Willy and Denise were much like any other young married couple out there. They were busy living their lives in Pennsylvania and planning their future together, saving money to buy a house and turn it into their dream home.

They had been working with their church youth and began to notice there was an epidemic of selfishness and shallowness amongst the teenagers. When the biggest thing going on in the lives of these kids was getting the latest CD, Willy and Denise decided their eyes needed to be opened and they organized a youth missions trip.

It was a success, and the next year they organized a second trip. However, as the time drew closer, all but one youth backed out. Instead of doing a youth trip, Willy and the young man planned to join an Alliance Men’s missions group to work with Pastor Tomas in Mexico. Then that guy also backed out, leaving Willy to go alone with the men’s work team.

The experience was good and Willy ventured back again, this time with Denise, to work with Pastor Tomas and the Tarahamaran Indians.

Growing up in Indonesia as a missionary kid, Denise had seen what poverty does to people. But in Mexico she noticed something disturbing. Never before had she seen such hopelessness in the eyes of the people she met. Denise and Willy returned home and started discussing a future living and working with Pastor Tomas in Mexico to help bring hope to this lost people.

There were tests of faith for the couple as they looked to the mission field God had prepared for them. They went to Mexico several times and were stretched in them when it came to finances, giving up secure jobs and leaving their families to answer God’s call.

They are now living full time in Rio Chico, working with Pastor Tomas’ ministry and raising two beautiful young daughters. They have given up a lot to work far from home, to raise two daughters in a foreign land. They have now gone almost three years without a steady paycheque, yet God has provided for all their needs.

They have seen lives changed, not just in the Mexicans and Tarahamarans but also with teams members that have come to help. One man, a doctor, came on a missions trip when he was not a Christian. He was greatly impacted by his time in Mexico, and a week after he went back to the States he accepted Christ. He now brings medical and construction teams down annually.

Every day Willy and Denise once again give up everything to the Lord all over again, trusting Him to provide, to expand their faith and to guide them.They have been blessed with safety in a place with limited health care.

Denise shared with us a story that illustrates what has happened in their lives as a result of answering God’s call. She and Willy had the opportunity to take their young daughter on a trip into the Copper Canyon to help the Tarahamarans. She watched as her daughter talked with the kids there and handed out candy. Denise recalls just thanking God over and over again, praising Him for giving her this gift of allowing her daughter to experience real ministry at such a young age. Like any mother, Denise wants the best opportunities for her child. But, she asks us, what better opportunity is there than to have her daughter see and experience ministry and to be a blessing to others? For Willy and Denise, there is nothing better than to raise their kids where God wants them to be, living within the will of God.

In the grocery store line-up, I see celebrity magazine covers splashed with news from the icons this world chooses to follow. But those leaders let people down. You don’t have to watch much TV or stand in grocery store line-ups to know that Jon and Kate are no longer plus eight. The perfect family splits up, now who do you follow when it comes to marriage and kids?

Then there’s the political leaders. I think of Barrack Obama. It was like the second coming of Christ when he was elected; people followed him like lambs, vowing everything would change for the better. The world would be a rosy place with Obama in charge. Now the realities of his role have hit and we find he is not the knight in shining armour many had trusted he would be.

We follow the footsteps of these leaders, in the hope that the lives they live and the decisions they make will lead to a better tomorrow. And we are let down. Even in Christian circles this happens, for we’re all susceptible to the sins of this world.

Yet there are leaders worth following in this world, if you look in the right place. Look, for example, in Mexico and to Pastor Tomas. I know I’ve mentioned Pastor Tomas in a couple posts from Mexico. But mentioning is not what I want to do. I want you to know him; I want you to feel as if you have sat down and listened to him speak because I’m sure God has given him a gift of vision that is passed along through his words.

He is a man of strength, a man of vision, and a man of action. He has such passion for the people of the Copper Canyon, the unreached and hard-to-reach people of Mexico’s deep valley areas. He was called to the people of the Copper Canyon many years ago, after hearing of the great need that existed there. And he has not looked back since.

Sitting in the the teacher’s humble room at the orphanage in Guacaivo, Pastor Tomas took the time to share with me this passion he has for the lost people in this stunningly beautiful place.

“Our principal goal is that everybody know Jesus, the Saviour,” he says with a quiet and heartfelt voice. His weathered face reveals the years of trekking through the elements to reach the far-flung destinations, and his attire is simple and practical – a cowboy pastor in the heart of Mexico.

He works to accomplish that goal by providing for basic necessities of food and clothing. The people come to the monthly distributions and Pastor Tomas gets the opportunity to meet with them face to face. He shares the love of Christ and in return they listen and walk away with bags of food and clothing.

He not only ministers to the Tarahamarans and Pima, and to his church members in Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas. He ministers to the North American teams that come to help as well. It was humbling to hear him give thanks to the Coquitlam team we were in Mexico with, when he does so much and by comparison we do so little. But he is not a man of idle words, he clearly meant it when he told them how grateful he was for all they do in coming to Mexico, in sharing the story in the church back home, and in raising much-needed funds for projects.

