Update August 3, 2006

I want to update you on our ministry. First of all, we are very busy. Seems I am running all week long, and never catch my breath. Our small church has seen a number of new families come, and a few leave recently. Our numbers have run up to around 50 or more, and I feel we have had attacks from Satan on our people and on our ministry, and some have left us. Part of the problem is our stand. Some have come, and we have talked with them about Tongues and other Charismatic issues, and they have left us over these issues.

We continue to go out every week in door to door visitation. We have taken a step of faith and have added an assistant pastor, Robert, to our church staff. This was back in February. He is pastor of evangelism and discipleship. I was going out every week some 3 or 4 times a week with him and his family (wife and two grown sons). Both sons are now working and are not available for this evangelism, but Roberto and I continued to go out with his wife and at times with Tule.

We are trying to have discipleship courses for new believers, and Tule, Roberto, Carmela, and most recently I have dropped out of the weekly visitation to give individual discipleship courses. These last around 2 months, unless the person asks us not to continue them. Saturday we had 8 adults go out on Saturday church visitation. We are hoping these new soulwinners will be faithful and continue.

About 3 weeks one of the families in our former church plant in the north of the city contacted us about me giving them a Bible Study on Friday nights in their business. The situation was that we had to return to the states in 1999 because of support needs and we didn't have anybody to take over the church. The group we had then decided to merge with a Fundamental Baptist Church in the north of the city. There are now problems with that group, because Billy Graham is coming to town and basically the people who were with me see their church's participation in the Graham crusade as compromise with the Catholic Church. They confronted their pastor with information about Graham, and as I understand it, things are rocky. They asked me to teach through the book of Isaiah with them on Fridays. I want to support them in their efforts, but I don't really have any plans to go up that way to start a church (as they are asking me to do). We (both I and they) are waiting to see how this Graham thing pans out.

So I started a Friday night Bible study with them on the book of Isaiah. We had 14 one night so far. It is a good group. They take up an offering for me every Friday night, and with this offering I am paying one of our unemployed men, Carlos, to work full time in our church in evangelism and discipleship with Roberto. This frees me up somewhat for Bible study. I am giving a discipleship class with one family and writing my own discipleship course in the process, so we can replace what we were using.

We also started a Sunday School class on Sunday mornings, 10AM. I am giving the same Isaiah study. Another church that we have relations with has a pastor that is in his 60´s and has prostrate cancer. This brother, Fransico Paredes, has helped me since my first year in Mexico. His situation has grown critical, and he has renounced his position as pastor to spend this last year or two of life with his family. He is having physical (medical) difficulties also. Please pray for him.

Brother Paredes and I get together from time to time to fellowship, and in several of these we have discussed the transition of a church when their pastor leaves and another comes in. I planted the idea that it is my conviction that the best situation is that a church choose their next pastor from among the ministers and members of that church so as to keep the same vision and stand (doctrine and separation position). He also planted that idea to his church, and they decided to have 3 of their men to take the pastorate and not look for a new pastor (at least not yet). They (Brother Paredes included) are asking me to go and teach them about the ministry of pastor, and help them. They offered me the pastorate there, but I refused it because I already have a work God is blessing, and I don't want to leave one to take over another. My objective as missionary is to raise up independent local churches and train men into the ministry. Taking over other works is just not in my mindset, although most missionaries today boast dozens or hundreds of churches they have planted just take over existing works and push out the pastor that was there and install their own men. That is "planting a church" in modern missions supposedly.

Anyway, God is opening doors of opportunity for us, and I am trying to write and preach to preachers in our fellowship meetings to help these men that are struggling in the work of the Lord. Please pray for us. All of this implies more work, more study, and more ministry. In a typical week for example, I have 6 preparations for preaching to work on. At present I am duplicating some (Friday Bible Study and Sunday School), and giving Roberto and Carlos some preaching opportunities of their own. Please pray for Roberto and Carlos. Carlos is preaching his first sermon Sunday. Roberto has many years in the ministry, but he has many ideas from his years with the Navigators that need to be changed. We are working on that.

