Current Events and Updates of the Ministry

Elephant Ears in our patio garden

Well, I knew that it was bad, but I had no idea how bad it really was! It has been more than two months since I have last posted a blog. I could do a song and dance and try to get some pity, but I know that would be as good as useless. So, without belaboring the issue, I will begin tout suite.

Theresa and I are back in Cd. Valles, having arrived back on Sunday evening after a wonderfully uneventful crossing into Mexico, and an equally quiet trip from the border to our place yet once again.

But let me first bring you up to date on events that happened back in Canada while we were there. As I reread my last blog again, I realize that I left everyone very much in the dark during the past two months. I apologize.

As you will remember, we returned to Canada for an unexpected visit due to my father’s deteriorated health. At the time it looked like he was unlikely to live too much longer, and we did not wish to return simply for a funeral. When we arrived back in Manitoba on the 23^rd of March he was not doing well at all. He had recently been discharged from the hospital, and was surrounded by caring family and friends.

Theresa and I were able to spend almost every day with my parents while we were in Manitoba, and we were overjoyed to watch my father make a slow, but very steady return to health. He is single-handedly keeping the pharmaceutical companies in business, but he is doing very well.

During his very near brush with death and his subsequent recovery, my dad has had a rekindling of fire in his spiritual bones. He is actively declaring, praying for, proclaiming, and believing for revival in God’s Body – particularly across the north of Canada. He has always been a good communicator and letter writer. Now, however, this is his burning passion. He is in communication with friends, church leaders, acquaintances from over the years, as well as First Nations Chiefs and community leaders, calling for unity and revival amongst Christ’s Body, the Church. As I watched him write his letters I often thought of him as the Apostle Paul who also spent many hours in his later years writing letters. We can be extremely thankful for these letters as well since they make up a large portion of the New Testament in the Bible.

By the time that the end of April came around we felt that both of my folks were doing well, and we had their blessing to leave and return to our work in Mexico. We made several stops on the southward journey promoting the work of the ministry, and arrived back at the border of Mexico on the 17^th of May.

We arrived back to a very, very warm welcome – both figuratively and literally. Before I sat down to the computer I checked today’s stats on my little weather station – it read as follows for today:

Outside temperature

Maximum:        106.5°  (41.4° C)

Minimum:           81.3°  (27.4° C)

Inside Temperature (ie., our living room)

Maximum:          99.5°  (37.5°C)

Minimum:           85.2°  (29.6°C)

And it is not nearly hitting the top yet.

It is “lovingly” claimed that it reaches 45° – 55° Celsius or more (113° – 131° Fahrenheit) in Valles at the peaks. Honestly, I don’t doubt it, but sometimes I do think that the temperatures are taken in a cheating fashion. In all reality, temperatures need to be taken in the shade (as are mine), and not in the sun as this will skew the temperatures due to the direct rays. Nonetheless, when one cannot possibly step onto concrete or soil barefooted without badly burning your feet, and when it feels like one is breathing hot air out of an oven, except that it is dripping with humidity, is it hot however you cut it. Thank God for a little window air conditioner unit in our bedroom. This makes nights tolerable, even if not cool. In my years here before I had air conditioning it was almost insufferably hot, making it difficult to get any sort of a good sleep at all. Now it is much better at night. The days still do take some getting used to, especially when there is no escape.

The sugarcane looks wonderful! God has blessed us with good moisture after our initial desperate pleas last year. He has answered our prayers, and things are looking good now. If he continues to bring us the much-needed rains, this will be a good harvest year indeed. Praise the Lord!

We are gearing up for village outreach again. We brought our little trailer down from Texas this time. Tomorrow I hope to buy 30 chairs that we will use with the video ministry in the villages. The trailer will be used to haul the chairs and ministry equipment. We are putting a team together of like-minded people from various denominational backgrounds, and with various giftings. On Monday we hope to begin ministering directly into the surrounding villages of the Huasteca region – especially among the Tenek indigenous groups.

Theresa is again getting prepared to begin ministering to the women with sewing classes. Already there is a steady stream of women arriving at the door to find out when classes begin. Theresa’s fingers will not be still for long, and there will be many women ministered to through her talents. She is also already booked to help prepare puppets and other props for the extensive Summer Bible School programs for the children. Once again, she will be kept very busy there.

It seems like we have not yet had time to breath since we arrived back. There is always mission ”business” to take care of, meetings to hold, bank accounts to take care of, things to arrange, etc. But then, how is this different to your life? I guess it isn’t. Maybe the one exception is that I am now struggling with an overgrowth of weeds on the land again in 106° heat. That may be one difference that we have. However, I hope to get the tractor fired up very soon, and utilize some “modern technology” rather than that of a machete and gasoline “Weed Eater” to cut down a field of two-foot tall grass and weeds.