Pastor Tomas moved my heart. He gave me a sense of what Christ did for the world, sacrificing of himself for a dying people. ‘Pastor’, as he is affectionately called by his team, saves people from death by starvation and death without salvation. He showed me that one person can make a difference.

Pastor Tomas said something to the team that really stuck out to me. He said that when God called him, he had no worldly possessions, no money, no resources but gave to God what he had: his body and his passion. And still today he wants to continue his journey with passion. ”I want to live; not to think of the cost, but to go to those places that have more needs,” he said. “This doesn’t come automatically. You have to walk, to stumble, to feel you’re sometimes not able to go on and then you can see God there . . . If I didn’t see God walking in front of me, I wouldn’t go.”

Pastor Tomas is a man worth following, because he follows in God’s footsteps.

From my experience, there are two categories of runs: sprints and marathons. OK, technically a marathon is a set race of 42 km. But in my mind, there are the short races and the long hauls. And you run the races very differently depending on the length.

Sprints are all-out, pump the legs and arms as fast as you can, pound the feet against the track, end goal in sight type of deals. You basically go like stink until you reach the finish.

Marathon length races are run much differently. They require persistence and an ability to push through a more aching pain as you consistently pound the pavement. Mentally your focus needs to be on the end goal though you cannot see it for miles in between you and the finish line. Pacing is important, and having a strong support team providing water, food, encouragement and arms to fall into at the end of the race are crucial.

Our entire Mexico trip we were with a team from Coquitlam Alliance Church (CAC) and as we worked with them, I really saw the difference between a sprint and a marathon when it comes to a short term trip. The people on this trip worked like stink, hiking and digging and dry-walling and pipe laying and concrete making and running VBS and encouraging and praying and driving – lots of driving – for two weeks straight.

And we pretty much followed along the team schedule set up for the CAC group. For 14 of the 15 days we ran the rapid pace that is a short term missions sprint: limited time, much to do, many places to get to in such a short time that every hour counts.

And what a team CAC was to race with, sprint style. They were probably all tired of work projects by the time we had hiked out of the Copper Canyon and got to the base camp in Rio Chico. Yet everyone was out there, smiles on, shovels in hand, ready to get brand new scratches, blisters, aching muscles and then to look back at the end of the day and know they did a job well done. It’s amazing to watch and it was great to be a part of that experience.

But now that sprint is over. The CAC team members are back home, blisters healed, burnt skin pealed off, photos downloaded and travel items put back in closets and drawers. It makes it all the more obvious to me now in comparison that Justin and I are running a marathon, not a sprint as we see others finish the race they set out to do and we are not even halfway done ours.

I remember that when I ran, there was almost always a point where I had to mentally remind myself of why I was in the race. I would glance around me to see other racers plugging along. I would take in the scenery, feel the ground and my shoes connect with each step, listen to my breath and just take the time to realize that my body could, after all, complete the remainder of the race.

We just spent a week away from all things Pockets of Change related. It felt good to take that moment in time to look at the scenery, feel the grass under my feet, listen to my heart and realize that I could, after all, complete the remainder of this race, this project, set out before us.

Am I tired? Yes. Do I long for the finish line? Yes. But I am enjoying the course immensely. There have been many interesting people along the route, many God-breathed moments like a cool breeze out on hot pavement, and many assurances that the race is nothing to hard in light of God’s glory and grace.

Pray that we can run this race with strength and endurance, and finish strong whenever that finish line may be.

The Tarahamarans are the indigenous people of Mexico. And they are slowly going extinct. There’s not enough food around most of the time and people literally starve to death in the craggy rocks.

Pastor Tomas is trying to change that. He was called to reach out to the people in the most inaccessible places of this mighty canyon, seven times larger than the Colorado’s Grand Canyon. He brings physical support like food and clothing to reach them spiritually with the Gospel of Christ.

We came to help at the orphanage and school that Pastor Tomas, Brenda and the missions team started.

While there, we were fortunate enough to witness a food and clothing distribution day. The plan was to start the distribution part way through the day, so we spent the morning working on a fish pond above the orphanage Pastor Tomas had started.

As we dug and cleared and forced rocks out of their earthy graves, groups of brightly dressed Tarahumaran women and cowboy-styled men would all of a sudden appear out of rocks across the small deep valley, on the steep mountainside.

They would make quick work of the steep switchbacks, traversing back and forth until they reached the roadside then downhill to the orphanage. It was a beautiful sight to see – these lost people coming to a Christian organization to have their basic needs met.

They were there to gather food supplies that would apparently last them a month. The Coquitlam Alliance team had bought and put together food bags that included flour, sugar, cornmeal, tins of meat and jalapenos and lard, matches and cookies, salt and coffee. They brought cloth shopping bags from grocery stores back home and by the time the supplies were put in the bags were almost to the top.

