The Juarez Cartel Wars

The Mexican people loved coming to our meetings!

In the summer of 2008, we helped an American missionary church planter, working in Juarez, Mexico.  By his own testimony, the missionary was discouraged with very few people in his church and he was ready to quit.  We had just found out about his work in Juarez, and arranged a week to help him build his church (that’s what our mission trips did – help the local Mexican churches).  He was excited about getting the help!  The week we worked with him, he got pages of addresses of Mexican people who were saved at that week’s meetings.  And he and his church followed up on them all.  In the summer of 2009, we had two weeks of meetings with him.  We normally don’t work two weeks with the same church in a summer, because so many people get saved, it becomes too many to follow up on.  But he was so motivated, wanted the meetings, and I knew he’d follow up on everyone.

Preparing to load up at BPS El Paso to go into Juarez.  God was ALWAYS with us!

That little church grew to over 200 people and they had to meet outside until they could get a new church built.  They are on fire for the Lord!  Of course, I’m sure the BPS El Paso ministry will continue to work with him.

This was just one story of God’s blessings.  I told you about this particular church for a reason.  It occurred during the 5 years of cartel wars in Juarez, Mexico.  Juarez was named the most dangerous city in the world.  It was called the cartel wars because there were 5 cartels trying to take control of the lucrative drug trade in Juarez.  The killing was mainly the cartels killing each other.  It finally stopped when there were two cartels left standing, and they made a truce.  During those years we continued to schedule mission trips.  People around the U.S. scheduled mission trips because they felt God was leading them to go.  That’s good to listen to God’s leading.  Some had to cancel because God didn’t provide the money.  Some had medical issues that God didn’t resolve, or work issues that weren’t resolved.  That is God closing the door.  He knows how to do that very well.
However, what if after you schedule a mission trip, you find out that the place you were going to was dangerous?  Now what should you do?  Should you now just cancel the trip (that God lead you to schedule) because you are fearful?  Listen, if God doesn’t close the door, that’s a signal from Him to you that He wants you to go.  It really is that simple to follow God.  But you say, “Wait!  I didn’t know it was dangerous – I’m not going anywhere that will put our children in danger”.

Here is what you have to be careful of.  If you cancel a mission trip or anything else you are doing for God, because of fear, listen carefully.
1- If you are fearful of serving God, that fear is not from God.
2-If you are using wisdom to not serve God that wisdom is not from God.

If you canceled a mission trip for either of the above two reasons, God clearly wasn’t the one influencing you.  I believe from the story above about the Mexican church, which was just one of many great things that happened, that God wanted those people who canceled on those trips!  I’m not trying to be self-righteous or mean; I just want you to see what God has clearly shown me.  During those years of the cartel wars, many churches canceled out of fear.    However, most of those trips we took anyway, just with less people.  Those years were not good for the ministry financially, but the greatest spiritually!  Thousands of Mexicans came to Christ (many in tears), and tens of thousands of copies of God’s Word, were given out (which do not return void).  And the Americans who came?  They came even with the new requirement we had for our mission trips…. “You had to have faith”.  Wow!  There was a common theme I heard from the groups who came…. Most came even though they were afraid – but halfway through the week when I reminded them about the fear, they laughed, because they had forgotten about it!  In fact, most said, “I felt safer in Juarez, than I did in the U.S.!”  I told them, “That’s because when the God of this universe puts His arm of protection around you, you feel safer than you ever have!”  One young woman told of leaving her little baby with her brother’s family while she came on the mission trip to Juarez.  She said He told her she should be prosecuted for child abuse for going to Juarez on a mission trip to get killed and leaving her child an orphan!  She replied to her brother, “I’d rather die serving God in Juarez than in a car wreck driving to your house!

One of the people related a story during the cartel war years of a young man named Pedro who went to one of the churches in Juarez that we worked with.  22 Year-old Pedro had a small hamburger stand in Juarez.  It was a grill on the side of the road, and he made American-style hamburgers.  Since he was a Christian, he had a small box in which were a variety of Chick-tracts, which he gave to his customers to read while he made the burgers.  One night a big, well-dressed man came up to the stand and said in a gruff voice, “What are you doing?”  Pedro said, “Making hamburgers, you want one?”  The man said, “Yeah, make me one”.  Then Pedro did what he always did.  He reached into the box and randomly grabbed a tract, gave it to the man, and said, ”Here’s something to read”.  What Pedro didn’t know, was the tract he had “randomly” given this man was called “The Assassin”, and this man was in fact an assassin!  The man took the tract and proceeded to read it.  When he finished reading it he said, “Hey!  Is it true what this little book says?”  Pedro opened his mouth to speak, and the man cut in, “Because if I don’t like your answer, I’m going to kill you!”  He opened his coat so Pedro could see the big gun he was carrying.  Again Pedro opened his mouth to speak and the man cut in again, “I’ve already killed three men today, and I have two more on my list!”  At this point, Pedro, filled with the Holy Spirit, said “Are you finished?”  “Well, yes”, said the man, a little surprised.   Pedro continued, “Yes it’s true, it’s all true.  There is a God in heaven who LOVES YOU!”  Pedro stepped out from behind the grill, walked around to this big man, reached up and put his arm around the man’s shoulder, and said, “You know the father you’ve always wanted?  His name is Jesus Christ, and He wants you in His family forever!”  The man broke down and wept, as Pedro led him to the Lord.  And if THAT wasn’t incredible enough, that man said, “Wait here!”, and ran off.  Soon he came back with his friend, another assassin, whom Pedro also led to the Lord!  Glory to God!  I would say it doesn’t get more front line battle than that!  Wow!