But, it is to bed with me for tonight. It has been a long and strenuous day. Tomorrow is another day, and there will be more blogs to follow (hopefully without such a long wait in between).

Blessings,

Steven and Theresa

The Beauty - 64 Years Young and ready for more! (the tractor, that is)

Tonight will be a very short entry since it is very late, and there is still much to do tomorrow. But, I would like to bring you up to date with what is going on in our lives.

Theresa and I got an emergency email from my brother on Monday morning concerning my father. He had taken a very bad turn for the worse, was in the hospital again, and at that point they really questioned if he would pass away over night. It was strongly requested that “now was the time for us to return”.

As I think I had mentioned in a previous blog entry, we were waiting for such an indication so that we would know when we did indeed need to return. We have so very much to be thankful for because my father is at home once again, and seems to be rallying somewhat. However, his condition is still “muy delicado” as one would say in Spanish. We made the decision to return as soon as we could do so. We will be leaving on Saturday morning, the Lord willing.

This means that we will be leaving Cleo Yoder in the lurch, and alone. But he understands the situation, and we leave with his full blessing.

The Project L.A.M.B.S. class that Cleo is teaching is going very well and the assistant teachers are working well. It is a joy to see the national staff taking over. This, in fact, will be the second to last cycle that will be headed up and taught by expatriate teachers. After the next teaching cycle it will be run completely by nationals.

The Red Beauty

This is a gratifying conclusion to the vision of Jim Humphries and others who have developed the courses, as well as that of the dedicated teachers who have taught the classes over the years here in Cd. Valles.

Then, my personal thanksgiving and “victory” is the finishing of the tractor. It is a “thing of beauty”, purring like a kitten (with a bit of a mean bark), and sitting ready to yank and gnaw on stumps and break new farmland. But this thrill will need to wait a bit for now I suppose. Still, mission accomplished, and a job well done, if I must say so myself!

Things are getting battened down here before we pull up stakes on Saturday morning. Javier and I will go out to hire some workers tomorrow who will spend several days cleaning our field of weeds. We have been so blessed with moisture now since the terrible earlier part of the summer. We have had some good rains in the past months, and there has been some good recovery of the sugarcane crop. If the Lord continues to bless with rain we will actually end up with a good year. We continue to pray that he will do so.

Assembling Tracts in our Livingroom

Tonight Juanita and her young daughter were at our place for some last minute “squeeze-it-in-at-the-last-second” assembly of tracts for the evangelism ministry. It is a blessing to be involved in this type of work, even when it makes time much more rushed.

Tomorrow will be last minute tying together of all loose ends the best as is possible, and then off in the morning.

So, my next blog will probably be coming from Canada. We plan, the Lord willing to drive up to the border on Saturday. From there we will pass through Houston and up to Manitoba as quickly as possible. We then will spend a month or a bit more with my parents, helping my mother in the care of dad as he continues to see what God has for him; whether it will be more years here with us, or a home going.

We expect to return to Cd. Valles sometime in May. However, this is again dependent upon what happens with my

Javier and Steven - Final Assembly

father’s health.

I will close. Thank you for your faithful prayers and support.

We will be in contact,

Steven and Theresa

More recent shot of Mom and Dad

You will be aware, if you have been keeping up with my latest blogs, that my father, Alvin Frey, has had a major setback in his health of late. Thankfully he is at home from the hospital again after having spent a couple of weeks in a very touch-and-go situation under direct hospital care.

He has a very much weakened heart, and suffers from the

"Simplicity" - Dad with Gitchi Mama

symptoms of congestive heart failure. This is replete with extreme shortness of breath at times associated with fluid buildup in the lungs. He has also has edema in his legs. He is further tormented with extreme restless leg syndrome (RLS) which is more recently affecting his whole body beyond being restricted to his lower extremities as before.

Dad has also been having attacks of what was being attributed to TIAs (transient ischemic attacks). In a TIA the blood flow to a part of the brain stops for a brief period of time. When having a TIA a person will have stroke-like symptoms for up to 1-2 hours. Dad did indeed have these symptoms. However during his recent time in the hospital this diagnosis was ruled out, and it was discovered that he is actually having seizures. At some point in the past, prior to the CT scan that was taken about a year ago he must have had a slight stroke which affected the back of his brain. The neurologist feels that the scar tissue left from that stroke may well be causing the seizures that he is, and has been experiencing.

Dad in canoe at Deer Lake. Water transportation was our only form of travel - or in winter over the ice.

