Even though this situation has been incredibly sad for us, it has had the benefit of bringing into sharp focus some important things; mainly, our personal relationship with God and what “ministry” means to us and to Him. We believe and have said many times that ministry has much more to do with your location than your destination. We are getting to experience that in a new and deeper way as we find ourselves standing in a place we never planned to be while our planned destination fades into a fog of uncertainty. But how many different places do we see “ministry” happening in the Bible and how much of that was planned by the “minister”? It happened in gardens and deserts, on mountains and in caves, in palaces and in prisons. So where are we? While we are not in a palace, we are certainly not in prison! It has been an incredible joy to return to Chihuahua and work here in our new jobs. And the Lord has provided us with a wonderful house with plenty of room for the 4 growing kids, a barbeque in the back and air conditioning (actually, “swamp coolers”)! And all within a 5 minute walk to the office and guesthouse!

Tasha has settled into her responsibilities quickly and easily. Managing the guesthouse has its moments of crazy busy-ness, but has mostly left her with plenty of time at home and with the kids. (She even has found time to begin learning to play the guitar!) She loves to visit with the guests who come through and finds herself enjoying fellowship with many different people as she delivers laundry soap, checks on the rooms or washes towels. (The kids enjoy those moments, too, as they get to bring bikes and scooters to the playground while they wait for her.)

Ron has also settled well into his role as office manager. It is a more technical job, with responsibilities like record keeping and equipment maintenance, but often turns into a more social job as he helps fellow missionaries and visits with those who pass through the office, catching up on life and being encouraged in the Lord. And the candy basket on the desk is always full, encouraging everyone to take a piece and maybe stay and visit a little longer.

Meanwhile, we have been able to step back into a ministry that we were involved in several years ago when we first moved here to Mexico. Some of you may remember a place we called “the brickyard” located on the outskirts of town. It is a desperately poor community of Mexicans and Indians living in dirty shacks, producing labor intensive, handmade bricks for less than ten cents apiece. (That’s less than what we paid for bricks to build our house in the tribe!) A local Mexican church and fellow missionary have been working with the community for some years, providing gifts of food and clothing and teaching Bible lessons and literacy. On Fridays, Tasha, the kids and I go out to help. Tasha, Joshua and Nathaniel have been helping in the nursery during the lesson time. Meanwhile, Ron has been helping with the teaching and Emma and Benjamin help those who have difficulty reading and writing to fill out their note sheets that we hand out before class.

It’s been an incredible, wonderful witness to our hearts to see what happens when we let go of the reigns of our lives and let God take them. This was never a destination we planned to reach; living in a town of over 600,000, working in an office and teaching the Word in a slum. Yet, we love it. We don’t know what God has for our future. We are still willing and ready to work in a tribe, but this is where God has us for now. So we’ll grow and bear fruit were He has planted us and encourage those around us to do the same!

We thank all of you who have given to our ministry and prayed for us. Your gifts are dear and your prayers are priceless!

Ron, Benjamin, Tasha, Emma, Joshua and Nathaniel (by order of height!)

Greetings in the name of the Lord from Durango, Mexico!  Because you are such an important part of our lives we wanted to make sure you knew about some big changes that are happening in our ministry. We are no longer part of the tribal team reaching the Nahuatl Indians.  I know this may come as a big shock.  It was to us!  This past Fall and Winter we were more excited than ever about the path the Lord had for us and He had been challenging our hearts to trust Him above all else.  On January 18th the path changed, but trusting Him did not.  That day started a month long barrage of e-mails, team meetings and various phone calls with leadership.  The result was that we were told that they didn’t see our family as being suited to live in a tribal setting at this time.  We have been assured that we were not taken off the team as punishment or because of sin but rather because of concerns that our life skills and gifts are not a good fit for the tribal ministry.  We are completely trusting God with this decision, and He has been showing Himself faithful daily!  After the decision to remove us from the team, field leadership presented us with other ministry opportunities here in Mexico with New Tribes Mission that are VERY necessary to seeing the Nahuatl and other Mexican Indian tribes reached with the Gospel of Christ.  So, for now, we will continue to serve with NTM.  God has given us the peace that passes understanding throughout this process of change and He has continued to bless us and show us His love through Scripture and through the Body.  

As for our new ministries; Ron will be the Office Manager and I will oversee the Guesthouse ministry. Office Manager is pretty much what it sounds like, but will also involve a lot of record keeping.  His attention to detail and perseverance will fit well with this new ministry.  Also, he will be making sure that all technical things run smoothly in the office, which is something he really enjoys.  

The Guesthouse ministry involves managing the maintenance, cleaning and reservations of the NTM guesthouse in Chihuahua.  The guesthouse exists as a place of rest for the missionaries that come out from the mountains for paperwork, medical needs, meetings or whatever.  Since Ron and I have now had experience on the front lines we can empathize with missionaries who are out there slugging it out in very isolated areas.  We are thankful for that experience which allows us to understand them a little better and hopefully be an encouragement to them.  (When not occupied with missionaries, the guesthouse also serves is a place to stay for mission guests who are traveling to or through Chihuahua.) 

