Based on the US population of 300 million people, this would be like having only 125,000 Christians in all of the United States. The US currently has 3,141 counties among it's 50 states. This would be like you having only 40 Christians in the entire county in which you live....Parker, Bexar, Collin, Dallas, Tarrant just to name a few. Can you imagine that? Imagine in your entire county if you had only 40 Christians. WOW! Kind of puts it into perspective doesn't it? That is what it is like for us here in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. We have found ourselves swimming in a sea of unbelief.
We find a similar story in 1 Kings 19. Here the prophet Elijah is hiding in a cave on Mount Horeb, having fled from Jezebel as she sought to kill him for God's judgment on the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. Things had gotten so bad for Elijah that he no longer had the discernment to notice even a remanant in Israel. Based on the number of fighting men recorded in the days of David in 2 Samuel 24, I think that it is safe to assume that in all of the twelve tribes there were probably around 8 to ten million people living in all of it's territories. And out of all of those people, Elijah could not discern the existence of faith in the hearts of anyone in the entire country. Yet in 1 Kings 19 we find the Lord reminding him that there in all of that sea of unbelief was a hidden remnant of believers.
"Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel - all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him." 1 Kings 19:8
When you study Israel's history you find that the inevitable result of idolatry (turning away from God) was that the family unit always broke apart. When either an individual person or an entire culture turns away from the Lord you have the invetiable consequence of the breakdown of families. When our vertical relationship with God is compromised our horizontal relationships with the people that God has set around us always suffers. First is the vertical, second is the horizontal. When the first suffers, the second always falls apart. Marriages break down, relationships between parents and their children suffer, relationships between siblings become strained.......we could just keep going.
"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse." Malachi 4:5,6
The purpose and intent of God is to restore relationships. First, vertically. Second, horizontally. God's Spirit is a reconciling Spirit.
"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he committed to us the ministry of reconcilition......We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God." 2 Corinthians 5:18-20
God's intent is to reconcile us to himself, knowing that in the course of time this will lead not only to our restoration with him but with the entire family of God as a whole. God knows that as we reconnect progressively with him it will open our hearts to others and form bonds that become eternal. As we continue to read the book of 2 Corinthians we see this play out.
"We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange - I speak as to my children - open wide your hearts also." 2 Corinthians 6:11-13
"Make room for us in your hearts.... I have said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you." 2 Corinthains 7:2,3
First comes vertical reconciliation with God, then as we do our horizontal relatiohsips with one another open up as we make room in our hearts for each other. According to the prophet Malachi it would start with the man who would come in the spirit and power of Elijah, that is John the Baptist (Matthew 11:14), then proceed through Jesus himself, then continue through the apostles and subsequently through successive generations of Christians down through all of history. God's attempt at reconciliation continues on. But when men break off from God, people break off from each other. It's a proven historical fact. And the ones that end up suffering the most are women and children.
Inevitably, when you have the absence of God's reconciling Spirit, what you have is an impending breakdown of social order that extends right through the family unit. As a consequence, many women becomed widowed, both physically and spiritually, and children become orpans, both physically and spiritually. When I say widowed, I am not just referring to the death of the husband and/or father. I am referring to the abandonment of women and children by their husbands and fathers.
The word used for widow in the old testament was almanah. It comes from the the Hebrew word alman. Alman means bereavement, a divorced person discarded by their spouse, someone forsaken by another person. The Greek word for widow is Chera. It means deficiency, someone who lacks a husband either physically or figurativelly. (Note the word "figuratively.") Chera comes from the Greek word Chasma or Chasm. It means vacancy or gulf and is related to the Greek word Chao from which we get the English word Chaos.
What we see in both definitions is that in the pre-exilic Hebrew culture a woman could be considered "widowed" in situations where they were discarded by a spouse through divorce. In the Post-Exilic Hebrew/Roman culture a woman may be considered widowed even if her husband was alive simply by the husband not fulfilling his duties as a husband as both provider and protector of the family, even if he was still physically around. The impending result of such a condition was familial and societal chaos in various aspects of the culture. I believe very much that this was a major problem throughout Israel in the days of Elijah. Consider that Jesus said the following:
"I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years....." Luke 4:25
There were many widows in Elijah's time. And Why? Some through death, but many through divorce and abandonment. Consider the fact that a Hebrew man could divorce his wife simply for not liking something about her. That's right. If you were a Hebrew man and you didn't like something about your wife you could just divorce her, period.
