A letter from Chris McReynolds on the U.S.-Mexico border
June 2011
20-Year-Old Iris
Iris (4th from right) and classmates growing strong at Victoria en Jesucristo Presbyterian Mission of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.
Twenty-year-old Iris vaguely remembers her dad. He was tall, and when he picked her up she felt like she was on top of the world. When she was 4 years old the drug cartel near Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, México, abducted her dad. Her world changed. Her mother was left with two children, no income, and not even a high school education. The wounded family was now in survival mode. Surely, like so many thousands of others, they were locked into a cycle of poverty and brokenness. However, what was intended for evil, God transforms for good.
The extended family pulled together to help, as did the local church. With help from Proyecto Amistad, church volunteers filled in the education gap with inspired Christian education that equipped Iris, intellectually and spiritually, for the years ahead. These classes greatly increased her knowledge, vocabulary, reasoning, listening, reading, writing and creative skills. She excelled at school, and her teachers took notice. She began to hope in the God of the Scriptures and learned to act on that hope. She became a young woman dependent on the promises of a loving, faithful, wise and powerful God. Today she is a bright young woman with godly wisdom and a loving heart who recognizes opportunity and is able to take advantage of it. She looks forward to having her own family some day and to teaching her children that their strength, like hers, is in God.
What a wonderful ending to this story, right? The fact is, “20-year-old” Iris is still only 4½ years old. She and her family are still living the first paragraph of the story.
As the Church, will we organize ourselves to help make the rest of this story come true for Iris? What about the thousands of other families in similar situations? Each weekend Proyecto Amistad, along with more than two dozen church volunteers, ministers to almost 140 children, including Iris, with the type of education described in this story. We invite you to learn more and partner with us in obedience to God as he writes the rest of the story for Iris and many others.
In Christ,
Chris McReynolds
Mission co-worker serving Presbyterian Border Ministry’s Proyecto Amistad
The 2011 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 283
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