We are packing up our house right now and hope to be headed up to Chihuahua within the next few days. Once up there we will look for a suitable house to rent. The older two kids will enroll in the local mission school and I will continue to home school Joshua and Nathaniel for the remainder of this year. I am looking forward to that! 

We thank you all for being behind us and supporting us as we seek to serve the Lord!  “For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.”  Psalm 84:11

Trusting and serving Him,

Ron, Tasha, Benjamin, Emma, Joshua and Nathaniel Davis

P.S. We know this is a big deal, so if you have any questions, please let us know.

            The last six months have brought so many significant events and blessings that there is not room to tell it all!  But a good summary is in order!

            In our last newsletter we left you with the question of what we were to do about Tasha’s herniated disk.  Well, here we are, praising the Lord for the healing He has done!  No surgery was necessary.  The disk receded from the nerves without any intervention!   And now we have just returned from a trip into the tribe almost exactly one year after the trip that started all her back trouble… and she did fine!  No trouble whatsoever!  Praise the Lord!

            Now let me tell you about our trips.  This month’s trip was the culmination of three other trips that were made since arriving back here in Mexico in September. 

The first trip was with a couple of guys from Chihuahua who came to help repair all the damage that the rainy season caused to the adobe walls of our house.  The walls were fixed much faster than I thought possible and quickly prepared for the next step: the roof!

            The second trip was a complicated one that resulted in getting 75 sheets of plywood, 25 sheets of drywall, 50 bags of cement and a load of boards to the house site.  Everything was now in place for the roofing team… I thought.

            On the third trip, Kevin and Wendy Case, fellow missionaries here in Mexico, went in with me and a team of seven guys from their home church, Verde Baptist, in Cottonwood, Arizona.   What a great team!  They accomplished an incredibly difficult job under less then ideal conditions, giving us a luxurious second floor to our house!  The major glitch for the week appeared when we began to sort the pile of lumber.  As we pulled the first needed pieces, I realized that none of the rafters were there!  Somehow they had been overlooked.   It seemed incredible to me that I had missed something so critical, especially with countless opportunities to catch the mistake in the days and weeks beforehand.  I was distressed and heartbroken with the thought that I had brought all these guys out just to waste their time and money and not be able to accomplish what they came to do.  I knew that the Lord had a solution in it somewhere, and wholly trusted him to resolve it.

            We decided that three of us would head back out to the mill, three, rough-driving, hours away and see if we could get the needed lumber there.  I had already paid for the rafters, but because the mill normally shuts down from June to January it would be unusual that any lumber or workers would be there. On the trip out I was literally sick with worry, yet praying and knowing that the Lord had a solution.  I even thought of some things that He could do to work it all out!  And would you believe it, the solution was even better than I had expected!  As we drove up to the lumber yard Dan said,

        “Hey, guess who’s there!  It’s Chilo!” 

        Don Chilo?!  He was the mill boss from whom I had ordered the lumber!  I was able to talk to him directly and we reached an agreement that we could gather what we needed from the yard until the quantity was reached that I had originally purchased.  It took several trips to get all the needed material, but we had the time, the vehicles and the gas, and it didn’t cause much delay in the roofing project.

            And, finally, this month I was able to take the whole family out to see the finished roof.  We actually set up our cots in the upstairs and the kitchen downstairs and “lived” in our new home!  We had a great time and are now chomping at the bit to finish it and get out there permanently!

 “²⁰Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, ²¹Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.” (Ephesian 3:20-21)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Ron, Tasha, Benjamin, Emma, Joshua and Nathaniel Davis

Progress on our walls seems to go in occasional spates of bricklaying.  Currently, the “maestro” (job foreman/bricklayer) had to go visit his mother, who is ill, so nothing will be happening to our walls for a while.  Last week he arrived late to the work site and after wrestling with the level of two bricks for far too long, he acknowledged he was too drunk to work that day.  I had been struggling with a culturally appropriate, non-offensive way to handle the situation and was relieved he decided to go home himself.  Please pray for us in these early stages of moving in as we try to build friendships and understanding with the people in spite of our limited knowledge of their customs and ways.  Some of these situations would be easy to mishandle out of ignorance.  This is definitely a time of total dependence on the Lord for wisdom.

During the last trip the need for the people to hear the Good News was brought into sharp focus with the news of a baby’s death in the village.  As we talked and visited with the family and neighbors, their hopeless condition without a Savior was evident.  The next day Dan and I helped dig the grave.  It is a surreal feeling to dig an infant’s grave.  It gave me a moment to think about life and death in a deeper way and especially in the context of the way the Nahuatl think of it.  Please continue to pray that we can move in soon, learn their language and share the message of Hope that God has for them.