We had so many stories during those years.  The churches we worked with each week always picked the place where we would have our meeting.  During one particular week, the pastor brought us to a small, poor community near Juarez.  There were about 400 people living here, and the pastor said they had a hard time with visitation in this area.  Most wouldn’t even come to the door when they knocked.  I would find out why later.  We were always happy to help the pastors with their churches.  Prior to our meetings we would divide up into groups and invite the people door to door.  A big bunch of Americans with puppets and a chalk drawing would usually draw the hardest of crowds.  Of course, prayer was the main reason they came.  After the meeting started, we had a good crowd of about 300 people.  The pastor was ecstatic.  About halfway through the meeting, the pastor started telling me about where we were at.  This community was full of witches, warlocks, Satanists, etc.  They had a lot of murders and the police were here all the time.  It was known as the most dangerous community in Juarez.  I thought, “The most dangerous community in Juarez?”  And Juarez is the most dangerous city in the world?”  Wow – I felt like we were at the epi-center of it all!  I thought it wise not to share this gem of information with our group until we were on the bus and heading home.  Then the pastor took me around to the back of the bus.  The bus was parked next to a building that looked all closed up.  He pointed to a little red cross painted on the bottom of the building.  I said, “What’s that?”  He said, “That’s where the owner of this building was killed for refusing to pay one of the cartels for protection – that was last week.”  Well, one more bit of information I’ll wait to tell the group.  We went back to the meeting to watch God work.  By the way, God doesn’t care “how bad” men think other people are.  God’s will has always been that “None should perish”.  At the end of that meeting, over 250 people came to Christ!  Glory to God!!  Is He good or what!!

Nobody can tell me that my God didn’t want us there!  We went, like He wanted.  We presented His Word like He wanted.  He took care of everything else!  I was not foolish going into Juarez.  I looked at it this way.  If God didn’t want us going there, He would close the door.  There were many ways He could have done that.  He could have easily stopped us at the border.  But He NEVER shut the door.  And if He wasn’t going to shut the door, I sure wasn’t!!
I had someone call me who said, you need to stop going into Juarez, I read in the paper (a Miami newspaper) that blood was flowing under the fences into El Paso, and people in El Paso were getting murdered….  That was ridiculous!  In fact, during those cartel wars in Juarez, which was a stone’s throw across the Rio Grande from El Paso, El Paso was rated the Number One safest city to live in the United States!  No cartel guys would venture into El Paso because they’d either get arrested or killed!  When a cartel guy was shot in Juarez and didn’t die, if he could, he definitely wouldn’t go to a Juarez hospital.  Because the hired assassin who tried to kill him in the first place would just go to the hospital and finish the job.  So the wounded guy would do whatever he could to get across the border to an El Paso hospital where he knew he would be safe.  The assassins wouldn’t follow him there.  Because the US border had a lot of firepower and soldiers during that time… no assassin would be crossing!
I remember telling one group how unhappy I was with the way the cartel war was reported by the media – it was obvious that murder and killing was news that sold very well (there were over two million stories about the Juarez cartel wars on the internet), regardless of whether it was true or false.  Then a guy from the group came up to me and introduced himself.  He was a Channel 5 news anchorman in a nearby state.  As I started to apologize, he stopped me.  He said, “Your right.  The news people don’t TELL you the news, they SELL you the news.”  He explained it this way.  “If a TV news person sounds boring, the couch-potato watching will just pop that remote and listen to somebody else.  So the news is “embellished”, or “spruced up” to the extent that the viewers watch their station.  Then the stockholders are happy,  the bosses are happy, and everybody under the bosses keep their jobs.”  Think about it folks.  Does someone really think that the  truth in today’s world is somehow more important than the money?

So what’s the point here?  God led you to go to a foreign field, either long-term or short-term, and you find out later that it’s dangerous.  And now you’re upset. Should you go?  Maybe you should ask God this question, “Lord, why didn’t you let me know ahead of time that it was dangerous?  If He answered, He would say, “It isn’t about danger”.  Of course God knows it’s dangerous.  But He has someone there He wants you to give His Word to.  If God leads you to serve Him, in your church, to the mission field, or whatever, or wherever, go forward until God closes the door.   Let Him take care of the door!  Don’t use human reasoning.  Your reasoning is always susceptible to fear.  Trust HIM!
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” Prov. 3:5.

God is so good, folks!  Follow Him!  Search for reasons to serve Him!  Be useable!  He will and He can take care of you!