Dad is on a whack load of medication, and is being followed closely by doctors in Steinbach, the small city near their home in

Wow, cool colors! It has to have been the 70s

Mitchell, Manitoba. But truthfully, as my brother Paul recently wrote, “Physically, Dad is frail and declining somewhat day by day.  But there are days like today when he does feel better.  Hopefully there will be an increasing number of the better days, but I don’t know that we can bank on that.  Mentally, Dad remains quite sharp.  Mom seems to be coping well enough for now”.

So, that is ultimately the frailty of this “tent in which we all dwell”, as the Apostle Paul referred to our human bodies.

Mom with her "cool shades" (with my brothers Paul and Larry)

We all certainly appreciate your continued love and prayers for them, especially now in these more difficult times of their lives.

Both my mom and dad have been huge examples of godliness, servanthood, love, and Christlikeness in my life. I wish to post a short blog in honor of them. This comes with all of my love and respect for them as the exemplary man and woman of God that they have been all of their lives. They have literally touched and changed the lives of men and

Frey family 1966 (including J.J. the crow)

women for God in many countries, from the highest to the lowest levels.

Please accept this post as an honor to a great man and woman.

In many ways my parents, Alvin and Lydian Frey are giants. As I look back over the years I realize that they have touched the lives of people across the world. In my case, both my physical and spiritual birth is directly due to them.  However, I know that a multitude of others will also testify that their spiritual growth, if not directly its birth, is linked to them as well.

It is amazing to me to see how God has used two kids, born into southern Ontario conservative Mennonite, farming families and made them touch the world. You may already know the story – my father’s family was conservative horse-

Early missionary days - Deer Lake

and-buggy Mennonite when he was born.  Later his parents joined the Black-bumper Mennonite church, where they stayed until they died.  My mother was born into a somewhat less conservative farming family.  My parent’s first years in school were very difficult as they needed to learn English rather than their native German tongue (incidentally, a language that was not an asset on the playground during the anti-Nazi days in which they grew up).

Others would be better in telling of their teenage and courting years (I wasn’t around then).  However, I do know that there were the usual struggles and soul searching of normal teen years.  My father – most will not know this – left home in his later teenage years and went north and west.  He worked for some time in the harvests in the Canadian west.  Later he worked for the forestry service in northern Ontario.  The most interesting chapter, I believe, was his gig on a freighter in Lake Superior.  The ship captain was grooming him to move up the line and begin a career as a captain himself.  How different that would have ended!

But, God – that is the key phrase in my parent’s lives I believe – “but God” had other ideas.

The life of faith is not always easy.  Just because you are in God’s will and purposes does not necessarily mean that things will be easy or “nice”.  I know that many times in their lives my parents lived uncomfortably, lonely, and misunderstood.  This was perhaps especially true throughout the years that they were missionaries at Deer Lake, a tiny isolated Indian village in northern Ontario, Canada. We ate bannock and snowshoe rabbit cooked in stewed tomatoes more often than I care to mention. Beaver, muskrat and elbow macaroni were often our fare.

Guests in our home - Deer Lake

My mother soon learned that it was folly to attempt to mop the floor all winter since at -50°

Deer Lake - the early days

Fahrenheit the mop froze instantly to the floor.  Many times we ate breakfast huddled around the kitchen wood cook stove with the oven door open and all of our feet in the oven in a vain attempt to keep our toes warm during breakfast.  My mother spent many lonely years without another woman with whom she could speak as the women of the village spoke only Cree.

My parents were often misunderstood, mistrusted and wounded by the very ones closest to them who should have been there to support them. As God began to reveal more and more of himself to my parents, they found that they were being rejected by their fellow missionaries, and on one occasion at least, called “heretics” because their newly discovered understanding of the person of God. These are the times of pain and suffering that don’t make good anecdotes, but they do make good and noble character.

Dad with supper - Deer Lake

I stand in amazement at how God has taken these two backward, German speaking, Mennonite kids and touched the world with their lives.

Mom and Dad, I honor your lives. I love you. You have lived like giants.

Blessings,

Steven and Theresa

Not much left when you tear it all apart

I wonder what it actually looks like to be a missionary. This is a very different question I believe than “what does it take to be a missionary”. Both are distinctly different in scope. Still, what is the “face” of a missionary I wonder?

I do not pretend to be an expert in any sense. However, in my few humble years I have crisscrossed the globe and met with missionaries of different shapes and sizes from Haiti to Cambodia, and from India to Ecuador. I grew up with my own parents being missionaries in northern Canada, and “hung out” with missionaries of every ilk in those growing up years. So, although I claim no “special knowledge” in this area, I have met one or two in my lifetime.

