I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight and to present this work on Mexico. As Mr McClung has said, I had the privilege with one of the men from the church in Greenville to travel to Mexico in 2013 and to visit the work. At that stage, we just had one missionary, and it was Jason and his wife, really, the team that were there. Since that, there have been other missionaries who have come on to the board in North America, come on to the care of our presbytery. and hopefully there are a couple of pictures of those brethren here as well. Mexico, when I went there in 2013, I didn't know what to expect but it is a thriving city. There is a tower in the city that you can go up and it gives you a panoramic view of Mexico City. It's a vast place, I have never seen driving like it. You may have three lanes marked on the road and you could have six lanes of traffic on those three lanes It's a very dangerous place for travel. It is so packed with people, there's about 8 or 9 million people in the greater Mexico area, that if your registration number on your car finishes with a certain number, you're not allowed to drive on certain days. So if your car finishes with a 1 or a 2, you can't drive on a Monday, 3 or 4 you can't drive on a Tuesday, just because there's so many people. It's a very prosperous city in the sense that there's a lot of industry and business. It's not really that poor by the general standards, a lot of things taking place, great architecture, a lot of high-rise buildings with business companies in those. It's a very old city as well, and I'll mention that a little later on. We were able to go down into Mexico City for one day just to see around, a lot of very old buildings. There's a very strong history with the Aztec people going back into the 14th, 15th century. their capital was built on the very edge of the lake, and that's where Mexico City is, it's on the lake, and because of that, and you'll see this a little later, one of the buildings, the main Catholic chapel, is actually starting to sink. We'd want it to sink a whole lot quicker, but it's sinking by a few degrees every year. It's a very colourful place, you might not just see the colours, everything is colourful in Mexico City. There's a lot of market stalls downtown, in the city centre, and you have all this Mexican kind of art. Bright coloured stalls, bright coloured artwork. They just seem to be a people that are very fond of that kind of thing. Food is very plentiful too. All kinds of varieties of, I guess these were kind of little dessert things that were made along the street. This, you can't really see this very well on the picture, this actually is a pig's brain. Now I didn't try this, I reckon my brain will rot, sorry, without this This was a Mexican dish and you can fill this bread with any kind of meat or any kind of vegetable But they offered us pig's brain, I didn't try it, the fella that was with me, he did And he took one bite and that was the end of him, well the end of the bite, it wasn't the end of him But he didn't eat any more of it, I reckon I was ok the way I was this bowl of soup we had a they have a Sunday morning service in the church and then they have a fellowship dinner afterwards and I was eating this bowl of soup and I said to the man beside me as best I could with his Spanish and my English what was in this and actually it was pig head with the eyeballs and all just chopped up I didn't ask him until I was nearly finished and I was thankful that was the case it's a very Roman Catholic country 95% of the people are Roman Catholic, 3% are Evangelical Protestant, and 2% are really any other kind of Aztec religion, that kind of thing as well. But there are huge Roman Catholic buildings dotted all over the city. We went into one of them just to see how large it was. The kind of attendance you can't see very well in that picture. But it was reasonably filled that day that we were there. just standing at the back taking the photographs. Very lavish buildings, no expense spared. There's some very poor people in Mexico. As often you find with Roman Catholicism, the buildings and the religion are well financed, but the people live, some of them at least, in great poverty. And this was the case with this building too. Crucifixes, etc. They present a dead Christ. That's what you pray to, that's what you bow down before. Mary and the Saints. A little confessional box in the chapel was there. People are devout, devout in their religions, not like the south of Ireland where people have turned away from the Roman Catholic Church. In many ways in Mexico it still has a very strong hold upon the people. The Statues of Saints, Loyola there to the left, the founder of the Jesuits and these kind of things are dotted all over the city. There's just chapel after chapel in different parts of Mexico City. There was a little video clip on this and it didn't embed well into the laptop here, but that man that's standing there with his back to us, you can't see the guy behind him, but he's an Aztec witch doctor and the video shows him with a, it's like a handheld feather duster, that's the only way to describe it, and he rubs it over the man's neck and he thumps his back with his fingers and He's driving out the evil spirits out of this man. It's quite an amazing thing to watch, quite a strange thing to stand and watch men pay this man to do this to them in the hope that somehow or other it drives away evil spirits. So the Aztec people still have an influence, the religion of the Aztecs, the paganism of all of that still has an influence in Mexico City. These were Aztec dancers. They have the offering there in the middle and it's filled with fruit and vegetables and that kind of thing. They perform the dance for