It was hard to imagine these families depended so much on these supplies. The night before the food distribution, Pastor Tomas told us that many of the people would be very scared to come as they are not accustomed to outsiders and have a fear of strangers brought about from the time of the Spanish conquistadors. But because they need the food so badly, they come.

Pastor Tomas’ team and the CAC group also gave away cowboy hats, toys, cloth, shoes, and clothing to the men, women and kids who came.

It’s been a few days now since we did the distribution and hiked out of the canyon. It’s hard to match in my mind that the Tarahamaran world and my world are one and the same.

Some Tarahamarans still live in caves. I could live in an expansive house. Tarahamarans live off of roots and some fruit when they’re lucky. I live off of much to much food in variety and abundance fit for a king. They wear the same clothes for days and days on end, and are fortunate if they have shoes and a winter coat for the freezing winters.  I can’t even fit all my clothes in my dresser anymore. They have a roaming pastor come in once a month or so to preach God’s Word. I have church, Bible Studies, a Bible and the ability to read it, hundreds of study books, internet sites, podcasts, radio stations and more to seek and know my Saviour more.

How do you move on in life when so much seems so out of balance? It makes me sad, and frustrated, and longing to do more than write a few stories and hand out a couple bags of food. Yet there is hope there. I have seen the hope in Sandra’s eyes, in Alfredo’s words, in the stories told by Pastor Tomas and Brenda, and I will share those with you soon. But for now, think of the Tarahamarans next time you turn on a light, flush a toilet, read your Bible, go to church and sleep in your soft bed. Think of them, and pray that Pastor Tomas will continue to have the strength and support needed to reach these lost peoples of the canyon.

Well, faithful readers, we survived.

I know you were worried. I sure was. But through Christ’s strength, not my own, I made it both in and out of the Copper Canyon. Thank you all for your prayers, without them I fear I would be sitting in the canyon still. But let me tell you, we would do it again to see what we saw, experience what we experienced, and hear the few but powerful stories we heard.

I’m looking forward to writing about our time in the canyon. But for now, I want to share with you about the hike because it emphasizes the true length teams go to in order to help out in the neediest of places.

The hike to Guacaivo descends 4,100 feet into the canyon bottom, then back up the other side for 1,500 feet. It is a long, steep switchback path. It took me four knee-bending, body-sweating, slow-going hours to get down the side of the mountain. At the bottom of the canyon there was a wide river to cross, which we did in a suspended cable car over the river. That, I gotta say, wasn’t Justin’s favourite moment of the trip being so high above the water in a weeny metal frame hung from a rusty looking cable.

We got across the river in one of the last carts to cross and the team started up again right away. Time was not on our side as night was set to fall within a couple hours. We were told that going at a good clip, it would probably take an hour and a half to reach the top which meant I was aiming for about two hours. So we hauled it straight up the mountainside, following and crossing the creek again and again as we made our way up.

An hour and a half up from the river and we were at the orphanage. Praise God! We were absolutely thrilled to make it to Guacaivo from the top of the canyon in five and a half hours, though I was exhausted from the intense physical day.

We saw miracles with the weather and with the circumstances and I praise God for all of it. It was certainly through God’s faithfulness, His strength, that we made it in and out of the canyon. It was as though God took away every possibility that I would depend on my own strength to make to the orphanage in Guacaivo and then back out again four days later.

And in spite of the long day to make it to Guacaivo, still in the evening we were all able to sing a rousing round of ‘Oh Canada’ for our country’s 142nd birthday.

Tomorrow, I go into the canyon.

And I’m very, very scared.

We are hiking into the Copper Canyon to go to a village called Guacaivo. This is where the Coquitlam Alliance team is partnered and we’ll be going in to interview people about how they’ve been impacted by the work of these short term missions groups and the long term partnership with Pastor Tomas.

It is an estimated six hour hike all the way down the canyon, across a river and halfway up the other side. We have to pack in enough for four nights and five days, so our bags are H-E-A-V-Y.

Please pray for us, specifically on Wednesday and on Sunday as we travel in and out of the canyon. Pray for safety in walking and the energy needed to hike for such a long time.

Hopefully, you’ll hear from me again. Otherwise, look for me somewhere on the canyon walk, praying for the Lord to just take me home.

The Alliance Church in Juarez, led by Pastor Tomas, has four services every Sunday. Talk about commitment, these guys go all out twice in the morning and twice in the evening. We just attended the two evening services and I was tired by the end because it was such a high energy service!

I was especially excited with the worship service for a couple reasons. The words were on an overhead projector so I attempted to sing along. And a few of the songs were ones we sing back home. It was SO cool to sing in English while around me my fellow Christian men and women sang in Spanish. We sang ‘The Happy Song’, ‘How Great Thou Art’, ‘How Great Is Our God’, and ‘Mighty to Save’. Church services were one of the areas I struggled in with our first leg of the journey as it’s hard to worship God not knowing what the words are, what is being sung or the message being preached. Tonight, I got to sing, I got to listen and I got to worship. Isn’t God amazing, how He takes what I struggled with and gives me this gift of a service where I could fully worship?!