"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?" Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning." Matthew 19:7,8
"If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, then her first husband who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled." Deuteronomy 24:1-4
Just for clarity sake, here is Deuteronomy 24 in the King James Version.
"When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her; then let him write her a bill of divorcement, an give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife. And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house;....." (KJV)
I underlined the word uncleanness in the KJV of Deut 24:1-4. The Hebrew word is Ervah. It means nudity, blemish, shame or uncleanness. Ervah comes from the Hebrew root word Arah. Arah means to make bare, to pour out, to discover, to uncover.
What I think the verses were intended to mean is that if an Israelite man found out, after being married to his wife for a period of time, after he got her home and she let her guard down and stopped putting her best foot forward, that she was a gossiper, slanderer, refused to have children, was an idolater at heart, something that God himself didn't like, that he could then divorce his wife, even if she wasn't cheating on him. I think it was meant to have spiritual applications. What I think some Israelite men wanted this verse to say was that when a man married a woman and got her home and began to learn all about her personality, her quirks, habits, beliefs, tendencies, what she looked like with no clothes on, .....and he found something that he didn't like about her, regardless if she was a righteous woman or not, that he could just send her away with divorce papers in hand. I personally believe the verse was meant for spiritual application, not for personal gratification of the man. Remember that under some situations a man couldn't divorce his wife. See Deuteronomy 22:13-19. In God's eyes I believe a man had to have a good reason spiritually to issue the divorce papers. Remember, God hates divorce. He always has.
"Another thing you do: You flood the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, 'Why?' It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. 'I hate divorce,' says the Lord God of Israel, ....Malachi 2:13-16
When men divorce their wives, without reason and approval from the Lord, they are in effect making social widows of them and orphaning their kids.
So what does all of this have to do with Merida, Yucatan, Mexico? As a family we have now been here for almost 4 1/2 months. We have met people very quickly and befriended many, both inside and outstide the church. We have been to more parties, get togethers, lunches and social gatherings than I think we went to in the previous 5 years in the states. And the one thing we keep seeing over and over and over again is this.......Sexual promiscuity, infedility, men abandoning their families and divorcing their wives and leaving their kids behind can be a common thing down here. It's very, very common.
I told you earlier that we regularly attend Iglesia Bautista Norte. This is where the Lord has placed us for now and we are grateful for that. And I can tell that we have seen instance after instance where women and their siblings were abandoned by their fathers as little girls or where women and their children have been abandoned by their husbands today. It is also very, very common for husbands to cheat on their wives. It's almost socially expected. The way it was explained to us by Tammy Aldred is that some little girls are told from the time that they are young that when they get married they can expect their husbands to be unfaithful. The shame and dishonor that sometimes goes with being a wife in this culture can at times be beyond words. The courts in Mexico don't enforce child abandonment laws or alimony and child support laws. Those things don't exist here. Men just leave if they feel like it with no legal consequences. And most of the time they don't come back. So far we have not heard of one instance of reconciliation where a man returned to his wife and kids. Not one.
About a month ago I was having lunch with a man from IBN who I am starting to become good friends with. We will call him Roger. Christine and I just love Roger and his wife and daughter. They seem very committed to the Lord. At lunch Roger was telling me that his father-in-law abandoned his wife, all of her siblings and his mother-in-law when the children were very young. He said it was very traumatic for them as one can imagine. His wife's father moved away to another city and hooked up with another woman and never came back.
A few weeks ago Christine was talking to another lady in our church. We will call this woman Renee (not her real name). Renee and her husband just had a beautiful little girl. They are a really sweet family. Renee is bilingual. She and her husband are both school teachers. While Renee and Christine were talking Christine commented on how much Renee's daughter looked like Renee. Renee looked at her and said, "You know, people always tell me that I look like my dad. But I don't remember him. He left us when we were young and I have not seen him since."