Some perhaps are interested in what is going on in the Mexican elections. The situation is that legally Felipe Calderon won even though it was a narrow margin. Obrador is a socialist type liberal and radical politician. His methods are clearly incorrect, and at present he is trying to pressure the federal court that is considering his contention of electoral fraud. The problem is that Obrador has no physical evidence of fraud, and very few election day accusations from even Obrador and the PRD his party. It was not until Obrador "lost" in election tallies that fraud was mentioned. Obrador went into election day with a clear lead in the polls. The exit polls, the quick count, the official end of election day polling tallies, and the actual count some 3 days later all gave Calderon the victory. Obrador wants to open all the sealed ballot boxes from each polling station. If he succeeds in pressuring the election commission to do that, the entire election is invalid and has to be done again. The election law prohibits them from doing that. I would point out that because of fraud in previous elections, the congress make a federal election institute which is paid for by the Mexican Congress. This is the IFE. Each political party has an equal say in how it is run, and the rules of elections. The PRD political party has between 25% to 35% of the country backing it. So they had a large say in what the rules of the election were going to be. The PRD never said one word of complaint about any of the elections procedures, rules, laws, etc in the years before the election when all of this was decided.

A month before the election they came out with an accusation of Felipe Calderon's brother in law as having a business that was contracted by the IFE. Wrongdoing was never proved, even though the PRD said they had proof. The proof was a public media event that never got acknowledge in a federal court for lack of evidence. Here I would insert that the PRD did have several election problems before election day, and the IFE ordered them to remove some of their commercials accusing individuals (like Calderon's brother-in-law) because they were legally irresponsible. No proof, only your say so kind of thing. I believe the words in English are something like calumnity and injury.

In each polling station on election day, each party (includying the PRD Obrador's party) had observers that watched the entire day's events in each polling station, literally standing over the poll workers watching them, and these people counted the votes with the poll workers. In 150,000 polling stations, there are about 40 poll stations that had irregularities equally accused between the two parties (PRD and PAN). Those ballot boxes were reopened by the election commission, and in general they did not affect the outcome at all, having about the same percentage of votes as nationally. Most of these cases did not even change the final results that was officially reported.

Instead of waiting until the election commission considers each case and then declares a winner to the general election, Obrador wants them to open all the ballot boxes (these were opened the day of the election, counted by over 1 million volunteer poll workers who manned the polls all day, and each step observed by observers from each party, and then resealed.) Each poll worker and observer from the 5 parties who had candidates for president had to sign a form saying they agreed with the events in their poll or they saw irregularities and were not in agreement with the official results of their poll. The PRD observers signed they were in agreement in the vast majority of the cases. They entered election day in the lead, and didn't want anything to contaminate their "victory". Now Obrador is claiming that the vast majority of their poll watchers were paid off. Again, he has no proof of anything, but only hollow inflammatory allegations. I observe that either way Obrador loses. If he says his own poll workers were paid off on a national level, then Obrador and the PRD have no discernment at all, and how does that represent his ability to govern and pick all the new government? If they weren't paid off, then Obrador is talking through his hat.

While mayor of Mexico City several years back (2003) he proposed and got signed into law a law restricting public protest if it blocks the main arteries of the city. In Mexico City everybody and their brother does this to get attention to their cause. Typically they start in 5 different extremes of the city and march to the downtown (like where the White House would be in the US) blocking traffic the entire day. Obrador wrote that law, and got it passed, and now he has ordered the major artery that crosses Mexico City east-west blocked along almost the entire length, dividing the city in two. That is illegal according to the law he got passed. But the problem lies in his replacement of mayor (a hand picked PRD official) that refuses to let the police clear the streets. The mayor is over the Mexico City police. The new mayor is also PRD (enters office in December), and also will follow the PRD line. All of that is really getting people upset here. A blockage of the city for months is just unreasonable.

Obrador and the PRD has a give away plan. While Obrador was mayor, he took city funds and diverted them into his own public PR projects, housing, government welfare, etc. If you don't live in Mexico City, you don't understand our situation here. Mexico City is basically 20 million people, with the state of Mexico surrounding it with another 20 million people. The state of Mexico is very poor, but the city (officially Federal District, of DF in Spanish) is very rich. The DF gets a huge chunk of money from Congress. Apart from that, the businesses in DF are pumping billions of dollars around the economy every day. The DF mayor sits on top of all that. He collects fees and charges for all kinds of things. He is over the police. The mayor (if corrupt) is in a great position to skim millions daily from all of this, and this has been the PRD's funding source for the last few years. With all of this the PRD has built public housing and donated it (only to faithful PRD supporters). So this is financially how they do what they do.

