Extreme Makeover - Mexican Church Edition

Currently our little church in Mexico meets under tarps come rain or shine. Fortunately it only rains at night but when it does, the church "floor" is solid mud. Here are photos of our church as it is now. We also included a photo of our pastor as we wanted to make a few comments about him. He has a full time job in Guadalajara, that is about 45 minutes away. He has a heart for our church since it is the only evangelical church in the village of Ixtlahuacan. He drives down for the Wednesday meeting and then returns on Friday for the Friday evening men's meeting and then stays through the weekend working with the youth and then church all day Sunday. They stay in a house on the property they are renting now for the church services. The house is falling apart, in fact, from their bedroom you can look through the crack and see the street. The pastor, his wife and three kids live in two rooms of this house all weekend. He apparently draws no salary from the church because he wants the money to go towards the church building. So his heart is in the right place.

Walt tries to go and help out but nothing seems to come of it. Although he has participated in some work, including with Scott Snyder from GBF as seen here, to dig stumps and drive a tractor to level ground, the status has only gotten to level ground for the building and piles of dirt. You can see the current status here. We have been wondering why nothing is moving and thinking it is maybe a language barrier on our part. However, we soon realized that this is standard building practice in developing countries where loans and credit are nonexistent. In a cash society, such as Mexico, you build when you have money and stop when the funds run out.

Currently one of the ways the church itself is helping the building program is to have special a church "family" lunch every Sunday after church. Different families will provide the food and we all "purchase" the food with the funds designated directly for the new building. We like it because we get to know more people at this time, learn more Spanish and get to try all sorts of different types of home-made Mexican dishes and "agua frescas" - flavored, sweetened cold water.

We spoke with the pastor today and he does have a building plan, but not according to American standards - there is no time associated with it. When asked what the timing might be he merely shrugged his shoulders and said when the funds are available. There is no stress to have it done at a certain time, they are happy with what they have and will be just as happy when they have what they are planning for. Here are photos of a baptism service that took place today showing that they are just happy to have an old jacuzzi to use in the rental property for baptism. The beauty of a cash only society is no stress about time, no debt and, since there is no debt, no stress about payback. We love it here!!

With this background, as we were watching another episode of "Extreme Makeover - Home Edition" the wild idea of "Extreme Makeover - Mexican Church Edition" came to mind. What if we could get a bunch of people together to make this thing happen?

Well, we sent out several inquiry type e-mails to friends and churches and received positive responses so we no longer thought it a wild idea. In fact, some folks have begun donations and some contractors are toying with the idea of coming down and pitching in for a week or so, helping to get this church built. We also contacted the pastor of a local English language church who says he has retirees with time on their hands that would also be willing to help out. So, what comes to mind is team of contractors from the North, a team of local retirees and of local Mexican contractors all working together to do something positive and needy. Now mind you, without a building schedule this will be a reasonably long term project so good planning can take place. Of course unless there is a rapid influx of large amounts of funding.

The more difficult task for us would be to coordinate people coming down for a week or so to make maximum use of their time. But that can be done. In addition to the labor to help construct the building is, of course, the need for materials. After our discussion with the pastor today, we have some idea of how many funds will be required and how many funds are available - currently there is a great disparity. There is a building plan so we can go from there to figure out cost phasing.

So the project is twofold: Come down and help build or donate for materials. Tax deductible donations can be made through the following 501(c)3 organization:

Shepherd's Heart Ministries, Inc.
135 Bill Cox Road
Jonesborough, TN 37659

and the check should designate: Church in Ixtlahuacan. It will then be set aside for that. This organization is a 100% pass through so every penny donated with this designation would go directly to the church.

We never intended our blog to be a fund raiser but we view this more as a long term opportunity to share with others who might want to be involved in a good cause.