One Saturday a month Christine attends a woman's outreach at IBN. I will go into the purpose of these meetings a little more in a minute. This last Saturday, while at the November meeting, the ladies of IBN were studying about living a holy life before the Lord and fleeing from sexual immorality. All of the sudden, one of the ladies started crying and started pouring her heart out about how lonely she was. We will call this lady Lynn. Lynn is now a single mother of five children with a few of them being teenagers. She has to work full time to support her kids and is concerned for their protection. Lynn's husband had an affair and has left them completely. No child support. No help. No visits. Nothing. (And just so you know....minimum wage in Mexico is $50 pesos a day for 8 hours of work. That's .50 cents an hour USD or basically $4.00 USD per day.) Some of these women are trying to raise kids by themselves on $20 USD per week.
Then after Lynn shared, one of older women spoke up and started consoling Lynn. This woman had been through the same thing years before, raising and supporting her kids by herself. She was trying to let Lynn know that she had been through it and that Lynn would make it. Then, two young women who happened to be sisters began to interject and share. One of the sisters had been through the same thing. Got married, got pregnant, husband had an affair, husband left her and the child. She is now a single mother of one. Then another lady sitting directly next to Christine started crying. This lady had also been through the same cycle. Got married, had kids, husband left and hasn't seen him since.
After this, another elderly lady started to encourage Lynn. As she was doing so she started breaking down in tears and started sharing how this whole pattern had happened to her when she was younger. Marriage. Kids. Divorce. Husband left. Women raising kids on their own. Our culture here in Merida is full of orphans and widows. This is a re-ocurring them here. We see it over and over and over again. When this meeting started the agenda was set on other things. This meeting was not intended to center around Women and Children Who Have Been Abandoned by their Husbands. That was not the plan. It just happened. Folks, women and children are wounded in this culture. The hearts of fathers in many instances have turned away from their kids and wives. And the ladies are caught in the middle, just trying to pick up the pieces.
It's very common. Very common. The scriptures say the following:
"My eye affecteth my heart." Lamentations 3:51
What people see with their eyes affects what is inside of their hearts. Here, in Mexico, there is no such thing as a Family Plan on your cable package. At around 8 or 9PM everynight and especially on the weekends, many of the basic cable channels show nudity and soft porn. Some of the commercials for movies have nudity. I was at the gym with my son Joseph about 2 months ago, swimming and running while having some father/son time. And when I looked up at the TV screens around the gym there was a Mexican music video with naked men and women running around on the T.V. screens. Total nudity. In the middle of the day on T.V. I couldn't believe it. I was floored. I looked around the room and no one looked embarrased except for me. Needless to say we don't go to the gym anymore.
In the U.S. you always have an option to get a cable T.V. package that has all the curse words cut out of semi-clean movies. Not here. Four letter words, F-bombs, whatever was in the original cut of a movie is what you get. The people of Mexico don't invest themselves into keeping their culture free of demonic influence. They have no problems risking exposing themselves to such things or their children. Do you know why so many men are wayward here? Pornography. This is a porn culture. Porn breeds adultery. The US is the porn manufacturing capital of the world. I have written on this in the past. But the Christians in America are more diligent to demand and to set up filters in the systems of entertainment to try and block that out from their kids. It's a more organized effort with corporate and technological support. You don't go to Gold's Gym or 24 Hour Fitness and see porn on the T.V. screens around the room. In the US a good deal of this garbage is filtered out of the main stream. Not here brethren.
So how are we participating in ministry? Well, so far the Lord has opened a door for Christine. As I told you before, IBN is having monthly meetings to try and help these mommies with early child-hood development. The pregnant moms, babies and single moms need help.
Last month the ladies of IBN gathered for a 2 1/2 hour workshop and ministry time to the pregnant moms, moms wanting to be pregnant and new mothers. The wealthy class and the growing middle class here are becoming educated about the importance of good eating, vitamins and healthy living before, during and after pregnancy. They are also learning about the importance of the parents role in childhood development. The poorer class does not have access to this information or the products needed to carry this out.