The federal election court is still considering Obradors objections of electoral fraud. But in the end, any decision to change anything or recount or anything else has to be based on facts and evidence (supposedly). If there was electoral fraud, some large group of people have to come forward and give specifics of specific cases, people, events, etc. They remain silent. One single polling station where fraud did happen cannot be extended to nullify the entire election, only the results from that polling station. These specific cases are simply not out there. The PRD has several times this year brought forth "proof" of things they claim is happening. Hand trucks with boxes of papers stacked one on another to the federal election commission. All of this is put on TV and a scandal made out of it. Once inside the building, all the boxes are empty, and one single file folder is brought out and given as proof. This is usually discarded by the judge because it doesn't meet requirements in cases they are trying to present.

I would also mention that many countries sent international observers, including much of Europe and the US, and we have heard not one mention of any of them that there was fraud. Sunday night of election day, the news said that all international observers said it was the cleanest election that they had ever seen in Mexico.

Obrador works on the premise of intimidation, lies, and deceit. (Well he is a politican, and that seems to be how they all work in my opinion.) Many people after the election believed Obrador that the was fraud, but when I asked them for details of why they believed that, they couldn't do anything but recite what they heard on TV from Obrador. But Obrador is a master at this PR manipulation of the masses, and even so, he has most of the country turning against him. The labor unions did not support him until 18 hours before election day, and pulled their support of him the day after the election. He is leftist, and in their camp ideologically speaking, but they are keeping their distance. Business men are 100% against him. The hotel industry all down the main artery where he is blocking traffic has estimated around 20 million dollars a day in loses, and possibly they will fire workers if it continues on and on. They are seeking suing him and the mayor of the city (PRD) for refusing to enforce the law which they are breaking by doing this.

So how did he get 35% of the vote? He ran commericals promising everybody making under a set amount ($900 US dollars a month or less) a government welfare check. Where he would get that money was never answered. How people who work in the black market, the underground economy, or in the street selling goods can be positively proven what they make to qualify for this aid was not explained. Many "normal" people voted for Obrador because they need help economically. His plans and projects simply are unworkable. He makes promises, and then bounces it to Congress, no money, and he accuses Congress and it all stops there. He is off the hook, and the poor have nothing, again. This is how he is thinking I am sure.

The large rallies Obrador is having with a million people in the streets are rigged. Obrador regularly organizes these things (he is an expert at it) and they paid a large number of these people (not in his group) to attend and paid them $30 each, a free T-shirt, and a free meal. They brought hundreds of buses of people from the countryside which make $5 or $10 a day, and they got off good. Even with that, he has a large loss of ground level support. If this continues to September, he will have a hard time getting any kind of rally that will impress anybody.

Obrador is on the border of inciting a national revolution. That is where he is heading with this. Poor people will come out for a free handout, but if things get rough, with people going to jail, people getting hurt in the streets by riot police, or worse getting accidentally killed, they stay home. Obrador wants to take over our country, "legally" as president, or illegally by force. I personally feel there is going to be some nasty force used in the future by the government, because Obrador has the mindset and working principles of the old Communist mentality. "Anything is valid for me to use against you, and anything legal you use against me is invalid." Revolution is acceptable if we use it to overthrow our opponents, but invalid if somebody tries it against us. So they walk with impunity, and their opponents just have to stop walking even if you have the law and majority on your side.

At this point if we have another presidential election, I doubt Obrador will gather even 34% of the vote. He tried to present himself as an honest, humble farmer type. Going into election day many believed this PR presentation of him. But his true nature has come out since, and many in the PRD do not like what they see. I don't know how many families have been set into a civil fued because of this election. As per the Mexican law, religious ministers are prohibited from entering in the endorsement of politics, or getting involved in politics. As a foreigner, I am equally prohibited. So I can only talk to people on a causal basis, and in general I cannot get involved. Likewise, I see no presidential candidate that would have represented any kind of biblical Christian. Please pray that the present government and the legal system will uphold the law, and not cave in to a big mouth who has a strong PR machine behind him.