“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
                                                            Leviticus 19:18

We moved to Samachique in August 2006 to work with Mexico Medical Missions www.mexicomedical.org in its 20-bed hospital, bringing health care to the unreached Tarahumara Indians who live and work as farmers in the drought-plagued hillsides and plateaus of the Sierra Mountains.

The Tarahumaras are one of only two tribal groups in the world that have no system of traditional midwives. As a result, they have the highest maternal mortality rate in Mexico and the fifth highest in the world.  Half of all Tarahumara children do not live to see their fifth birthday.

 Most of these deaths would be preventable with prenatal health care and assistance during delivery. Instead, Tarahumara women go alone into the forests to have their babies. If they die during childbirth, the babies also are left to die.

Our mission in Mexico is to train native Tarahumara women the skills of midwifery and basic health care using the Community Health Evangelism Program, a model that integrates spiritual and health teachings into a village. Because the Tarahumaras are scattered among 10,000 square miles in a mountainous region, many women will not go – or cannot reach – the hospital for care. It is our hope that by training tribal members we will be able to get health care to many more mothers and children.

We are amazed that God would choose to use “ordinary” people like us to do something so “extraordinary.” We challenge you to let Jesus do the extraordinary in you and through you as well.