Earl and Yolanda Yates

Serving in Mexico, Central America

Mayan Bible website

In 1991 my wife and I surrendered to the Mission field of Mexico and soon afterwards were working with a veteran missionary in Monterrey. After learning the language I felt led to move our ministry southward, to the city of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Here, the Lord gave us three wonderful children Abby, Tyler and Jessica. This was our home for over 15 years as we saw several works started and turned over to national pastors. Our ministries there included a weekly outreach to the prison and street gangs. The Lord blessed our work and we have seen many precious souls saved and discipled.

As the years progressed we began meeting native Indians traveling through our city from southern Mexico who begged us to come to their villages. I really hadn't planned on doing this, but the Lord again began to empress upon our hearts to step out by faith and help the overlooked masses down towards the bottom of the country. After visiting the southern tribes in 2007, we felt it was God working in our lives to make a change in our ministry, and we moved to Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico. It is just a stone’s throw away from Belize and Guatemala, and it suited the purpose of our new ministry outlook, which we coined Me-Gu-Lize, and represents the three nations we are reaching – Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.

If you were to see the surveys given by some well meaning groups, you would be misled to believe that Mexico has been evangelized. Although it does carry a high number of missionaries, 98 percent are from Mexico City area northward, utterly leaving the rest of the country to the 2 percent who are trying to make a difference. In fact, the 30 million Mayan people here in Southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize have been for the most part neglected, and this is our ministry’s new focus, reaching the indigenous people.

With over 67 different dialects in the Mayan culture, and only a few have a Bible or anything in their dialect, it is obvious to me that Mexico, Guatemala or Belize are evangelized. Sadly, the Indian groups in these three countries have grossly been pushed aside.

Maybe you ask what our plans are. Well, I'm not much on our future’s forecast. The Lord has that already written down, but we will keep on church planting, translating, training and discipling the believers so that these Indians may be edified and they in turn can reach out to their own. It's like Dr. Ray Thompson says, evangelism is never complete till the evangelized become the evangelists. Please pray for our family as we continue church planting on the foreign field.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

2 Thessalonians 3:1 Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have [free] course, and be glorified, even as [it is] with you:

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