A Mexico Ministry is Born
written by Rick
The road which led us (Rick & Sherry Owens) to Mexico was a long one laced with personal tragedy and heartache. As a young couple, we went to Alaska to seek our fortune. We built a home near Homer for our family of five (two sons, Chris and Quinton and one daughter, Jody). Our spiritual status at that time was "agnostic leaning toward atheist". That all changed when a neighbor in Anchor Point invited Sherry to go to church with her. Norman and Libbie Lowell began to study with Sherry and she was baptized in April of 1978. Norman's studies with me continued on a weekly basis for seven months before I was finally convinced of his need for a Savior. Shortly after I was baptized. I had a serious snowmobile accident and was disabled for almost a year. During this time, men from the congregation visited me regularly and studied the Bible with me as I grew in my new faith.
Things went well for us over the next few years but that all changed one evening in 1985 as Sherry was getting supper on the table. The boys burst through the door shouting "Jody fell off the snowmobile and hurt her leg!" It was only through a series of complicated surgeries and treatments over the next months that her leg was saved. As she awaited one of these surgeries, tragedy struck again. Quinton twelve years old at the time had been involved in an auto accident. We received the news, which all parents dread to hear. Our youngest son had been killed.
As we struggled with our grief, a final blow fell when our home we had worked together for 11 years to build burned to the ground in April of 1988. All our earthly possessions were gone. Worst of all, the pictures and keepsakes of Quinton were destroyed.
The Lord certainly works in mysterious ways. With a strength we didn’t know we had, we resolved to make a fresh start and to move in a new direction. We wanted to do something special for the Lord so with the insurance money in hand and our possessions in our suitcases, we flew to Memphis, TN to attend the Missions 1000 Program at the Highland St. Church of Christ. We were advised by personnel at World Christian Broadcasting Corporation in Alaska to go through the Mission 1000 program to prepare for mission work. A long-standing interest in Mexico coupled with the suggestions of several Christian friends pointed us to a location south of the border.
After graduating from Mission 1000, the Bridge Ave. congregation in Weslaco, Texas ask me to help with their Mexico Medical Evangelism program. I coordinated one week trips staffed completely by volunteer doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, medical technicians, veterinarians and non-medical helpers. I provided the Mexican logistical support and personal leadership that was critical to the success of these trips. The Mexican preachers and evangelists did the teaching and preaching while I and my workers provided open doors and hearts as the people of the villages came for the free medical and dental clinics.
We moved in with the family of Arnulfo Santillan, an evangelist who lives in Monterrey, Mexico. Arnulfo helped us find our own place and begin the arduous task of acquiring a second language. The only Spanish we knew was "si, no, and taco."
When we moved to Monterrey, Mexico, in January of 1989, the Jardin Espanol congregation in Monterrey and the Bridge Ave. congregation in Weslaco, Texas were doing 4 medical campaigns per year in the state of San Luis Potosi. By Jan. 1991, the planned schedule had increased from 4 to 15. The work by that time had already spread to the states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, and Northern Durango. Since that time we have also expanded into the states of Tamaulipas, Northern Zacatecas and Northern Chihuahua. Two of the fifteen were in the Yucatan and Dr. Ismael Santillan and I were the only ones from our group to participate. Besides increasing the number of medical campaigns we also built five church buildings. Growth and stability justified these buildings because the church has flourished wherever medical campaigns and organized follow-up have been used.
When we left Alaska, we committed to work in Mexico as missionaries for a period of three years, but as we were preparing to return home some flattering pressure from various individuals and congregations plus our personal realization that opportunities exist for expansion, we agreed to move to the border area and continue the Mexico mission effort.
We moved to Las Cruces, NM to provide the kind of schooling we wanted for Jody and so we could be in a centralized location to develop the medical evangelistic campaigns in the Mexican State of Chihuahua and to expand medical evangelistic campaigns for all of Mexico.
We began this new work with few contacts and one year later we had plans for over 15 campaigns in 1993. We also noticed that in most cases the people being converted had no place to worship so we started helping them construct church buildings. We built our first building in early 1989 in the village of Zaragosa in the mountains south of Monterrey. During 1993 we completed the church building that was begun in Chihuahua. We also developed plans to build three other church buildings in three different states. The need for the constructing of church buildings has done nothing but increase. By 2002 we had completed over 115 church buildings in Mexico.
Our work has given many congregations the boost needed to make a "quantum leap." I'm reminded of the man in Piedras Negras, Coahuila that told us: "not in my lifetime or my children's lifetime could we have done what was accomplished this year."
One of the letters I received was addressed "to the brother from New Mexico". It was mailed to someone in Texas who knew how to get it to me. That is from a man in a congregation that 10 years ago had 35 members. Today it has over 200 and two other churches have been planted by members from this congregation!
This good work has not come without a cost. In 2002, I was diagnosis with lung cancer, which fortunately turned out not to be the case. After two surgeries, one on each lung, the Valley Fever which was contacted in Mexico removed and I returned to Mexico in January 2003.
The Devil again attempted to destroy the work with an accident in Monterrey, Mexico, July 2006. I was injured when I was headed downtown in Monterrey to meet two men from Guadalajara. I got out of my cab two blocks from the destination as I thought walking would be faster. About a block from where I exited the cab, two, very big Rottweillers, charged out of a building and tried to eat/bite me. In an attempt to escape them, I fell and my foot went into the street where the back wheels of a Greyhound bus ran over the heel of my left foot. It took all of the meat off of my heel and the bottom of my foot, and crushed the flesh as the bus passed over it. After surgery in McAllen, Texas, antibiotics, hyperbaric chamber treatments, suction pump treatments, additional out-patient surgeries and much recovery time, I have returned to work in Mexico.