So, what does a missionary look like? As anywhere in the body of Jesus Christ, we are all different parts the same body, with Jesus himself being the head. So, in my understanding, it is as ludicrous to try to place a single definition onto “missionary” as it is to place one onto any functioning member of the body of  Christ.

I have known and met missionaries who had very clean hands and a head full of translation work and meetings and

The clothes ain't clean, but the work is good

preaching. I have met missionaries who lived in nice houses behind compound walls. I have met missionaries down in the bottom of a septic tank, hand-bailing out the sludge which was clogging the outflow. I have met missionaries who were doctors and nurses. I have met missionaries who were mechanics and maintenance personnel. I have met missionaries who were office workers, housewives, cooks, dentists, international lawyers and aid administrators. In short, a missionary is as varied is the body of Christ itself. And that, I believe, is as it should be.

Like Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:12b “When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise”. As I understand this, if I insist on looking at others for the definition of my function in the body of Christ I am not wise, and indeed, very foolish.

All in little pieces

So, for me, at the present time, being a missionary means that I am covered from nearly head to toe with grease and working in the hot sun stripping down a tractor so that we can have a good working machine to develop the Bible Institute. This phase of the work will not be forever, but it sure enough occupies my time at present. When this is finished I am looking forward to “sinking my teeth” into clearing the rest of the landsite so that the development of the training center can continue.

For Theresa it looks different. She, needless to say, is not out tearing tractors apart or clearing land. She is working hard at language study and training women in our home in sewing and baking. She, quite honestly, is in her glory teaching sewing classes several days per week.

Last week she had the privilege of working directly with a woman who has just recently been released from prison, and whom I suspect has never had anyone willing to spend direct one-on-one time with her, honoring her as a person – a human being. She is still not a Christian (or a pre-Christian as some refer to it), but what better way is there to present the gospel? Isn’t that what Jesus is all about – loving others and giving of ourselves?

So, simply put, neither Theresa nor I fit the bill very well of a clean-handed and Bible toting missionary. My fingernails

Theresa with sewing class

tend to be a bit blackened of late, and there tends to be more than a little thread on the floor and sewing machines around the house. Others in the body of Jesus are actively preaching the gospel over the pulpit and visiting the sick, and doing it very well. We can leave that role to those who function better in it. I, for my part, don’t want to “measure myself by others and compare myself with them, and thereby become unwise. The outcome of this exercise can only be twofold; either one becomes overly impressed with himself and how he is so much better than others, or he becomes downright frustrated and discouraged because he feels that he does not measure up to the rest” (my own paraphrase of what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10).  On the other hand, I desire to function as I am made, and to be the part in the body of Jesus that he has made me to be.

On a wonderful note for those of you who have  been praying with us for my dad’s health. He is doing much better, and it looks like he may very well be discharged from the hospital to go home sometime this week. Please do not stop praying as he is not out of the woods yet, but he is getting much closer to the edge of the forest. Thank you for your prayers.

Finished products

On a personal note concerning my dad’s recovering health – it looks like we will wait to return to Canada now until the beginning of July sometime as was originally planned. Of course, this still depends upon any negative changes in my father’s health, and/or our needing to be in Canada before this time.

Thank you for your faithfulness,

Steven and Theresa

Gloria, Hallelujah we are in Cd. Valles! The tractor and implements parked in our neighboring farmer, Don Benigno's yard.

So, do we still serve a miracle working God? Yubetchah we do!!!

I “promised” that my next blog would be from Cd. Valles with the tractor delivered. God has been faithful, and here we are!

None of it was without its fun and games of course, (but have you ever noticed that God has never “promised us a rose garden” in our walk with him. Sometimes it is even downright difficult, but he is always there with us). I left you last week in Laredo, Texas with the hope, if not complete certainty that we could get the tractor, et al., at least across the border, if not indeed all the way down to Cd. Valles. I was still very much aware of the fact that we still had about four hundred and something miles to travel from Nuevo Laredo to Cd. Valles. I was also aware that this is the new battle ground for the various cartels – the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel being the main ones in this area. In fact, no one wanted to go with us since there was a very real and recognized danger in doing so.

We got our finished paperwork on Thursday afternoon. However, since the paperwork covered only the tractor and agricultural implements and nothing else, I had to cross with an empty van. We quickly unloaded the rather full van in Laredo and I headed across the bridge with the tractor and implements. The paperwork was 100% perfect, and I was able to get the initial importation completed in a matter of a half hour or so. Then my young guide and I transversed the city of Nuevo Laredo pulling the train behind us in order to find a parking location where I could store the tractor until the following day when Theresa and I would come with the rest of the load.

