May 2002

Greetings from Yucatan, Mexico

Yes, the hot weather has arrived in Southern Mexico. Our average day is about 94 degrees Fahrenheit, with 99 percent humidity. My shirt is soaked walking just two blocks. Martha, on the other hand, with her Mayan metabolism, never even glistens! Some of life is just not fair.

We are busy with the churches, seminary, and retreat center. I have made several trips to teach short continuing-education courses to pastors and elders in our state, Campeche, Chiapas, and Oaxaca. Each
place has its own challenges, and the great need for more leadership development continues to manifest itself.

At the seminary I am teaching a course on ecclesiology, or the nature of the church. For those of you interested in theology, you might like to know I am translating some of the work of Philip Schaff. He was one of the founders of what is now known as Mercersburg theology in the nineteenth century. Schaff argued for a very high view of the church, and I hope presenting this material will counterbalance the extreme individualism that is so common here. We
are also reading Hans Kung and Leonardo Boff, two Roman Catholics who were kicked out of that church because their views were too ecumenical. I hope to show our students that there is a progressive side to the Roman Church that is trying to make reforms therein. This prayerfully will start to overcome some of the profound displeasure and distrust that most evangelicals in Mexico feel towards the Roman Church.

Another class—really more of a continuing seminar—I am leading is a spiritual formation group of a dozen or so pastors every Wednesday morning. Here we are practicing mediation and lectio divino as well as reading some of the patristic authors. It is a gratifying group, as they are learning to accept that not everything before Martin Luther was hopelessly corrupt. We have begun to see that too much church history has been abandoned by the Presbyterian Church in Mexico and needs to be recovered as a part of our heritage. I say this because of what follows.

Over Easter week our family had a nice break going to a reunion of Central American and Caribbean missionaries from the PC(USA). We had a very nice time in El Salvador and were able to meet some old friends and make new ones. On the way home we stayed a night in Taxco, Mexico. This is the silver capital of the world. We had heard for some time that it was a picturesque town but it did exceed our expectations. Since we were there on Good Friday, unbeknownst to us, we saw a lot of medieval traditions that still continue to this day. We saw dozens of men carrying heavy loads of thorns on their
backs, their heads covered with black hoods. Others were making processions while doing self-flagellation, their backs dripping blood. My girls thought the show was disgusting and asked where any of these practices were in the Bible. It helped them visualize more than anything the great advances of the Reformation and how the Reformed church has overcome this sort of penitence to earn forgiveness. One of the great calls of the Reformed church is that we are saved by grace alone. The effort to pay for one’s sins by torturing oneself is certainly noble in a sense, but a sadly misguided valor.

So you see what complicated contradictions there are in Mexico. On the one hand, we are learning that there is much good to be recovered from church history even while, on the other hand, there is still much ignorance from the past that continues today.

• Some Roman Catholics treat us as brothers and sisters in Christ while others think we worship the devil.
• Enormous modern cities with all the latest technology exist beside indigenous villages where life has not changed since the Spanish conquest 500 years ago.
• The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has brought some jobs to Mexico, but the U.S. teamsters won’t let Mexican-owned trucks (built in the U.S.) cross the border.
• U.S. commodity dealers pay less and less every year for coffee harvested in
  extremely difficult conditions.
• The U.S. government pushes the Mexican government to control drug traffic but the process of doing so infringes on many basic human rights.

The list of conflicting dynamics is long indeed but we are not discouraged. When people take the gospel to heart, everything is changed. They gain courage to fight their vices and develop Christian virtues. People with Christ in their hearts start helping one another, and the Kingdom of God is brought near.

Please keep us in your prayers.

Don and Martha Wehmeyer

The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 248