So in response we are trying to help with supplies and education. To start October's meeting, Michelle, one of the IBN ladies, made a game for the ladies that created a baby shower atmosphere. Michelle is super creative and put some hours into a really fun game for everyone to play. About 35 ladies attended.
Llana, a member of IBN, led the meeting the rest of the way with a power point presentation she produced about the importance of taking care of yourself before, during and after pregnancy along with step by step development expectations for new babies. Llana is a native Meridian with a degree in childhood development that she earned at one of the Universities here in Merida. Llana explained the importance of taking vitamins before you are pregnant, especially Folic acid.
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| Llana's presentation. |
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| Baby Bib |
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| Tammy Allred presenting a gift basket. |
The ladies had a wonderful time of prayer, teaching, sharing and fellowship. They ended the afternoon with 6 special gift baskets to give away. 3 baskets were filled with items for ladies and the other 3 were made just for the 3 pregnant mom's in the group. The baskets were filled with lots of products a mom-to-be would need, like vitamins, ointment for sore nipples, some diapers and wipes, baby lotion. Christine wanted to make these ladies something extra special, so she whipped out her sewing machine and put together some adorable bibs with matching burp cloths for each Mom. One is pictured above on the right. They were so excited!!
Stay tuned for our next update as we will have another outreach at the end of November for the Mom's with new babies. We have 4 new Mom's so far that are coming and possibly more. We are preparing more gift baskets and Christine will be creating something very special for each mom.
Many Yucatecans who were born here never leave. One of the few exceptions to this would be some of the upper class Yucatecans heading to the United States or other countries for advanced levels of education. This minority of folks usually come back to utilize their education and provide services here. Examples of this would be various fields of medicine or architectural practice. There is also a small weathly class of people that gained generational wealth from Henequen production. You also have a growing middle class among the educated. However, that still leaves the majority of Yucatecans largely uneducated and often impoverished. Many of them have stayed that way from generation to generation. This is primarily a Catholic society which historically has cherished having children but that has incresingly suffered from many of the social breakups we discussed earlier.
Some of the wealthy and middle class have learned through education how to take care of themselves before, during and after pregnancy, but the lower class here is not educated about the importance of diet and vitamins before, during and after pregnancy. For generations, they have learned that you just have a child, feed them and protect them, but they do not understand the importance of early childhood developement as no one has taught them. They are often too poor to buy these necessary items. They hold there babies almost all the time, crawling is not really encouraged and necessary stimulation does not happen. What you see in their children as they grow is a lethargy and a lack of necessary development
This lower class that we speak of is growing in receptivity however. Again, we have teamed up with Tammy Allred of Inglesia Baptista Church to provide early childhood development information and supplies like vitamins, books to read to their children, baby rattles, developmental toys. Llana, as previously mentioned, helps with her education in early childhood development to help us teach these moms and moms-to-be about the importance of taking care of themselves and their new babies to bring them to full development potential.
This is were you can help. Mexico typically does not produce alot of these items we have been talking about, so they import them which really drives the price up, almost double in some cases in comparison to the States. We can purchase most of these items here at Wal-Mart as they are the least expensive even here. Please consider a donation for us to provide pre-natal vitamins, developmental toys and other necessary items. We cannot receive care packages as the mail system here can sometimes be unreliable. Many packages are stolen or looted before they arrive.
Please help us break the cycle here for these Mom's with education and supplies!!
Folks, remember, only .04% of our city knows the Lord. We have very few Christians in our city. Because this vertical relationship is broken, horizontal relationships within families suffer. We have a culture here where pornography is unrestrained in many settings. This leads to father's being pulled away from their wives and kids. The evidence is all around us. Orphans and widows are everywhere. Please pray for us to have a spiritual impact on our city and those around us. Please pray for the orphans and widows of Merida. Pray that the message of the Lord would spread rapidly through our city and be honored, that the Lord would work with us and confirm his word by signs that accompany it. We need your help. Pray for us. Let us know if you want to be involved. We do not ask for ourselves. We ask for others.
In Christ,
JEB
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