UIM Aviation supports the ministry of Mexican missionaries
June 27, 2009 by UIM Aviation Admin
Filed under people
Rounding the last cliff in the heart of a narrow Mexican valley on July 17, only two or three hundred feet off the ground, Wolfgang Grotendiek set the flaps and prepared to land. The airstrip, looking alarmingly narrow and short, came up at a rush, and the wheels crunched the ground with a jerk. Trees and shrubbery flew by, and just when it looked like the runway was running out, he crested a hill and rolled easily down the rest of the airstrip.
Stepping out of the aircraft at Palmarito is like going back in time. The mountains feel vast—and very, very quiet. Even a donkey’s bray, rooster’s crow or dog’s bark hardly penetrates the silence.
People quickly appeared on the airstrip to greet the missionaries. They greeted their host with the customary abrazo and followed him down the narrow path to the simple white-washed house where they had arranged for the evening’s meeting.
As they did so, Wolfgang took off to pick up a second group of Mexican missionaries and take them to Saucillo, where they would spend the week visiting and teaching in several surrounding communities. The same day a third group, led by Pastor Alfredo Marin from a Baptist Church near the Gulf of California, drove up to Mesa Colorado to minister to a group of 15. He baptized four new believers that week.
Job Sierra flies out to Guarijio villages in the UIM Aviation airplanes, visits the villagers, preaches and teaches all week, then reverses the journey for the trip home.
Who are these men and women who go from village to village preaching the Gospel every month? Years ago, Alfredo Marin was a Bible School student in Guaymas on the Gulf, and Ron Hamilton, an American from Arizona, was their teacher. Hamilton wanted his students to get practical missionary experience, so he began to fund flights to get them into the mountain villages where they could share God’s Word with love and power to people who had no clue of it.
Since that time, about a dozen men and women from various coastal churches have joined the monthly trek. At an age when most men are thinking of slowing down, Job Sierra, for instance, is still trucking six hours from his home up to the mountains every month. He then flies out to Guarijio villages in the UIM airplanes, visits the villagers, preaches and teaches all week, then reverses the journey for the trip home.
In 25 years these Mexican missionaries have seen about 40 people a year come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, a considerable cadre of believers by now. But the cadre of believers is not intact. A great many have left their villages—including the best Church leadership potential—because they could not make a living and did not want to be involved in the illegal activities by which others prosper. Hamilton says the path to starting churches in these villages has been “difficult, difficult, difficult.” So, little bands of poor believers are left without leaders and that’s what keeps these committed Mexican missionaries going out. They will not leave the people God has given them as orphans.