about 15 minutes. Their headdress is traditional Aztec headdresses with feathers and again colours and there are drums playing in the background etc. People will participate in this and they will feel this will drive away the spirits from them too. This is dotted over the city as well. These were one of the groups that we came across that particular day. I mentioned the building that is sinking. This plumb line shows just how much it is sinking, because as it sinks down, this moves, and it shows that plaque on the ground, just the number of degrees each year that the main cathedral is actually sinking there, because it's built right on the edge of the lake. We're actually on the lake reclaim ground and the building therefore is beginning to sink in that area. These are the missionaries, Jason and Danielle, the little son that they adopted just last year. It was a long process for them. The Lord has blessed them with this wee boy. And they've been in Mexico now for, I think it must be seven or eight years, they've been in Mexico City. Jason originally is from Greenville in South Carolina. He graduated from Bob Jones University, then came to Geneva Reform Seminary and did his Masters of Divinity there. He felt called to the mission field as an eight-year-old boy in Sunday school. He had a Sunday school teacher before he ever came to the Pre-Presbyterian Church who had a great interest in missionary work. And as she was telling her class about missionary work, Jason felt the Lord calling him as an eight-year-old to go to Mexico and although it was many many years afterwards before he actually got to Mexico but the Lord had so burdened him and that burden has never left. His wife is from Canada, she is from the Vancouver area and both of them have been in Mexico City now for several years. They have been in the one house and just recently they moved to another home not far from where they were living and not far from where the church meets as well. It's one of the difficulties the church has. The church is made in a disused garage. This was a car garage. It's been painted up and cleaned up. But it is small, and in recent times, really, they've outgrown their building and are desperately looking for somewhere else to rent. Property in Mexico is very expensive, and to find a church building or a building that is suitable for a church is very, very expensive. As of now, they meet in this garage. It's right on the edge of a street. It can get noisy when the traffic is outside, but the Lord has been blessing some of the people that you see there have been converted in the work. Some had come from a Pentecostal background. They had been living under dreadful guilt. If they sinned, they had been taught that once you're converted, you don't sin. And then when they did sin and they felt that, they didn't know what to do, and they were in terrible bondage. and then they came to hear the preaching of Christ and Reformed theology and they discovered the sufficiency of Christ to see if and to keep them not only for justification but also in sanctification and they started to grow in grace but they brought many issues with them from their previous church and Jason spends a lot of time on a one-to-one just ministering to people, small groups of people seeking to teach them the things of God. The work has flourished under his ministry There's a children's work as well. This was the photograph of the congregation in 2013. It is much larger now. More men have come in. And it has been good to see. You can't see very well there, but if you go to the left-hand side of the picture and come in, three or four people. There's a girl just in front of me. Actually, I'm at the very back there. The girl in front of me came to our youth camp in North America. There's a number of Mexicans came up. four or five of them and Danielle came up one year and that young girl Melissa got saved at youth camp and then she has returned to youth camp in North America in the summertime to act as a counselor and the Lord has been blessing her over the past number of years. She actually came up to Greenville two years ago on outreach. We had an outreach team organized through the Presbytery and she came up from Mexico to join that outreach team and the Lord has been blessing her But the congregation has grown since that time, and therefore they're outgrown, they're building. Ismaelisa in the middle there, the girl with the white top, that's her parents, her mother to her right, and her father. Her father beside me there is the treasurer of the church. He has good English. When I preached there, he asked me could I send down my notes before our visit, so I did, and he translated the notes into Spanish. And then when I was preaching in English, he was able to preach from his Spanish notes of my sermon. His wife has a little Christian school. She teaches in a Christian school that meets near where the church is meeting. She ministers there. This was the fellowship meal after the church service where we had the soup with the pig's head. After the church service commences Sunday morning with the Bible class, an adult Bible class, and at the same time the children are in Sunday school, and then have morning worship. That would go from 11 o'clock to about 1 o'clock, and then after 1 o'clock they have the fellowship meal in the church there. And then following that, there's a group of men and women who go back to Jason and Danielle's home, and they have a Bible study Sunday evening from around 5.30 through to perhaps seven o'clock, it's more a question and answer kind of thing. They're studying through a book at that time we were there, usually on a doctrinal theme, and it's a little more informal. We leave it open for questions, but it's been a means of seeing