After coming back a week ago from that last trip we have been focused on our next trip.  This one will be to Oregon!  We plan to spend most of June in the Rogue Valley, visiting churches, friends and family.  We hope to see many of you whom we haven’t seen for a while.  We will be staying with Ron’s parents and we will have U.S. cell phone, so give us a call!  Another reason for returning to the U.S. is to follow up on Tasha’s back trouble.  After a second episode with her back since December we learned that she has a herniated disk.  The picture shows that the injured disk (second to last, darker) is bulging out against the spinal cord.  Not a good condition.  Pray that her appointment goes well and she gets a favorable prognosis and successful treatment and above all, that we trust God with the outcome.

Your partners in Him,

Ron, Tasha, Benjamin, Emma, Joshua and Nathaniel Davis

I did NOT do this by myself!

14 loads of rock for the foundation!  We are really hoping that that is more than the first house needs, because, man, that was a lot of work.

Our next trip will be early December.  This time we are going in as a whole team, kids and all!

meters or feet?

We plan to take in materials for our house, mark out the foundation and hire another group of locals to lay the foundation and walls.  Dan and I will be hauling rock and sand for it and taking some time to get “warmed up” to the local language.  Tasha, Sarah and Rachel will also be warming up to the new language and building friendships with our new neighbors.  The kids and Tater will be having classes.  Hopefully, they can use the new classroom that should be up by then.  Just walls though,  no windows, doors or roof yet.

This should be an interesting trip in.  We get to test out the Suburban and see how the family does on the twists and turns of the “Devil’s Spine” and the rockin’ & rollin’ of the rutted “Dirt Highway”.  (Maybe, to pass the 8 hours after the pavement ends, instead of counting “slug bugs” we can count “bang heads” when someone’s head hits a window after an extra deep bump!)

But seriously, we are all really looking forward to the trip.  It will be a good time for our family and for the team.  Please pray for: 

safety during the trip,  bonding with the community, unity within the team, and success in accomplishing the goals of the trip.

After the exciting moment in April of receiving permission to live in the village, all the team members returned the U.S. for various visits and responsibilities.  Our family made a huge loop, traveling through Texas, Oregon and even Washington D.C visiting churches, family, friends and the occasional national park .  The trip was so full of wonderful highlights; from baptisms to bison to babies, it would take a book to cover them all. 

One thing we want to share is an answer to the prayer request pertaining to our new ministry in the mountains of Mexico.  We were able to pick up our new “mountain truck” in Pennsylvania:  a 1999 Chevy Suburban, generously donated by friends here in Mexico.  (We found that a family of mice had moved in under its seat while it was waiting.  That problem proved “entertaining” to resolve, but all turned out well.)  This vehicle will be our family’s transportation into and out of the tribe because the village airstrip is still unregistered and unusable.

We returned to Mexico in mid August anticipating our move to Durango.  Some of you may recall that we had housing lined up, but that fell through during the summer.  Our partners Dan and Sarah Alkire took a trip down to Durango and within a week located two suitable houses in the precise neighborhood we needed them.  In early September we caravaned down with 5 vehicles and 4 trailers, excited and ready for the next phase the Lord had for us.  That week found all the members of the “Las Moras Team” (already unified in spirit and purpose) finally united in one place. 

We are:

Ron, Tasha, Benjamin, Emma, Joshua and Nathaniel Davis

Dan, Sarah and Josiah Alkire

Tom and Teresa Elkins

Rachel Chapman

Katie “Tater” Moore

            We quickly settled in with school beginning for the kids and meetings for the adults to plan the next trip into the tribe.  That trip was just completed last Sunday and was a huge success.  We traveled in with John and Teddy Ann Courier, a hydrologist and his wife.  John evaluated the local water supply and gave us recommendations on how to improve it for the community and also ensure water for our families.  We also met with the community to discuss the construction of our homes.

            In April we left a large sum of money with the community to cover the cost of the adobe bricks we had asked them to make.  When we returned last week, the leaders were eager to show us the accounting and their progress:  2000 large bricks!  Praise the Lord!  We arranged for the construction to continue until our next visit and discussed locations and local work teams to lay the foundations and walls.  It has been amazing to see the people so helpful and reliable.  They are making the difficulties of moving into a remote, tribal location much easier!

           Pray with us that in all these successes we won’t neglect the one responsible for them: the God of creation who desires to see these people reached.  Praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people.  For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.  Psalm 117

            For our next trip in November we will take in materials to mark foundations, drawings of our homes, molds for the smaller bricks we need and some bags of concrete to begin the improvements of the water supply sources. 

            Continue to pray for our safety on these trips and that we continue to build relationships with the people.  Also, please pray that we won’t get discouraged.  In just one week we had some things stolen out of our Suburban, the Alkires had their truck stolen but recovered a half mile away and the kids’ teacher broke her arm in a fall!

            Thanks for sticking with us as we press on! You are a valuable part of our team!

Love in Christ,

Ron, Tasha, Benjamin, Emma, Joshua and Nathaniel Davis