21-The Progression of the Mexican Ministry

In a previous post I covered the actual rooting of the Mexican Ministry into the ABC with the story of Luis. This post explains the growth.

 

The Mexican Ministry began to take visible shape about the time I returned to San Diego. My father’s visits to, and befriending of, the shopkeepers in Tijuana eventually yielded visits to their homes and this brought requests for teachings. Homes were then needed in Mexico for the foundation meetings but most homes in Tijuana were tiny, some had dirt floors, and none would accommodate a large meeting. Rather than renting a building or hall a small apartment was rented in the La Playa area of Tijuana on the western edge of town. This was close to San Diego, but Tijuana roads were seldom maintained and this made for very treacherous driving at times. It was a long slow commute up the hill, made worse when it rained. It was not unusual in a heavy downpour to find these roadways had become raging torrents of flood water. Often in Tijuana entire homes would wash down the hills in these downpours since they were built on tires and other debris and not concrete foundations to bedrock. There were usually a numbers of deaths from these floods. Poverty can be deadly.

The Crown Victoria, and other sedans, my father was using to get to this apartment; and to pick up some of the Mexican people on the way; were not suited for the journey over deeply rutted roads so an offering was requested to buy a large van. The money was raised, a van was purchased, but within months it was apparent this vehicle too  would not hold up to the strain of the Tijuana roads. Another call went out for more money to purchase a large Chevy Suburban with four-wheel drive and a high clearance suspension. This was a more effective vehicle to maneuver the back roads and alleys of Tijuana, and became a bus of sorts picking up people to take to the meetings.

I was at a few of the meetings at the La Playa apartment. There were usually about five or six people from Tijuana, and about the same number would travel over from the states. These were typical foundation meeting with singing (one of the Mexican people had translated a few of the songs into Spanish), a teaching out of the Greek, spoken in English then interpreted into Spanish by a man named Pablo then prayer for any needs. It was not possible to construct a teaching the same as before since the ABC relies heavily on the Greek to develop its teaching points. To teach from the Greek required translating first from Greek into English, then from English into Spanish. This was proving quite difficult and the teachings moved in very slow motion. Most attending politely nodded their heads but no one really knew if the nodding meant they truly understood, or were just being courteous since no one from the states spoke much Spanish. I suspect it is the latter.

Not long after the apartment was rented in La Playa a large storm washed away the road making the apartment inaccessible without a long drive through side roads. This meant it would now take more than an hour to drive each way over rutted treacherous roads. A search was made for a new location to hold the meetings and eventually a large house was rented closer to central Tijuana. This home sat on top of a hill overlooking all of Tijuana and was constructed of stucco, stone and brick with lots of wrought iron. I took the pictures below at this house. The first picture was a kid's birthday party and the second is the view from this house at night. It had quite a view looking out over Tijuana.


This house was too big to justify renting just for meetings so David North moved his family to the house, enrolled his children in Mexican school, then commuted each day across the border into San Diego to work. There was not much left at the La Playa apartment for meetings; just a whiteboard and some chairs; but after the move to the big house it still needed to be retrieved. I was enlisted for that long drive to retrieve them and David North rode along with me. Since I had to do this after work this meant driving into Tijuana after dark and, while in Mexico, one of my headlights burned out. A local police officer, who spoke little English, stopped me. I spoke very little Spanish but  understood enough to know he wanted to take my car because it was not "legal". He planned to drop us off at the airport to fly back to San Diego from Tijuana. This was totally impractical as the distance between the two airports was perhaps twenty miles at best. David North paid the officer money and this caused him to "forget" about impounding my car and he let us go. It was a tense moment. We found a headlamp at a little shop in La Playa and changed it before heading back to San Diego.

Meetings were held at the large central Tijuana house for several months, but the massive flooding in La Playa, and other areas, had forced the Mexican government to address the housing situation and most of the participants had been moved far east from the downtown core. Flooding problems occurred during every storm on the hilly areas so the government built large tenements of solid concrete on a mesa near the Tijuana airport where flooding was never a problem. The church gave up the house and David North and family moved back across the border to the Casa Grande. Having a permanent house in Tijuana was  then abandoned forever. My stepmother, Yvonne, would later acquire another home in Tijuana, after my father's death, after starting her own new ministry in Tijuana. I will address that separately since it was not an official "sanctioned" part of the ABC.

The meetings moved to the home of a woman everyone called  "mama". On meeting days the Suburban would leave San Diego several hours before the start time, make a "bus run" to pick up anyone who lived too far to walk, and take them to these meetings. Most of the participants were related in some way and all were very poor. Nothing was ever done to aid their poverty, the ABC provided only teachings in Greek word studies.

Altogether there was only a handful of people's lives "The Mexican Ministry" ever touched. It officially ended not long after my father's death. I do not know exactly when, since I was not around but I do know, from what I heard, San Diego became a battleground for power and control and Yvonne, my stepmother, would leave the ABC to continue the Mexican Ministry on her own. During this time she negotiated a permanent pension from the tithes.  I was not part of the ABC then, but received regular updates on the progress from Yvonne by form letter.

In the next post, and the one following, I will introduce a threatening letter sent to all in the ABC and some anomalies that developed. Mostly because of the forming of the "Mexican Ministry".

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