On Friday morning Theresa and I got an early start across the bridge. Praying for a green light at the customs we breathed a prayer of thanks when the light turned green, allowing us to go through with the van without having to have our load gone through piece-by-piece by the customs agents.

We picked up our “train” and headed south. Unfortunately our road ran through the middle of Monterrey, a city of well over a million. Traffic was, well, let’s just say “very interesting” as we were forced through the center of the city dragging a cumbersome load which did not allow for easy braking, and certainly no lane changing without total cooperation from the rest of the traffic – yah right, dream on!

But we made it. We were hopelessly lost for a good period of time in Monterrey, heading off in totally the wrong direction with nary a road sign anywhere to be found. We were only pulled over for military, customs and police checks about seven or eight times. We only just barely talked our way out of trumped up traffic fines twice. We were stopped by every policeman and his brother from the border of Nuevo León to Cd. Valles. But we made it home in two days. Please don’t ask me to do it again, but we made it. Thank God!

There are several things that I would be totally amiss if I failed to mention and give God thanks for.

First of all, this little “tractor episode” has truly been an interdenominational pulling together of brothers and sisters from all over North America. Dan and Marlys Slaubaugh, good friends of ours from North Dakota and part of a little independent home church, began this whole chapter by putting us into contact with Floyd and Gayle Dowell from Tractors for our Daily Bread. Floyd and Gayle are lovely Christians who never seemed to see it as important to ask what flavor the ministry of Voice in the Wilderness was, as long as we were serving the same Lord. We were greatly assisted by Flame of Truth Ministries in Donna, Texas which is a small, Full Gospel work along the border. In Donna we stayed with dear friends of ours Rae and Judy Thompson, a former Methodist pastor. We were directed to a Christian broker by a pastor / attorney in McKinny, Texas by the name of Alex Camacho. I have never met Alex, but he is a faithful brother who, once again, never asked for our shingle before helping us. He directed us to a Christian brother, Rafael Dueñas in Laredo, Texas who is also an attorney who owns a brokerage business. Through these brothers we were also put into contact with Pastor Mike Barrera and his lovely wife Polly, Rafael’s pastor. Mike pastors a United Baptist Church in Laredo, Texas. Mike and Polly generously opened their home to us for four days while we stayed in Laredo waiting for the paperwork to be completed. Pulled behind, as the caboose to the whole magnificent train, was a wood chipper that was donated by our good friend J.W. Cunningham. J.W. has a Baptist background. Though this help the tractor was then delivered to an Assemblies of God ministry in Cd. Valles, Mexico, a denomination of which neither Theresa nor I are a part. Interesting, don’t you think? I think that this is the way that God’s Body should function.

Another thing that bears mention again is the incredible part that our dear brother Rafael Dueñas played in this whole saga. Rafa opened doors that were completely closed for us at the Mexican border. He made the impossible happen, and in the end would not accept even a penny for his work, insisting that it was done for the Lord. Thank you so much Rafa, and may God bless you richly for your service to him.

There is another little interesting thing that I want to note. My sincere prayer last week while we were still waiting for word to head for Laredo was that God would give 100% clear direction as to what we were supposed to be doing. I knew the closed doors that we had run into so far, and the supposed impossibility of getting the tractor across. Further, I was very mindful of the apparent danger in bringing it through Mexico during these unstable times. I questioned the expense that it looked like we would incur, and wondered if it would be worth it in the end. I was very unsure if this was indeed God’s will for us. My prayer was very simply a release of the whole thing to God, and a promise to accept whatever He would do through the as yet unknown brothers in Laredo. If that door were to close then I was willing to accept God’s voice.

Interestingly enough, as Theresa and I were leaving Donna for Laredo, about a three hour drive west, we were pulled over by a Mexican man and his elderly father in a pickup truck. They had been heading the opposite directon and had pulled a U-turn to meet us. They apologized for stopping us, but asked whether we were interested in selling the tractor and the whole kit and caboodle. I took their phone number and prayed some more for guidance.

But here we are. When God gives green lights, he gives green lights. When he opens or closes doors, he opens them or slams them shut. We do serve a miracle-working God. He is still on his throne.

Please continue to pray for my parents, and for Theresa and me for wisdom as to what we are to be doing now. My father has been doing somewhat better now for a couple of days. He is still in the hospital, and the future is still very much unknown. Theresa and I await a call from family to tell us to come back to Canada. We simply are waiting on God through this time.

My mom has advised us to wait to return and continue with the work here until we hear from them to the contrary. It is hard to do so.

We covet your prayers.

Blessings,

Steven and Theresa