Stories From the Fields of Culiacan

Those who were once on the receiving end of hearing the gospel are now the ones who are giving that same good news to a new generation of Indians.

Every year for the past 17 years, a major outreach has been held in Culiacan, Mexico to share the good news of Jesus Christ with indigenous Indians who harvest the extensive crops there. Over 100 minority languages are spoken in the migrant worker camps. Thousands of Indians have come to faith in Christ over the years. Here are three of their stories...

Israel

NOE AND ISRAEL

Noe and Israel grew up in the migrant worker camps with their parents Jacinto and Maria. Jacinto's family lived in the Oaxacan mountains where the Mixteco Indians fruitlessly try to eke out a living.

Each growing season the family would board the rickety buses that took them to the camps in the Culiacan valley. There they worked long days picking tomatoes, cucumbers or bell peppers for a pittance. Many times the little money they had was spent for liquor at the company store. Noe and Israel and the other children in the family had their childhood stolen.

But one year some trucks arrived at the camps with people who sang songs with the children, prayed for them, and gave out cassettes in their Mixteco dialect! Noe loved the visits because he always got something. His mother received the best gift of all - faith in Jesus Christ! After she began to attend church with her children, her husband Jacinto also turned to Christ and his life was changed also. From there the message of repentance and salvation from addictions spread even to the camp owners.

In 2006 Noe and Israel joined the Culiacan Project as workers! Now they revisit the camps where they suffered as children giving out cassettes and hope for the future to hundreds of Mixteco Indians.

Angelica

ANGELICA'S SECRET WEAPON

For the last several years Angelica, a Mixteco Indian born in the mountains and raised in Mexico City has been working with the staff of GRN Mexico in the Culiacan Project. In 2006 she was trained as an office worker at the GRN Missions Training Course in Oaxaca. Although her Spanish is very poor her Mixteco is very good, so she is a great asset when the teams visit the camps.

When she was being trained in the office, she noticed a record player with GR phonograph records. Her eyes lit up! "When I was a child," she told the staff, "my parents didn't know about Jesus. They would fight and drink all the time. Our life was very hard, until one day someone gave us a record in our language of Mixteco telling us about God. Eventually the message on the records reached the hearts of my parents and all of our family got saved!"

Now 30 years after those Mixteco records won her family's heart for God, Angelica has taken up the work of sharing cassettes wherever she goes, in Oaxaca, the big city, and in the migrant camps.

Roberta

ROBERTA'S STORY

Roberta grew up in Huajuapan speaking Mixteco and working long hours to help her mother survive in grinding poverty. After several years, a missionary shared cassettes with them in their heart language and they came to faith in Christ.

Now years later Roberta was invited to go to the Culiacan Project to share the message on cassettes with others. Although she has had very little formal training, she mobilizes the young people from her Mixteco Church to visit other villages with cassettes. In 2007, Roberta organized the first ever Jesus march in Huajuapan with over 700 people marching to proclaim the name of Jesus in that town!