2009 Mexico Mission Trip

To Mexico With Love
by Josh Crochet

Apostolic Man Ministries recently partnered with the Louisiana district for its second building project. I was scheduled to go to Mexico City with fourteen brothers to install a third floor on a Bible College. Mexico City is the second largest city on the planet with a population of over 22 million. Keep in mind that, while that is over five times the population of the state of Louisiana, the city is roughly the size of greater Los Angeles.

At the time, I could come up with a hundred reasons not to go and only one reason I should. On the first trip, my car was totaled in south Texas. God protected us and we walked away. He would later replace the car. Then He would pay it off. That wasn’t enough reason to stay home. On the first trip, gangs had passed the project flaunting semi-automatic weapons and smiles. I remember thinking as I walked past the SUV “Building a church is a good way to go.” God not only protected us, but we gained the respect of the local gang in the building process. Next excuse: In the year and a half that had passed since the first project, my wife had a stroke. Her state at the time was paralysis on the left side. Again God had intervened. She should have been dead, but His hand was on her. Now she was home and able to attend to the kids. Women from the church had volunteered to spend nights with her while I was gone. Through all of these thoughts, one picture trumped every reason to stay behind. It was a picture of our final night on the first project. A picture of men and women and children standing in a building that had not existed seven days before. Tears and smiles spread across their faces and they looked at us as if we were something special; regular men with blue collars, sunburns, and calloused hands. They hugged us and blessed us in His Name and said things that no language barrier could stop. In the same year and a half that had passed, the congregation would grow to over a hundred. Lives would be changed and souls would be saved. Cancer would literally fall off of the body of a woman during service among other miracles. Now I had the chance to do it again. I got on the plane.

The first two days were spent adjusting to the altitude and attending some fantastic church. Pastor Kent Rhoads of Oil City, Louisiana preached three of the four sermons that Sunday. Seven locals were baptized in Jesus’ Name. I lost count of how many received the gift of the Holy Ghost for the first time. If we had left that day, it would have been worth it. On Monday, construction began. The language barrier soon took a back seat to the common goal. Brothers would point, draw pictures, or nod to communicate. Ladies from the church would have meals cooked by noon. None of us left hungry and most of us had to fight off nap time in the afternoons. By the end of Monday, the exterior frame was up. By the end of Tuesday, the concrete wall board was hung on the outside. By the end of Wednesday, interior walls were mostly framed, partially rocked, and electrical had begun. Thursday brought more of the same, but it also brought the reason I had come. There was to be an evening service to dedicate the new floor and honor those responsible for it. People like Brother Drost, Brother Dean and Brother Rhoads who had prepared for months in advance.

Several blocks away, a fair was being held, but the main event that night took place in the first floor of the local Bible College. Children with long hair and dresses danced with tambourines. Grown men lifted their hands and sang with tears streaming down their sunburned faces. Brothers and sisters who didn’t even know the same language laughed at pictures of each other in the building process. Yeah, it was hard. It was hot. It was way out of the comfort zone. But when a sister nearly three times your age looks at you with her eyes brimming and hugs your neck so hard it hurts, it’s suddenly all worth it.

Would I do it again? Where’s the plane?