the congregation grow in grace. These are the children in Sunday school. memorising the catechism, memorising scripture passages, and really rung like a syllogical we would be familiar with here in Northern Ireland. Some of the work that's done throughout the week takes place in people's homes. Mexico, as you've seen from the pictures, is very densely populated, so people don't really spread out, they build up. So you'd have parents on the ground floor of a house, and then when their children get married, they'll build another floor onto the house for that couple to live in. And then when another son or daughter gets married and they want to stay in the same area, they build on top of that again. And so when you do pastoral visitation in Mexico, you can get three or four generations on the one home. And you'll find aunts and uncles and nephews all just seem to live in the one apartment or the one block of houses. So we had a meal with that family too. And as we were having the meal, Jason was ministering to a young couple in regard to either getting married or had been married. He was doing some marriage counselling with them. I mentioned the other missionaries that have come in under our presbytery there in North America. This gentleman and his wife are from Veracruz. His name is Marcus Reyes. Marcus had been saved in New York. He is an American, but he was saved in New York and he felt called of God to go to Mexico to minister. So he went about four hours drive south of Mexico City. to an era called Veracruz and he began to pioneer work among the Aztec people. He is a joiner by trade and he does that to finance himself and his family, take care of them. Marcus came to understand Reformed theology, began to study scripture and came to see that himself and he began to look for other people of like mind. In Mexico he couldn't find any and he wrote to some of the leading figures in North America, some of the more prominent ministries in North America, but none of them replied to him. Then he began to listen to sermon audio and began to listen to some free Presbyterian ministers in North America. He discovered that the free church used the authorised version, our ladies wore head covering, and he was shocked to find a denomination that had the same views that he had, even though he had never met the denomination before. So he made contact with some of the brethren in North America. They put him in touch with Jason, and Jason told them that we were coming down to visit in Mexico. So he and his wife and family drove four hours to meet with us and we met with him on a Friday evening and all day Saturday and he just asked question after question after question. The upshot of all of that was he eventually applied to London to take care of the Presbytery. He felt there was a kindred spirit with the Free Church in North America in his work and the Presbytery agreed to do that. The man to the left of Jason there is a man called Lalo, and Marcus was ministering to Lalo. Lalo is a converted Roman Catholic too. And Lalo also is ministering around little churches. So both these men came onto the care of the Presbytery at the one time. The Presbytery brought them to one of our Presbytery meetings to give their testimony how the Lord had been leading them. So as of now we have three missionaries in Mexico, Jason in Mexico City and then Marcus and Lalo further south, four hours south. Lalo is an accountant and he does some of that part-time to finance his family. He is a Spanish speaker and has a small congregation too. Some of the brethren in more recent years have been able to travel down, some of the North American ministers have been able to travel down to the Veracruz area to encourage them But they're pressing on. The three brethren now, Jason and Marcus and Lalo, are pressing on with the Lord's work there in Mexico City. They do need help. They need help financially. They need help with more laborers. And as the Lord lays them upon your heart, I know they will covet your prayers for them in the days to come. Mexico City is vast. There's one little congregation there that Jason ministers to. There are a couple of other Faithful works as well, but it is a vast city and there's room for many, many more missionaries to come and preach the Word of God. So I trust the Lord will lay it upon our hearts and stir our souls. There's not only a need there, if I can just broaden it out a little bit, we do have need in Kenya too for workers. Kathy Walker from North America retires now in May and she'll be returning home from Kenya and there's a great need there for labourers in the Kenyan mission field. Great opportunities right now for young people either in Mexico or some of the other mission fields that we have. We are thankful to the Lord for what he's doing in Mexico City. The Lord is richly blessed. They have constituted the work in Mexico City. There's now a constituted work of the Free Church in North America. Jason was ordained and installed as its first minister. That was within the space of five years of that work commencing. So the Lord has been doing a great work. And we're thankful for all the support, prayerfully and practically, that missionaries over there have received from congregations over here. I know the North American Mission Board is very thankful for the support that it receives from Northern Ireland. So I pray this will give you some insight as to how things are there in Mexico and to pray for Jason and Danielle. and a little boy, and also Marcus and Lalo and their families too, ministering down in Veracruz. May the Lord bless this to our hearts and bless it to your heart. I do appreciate the opportunity to be with you tonight and I pray the Lord will bless you and bless them in the days to come.