Mexico
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| On a cold January day in the high desert border town of Agua Prieta, the congregation of Lily of the Valley Presbyterian Church was gathered for worship. On this day, seven strangers were welcomed into the worshiping fellowship. Scraped, battered, and bruised, both physically and mentally, they were men who had left their lands in the south of Mexico where coffee prices had plummeted and had attempted to cross into the United States to work in a Tyson’s chicken processing plant in Kentucky. They had encountered and experienced the reality of what the United States-Mexico border has become over the last decade.
During the time of prayer, one of the men gave thanks to God for having saved their lives. Following worship, the men were invited to eat in members’ home and were given a place to stay until they could recover sufficiently to be on their own. The Lily of the Valley Church turned twenty years old in May 2005. It is a small congregation of sixty-five members with a powerful mission of Christian hospitality. Despite their apparent limited resources, the members of the congregation have provided spiritual and physical refuge to hundreds of people who find themselves far from home. In addition, they have been instrumental in ministries of compassion and justice. Over the last two years, the congregation has partnered with Frontera de Cristo, a Presbyterian bi-national border ministry, and with Healing Our Borders (Sanando Nuestras Fronteras) to give out over two thousand blankets to men, women, and children being deported into Mexico from the United States on bitterly cold nights and mornings before sunrise. On this night Maria Guadalupe returned at around 1 a.m. in 20-degree weather with a group of fourteen from Puebla. They had been lost in the desert for three days. Members of the church greeted them and gave them a warm place to stay for the night. Maria Guadalupe said that two of the members of the group, Ismael and Ester, were atheists and that she had shared the gospel with them in the desert and told them that God would provide. Maria said that the members of the Lily of the Valley were angels and that now Ismael and Ester were open to receiving God into their lives. |
 Partners/Ministries National Presbyterian Church of Mexico (INPM): Rev. Jorge Lopez, president, Pbro. Francisco Limon Cervantes, general secretary • Presbytery/Synod Partnerships: Presbytery of Arkansas, Presbytery of Charlotte, Presbytery of Coastal Carolina, Presbytery de Cristo, Presbytery of Geneva, Homestead Presbytery, Maumee Valley Presbytery, Northeast Georgia Presbytery, Presbytery of San Diego, Presbytery of San Jose, Presbytery of Santa Fe, Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley, Presbytery of South Alabama, Synod of Living Waters, Synod of the Sun, Presbytery of Tropical Florida, Upper Ohio Valley Presbytery, and Presbytery of Whitewater Valley with the INPM PC(USA) People in Mission INPM: Nathan Thompson Soule, reconciliation and mission exchange worker, Rev. Donald A. Wehmeyer, professor of continuing education for pastors, Dr. Martha L. Wehmeyer, team ministry, INPM • Richard L. Ufford-Chase, facilitator for cross-border dialogue, Central American Evangelical Center for Pastoral Studies (CEDEPCA)/Borderlinks PC(USA) General Assembly Staff Michael Cousins, BOP Jennifer Cox, PPC |
 God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength (1 Cor. 1:25). |
 Ps. 25, 34, 91, 146 Gen. 37:12–24 1 Cor. 1:20–31; Mark 1:14–28 |
