother’s addictions. What can we do about it? Nothing. We have little money to build adequately equipped community complexes. Aurelio’s home is so cramped and run down that if the family services come they will not accept the living conditions. We have no justice team to fight for the thousands of girls who are used like sex machines by their own mothers and protected by the law. So Maru has no choice but to do what she has to do because no one is coming to save her.

Please pray for Maru. Please help us find her and bring justice to her. Thank you.

I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the LORD. Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. Jeremiah 23:4 & 5

In Mexico for Jesus, Jason Fitzpatrick

This is not just about this individual need, as there are countless stories like it.  It can be overwhelming to face the need in the world, but that is the very heart of the Gospel.  As N.T. Wright says, “God is rescuing us from the shipwreck of the world, not so that we can sit back and put our feet up in his company, but so that we can be part of his plan to remake the world.”  Those who believe cannot be satisfied to find “personal salvation” and go along our way. Our call is to be God’s servants in God’s Kingdom.  Let us seek and pray how we can increasingly serve his Kingdom more, and our kingdoms less.

In the coming months, I will be sharing new ways you can be involved in ministries like “The Village Global”.  Please keep an eye out and pray about how you might partner with us in bringing God’s Kingdom to those who need it, beginning with ourselves.