Serving Christ in Southeastern Mexico since 1987, Ramona and I were filled with joy in August of that year when along with our four children we were commissioned by the Board of International Ministries to serve as missionaries to Mexico. IM’s collaborative style of partnering with church bodies around the world and its commitment to unreached and underserved peoples was a perfect match for our own hearts’ passion for mission. Before the month ended we were in Mexico City, one of the world’s largest, getting to know the men and women who would become our colleagues in the years to come. Our job was to work with a newly formed association of rural Indian churches: Council of Indigenous Campesino Evangelicals of Mexico. The Council was a year old association of 17 member churches located in isolated rural communities in the Mexican states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tlaxcala, and the state of Mexico and later Chiapas. These were young house churches, which were the first ever evangelical groups in their locales. Persecution was common as conservative forces resisted new religious alternatives. Faith was costly and the young believers we were coming to know made a deep impression on us. Even before our Spanish was out of kindergarten we understood what an amazing opportunity we had been given; what a privilege to serve awaited us: Helping to shape the first evangelical generation in a score of Indigenous communities. We literally fell in love with our Mexican sisters and brothers in Christ, working side-by-side, praying, worshiping, evangelizing, dreaming and planning. We learned more than we taught as we saw God at work in and through all of us. House churches built chapels, new missions were planted. Doors opened for new areas of collaboration and the Council grew to 25, 30, 40, and to more than 50 churches and communities. Our job was to listen to the people and to God; to encourage and enable without creating dependency. Churches growing with the leaders and resources which God had placed at their disposal. In 2002 Ramona and I returned to California to care for our aging mothers. Since then, our involvement with the Council and the seminary have been at a distance with occasional visits. Now, we have been invited back with the specific assignment of responding to the training needs of a new generation of church leaders and expanding the seminary’s distance learning program. We will be based in Mexico City but spend the bulk of our time in outlying centers organizing and presenting regional training events. Some of the same children we taught in Bible School a few years ago now want training that will help them lead their churches in the future. We are ready. We have the language, the skills, and the relationships to get back to work in Mexico. Our dream is to build on the past and prepare for the future. Please join us in prayer and, if possible, with financial support. Blessings! Chuck & Ramona