GLOBAL MISSIONS is the priority at the Transcultural Mission Training Center in Piedras Negras, Mexico, explains Ruben Juarez (at left), the center's founding director. Jack Calk, director of missions for Del Rio-Uvalde Baptist Association, interprets for Juarez as he describes the center's ministry to a group of Texas Baptist missions leaders who toured River Ministry sites from Eagle Pass to El Paso.

Texans learning from Mexicans
who are going as missionaries
___PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico--Dark skin may be the camouflage needed to spread the gospel around the globe.
___That's part of the theory behind the Transcultural Mission Training Center in Piedras Negras, Mexico, explained Ruben Juarez, the center's founding director.
___"In many countries, it is very difficult for an Anglo missionary to go," he noted. "But we look like the rest of the people of the world, and there are many cultural similarities.
___"God wants to use the Latinos and Mexicans to spread the gospel."
___The center, funded in part by the Baptist General Convention of Texas' River Ministry, trains Mexican Baptists to minister across the boundaries of culture and language.
___The center began as a training facility for Mexican pastors who will serve among more than 100 indigenous Indian groups that speak more than 50 distinct dialects throughout Mexico.
___But the transcultural principles the pastors learn have much broader applications, Juarez reported.
___"We want to train and equip many and send them to countries that are the least evangelized," he said. "This will help the local church to have greater missionary vision."
___That vision is growing, he acknowledged, noting Mexican Baptists have begun sending out missionaries in the last decade.
___"God is working in an incredible way in Latin America," he said. "God is using Latin

JEANE LAW (foreground, below) leads tour participants in morning worship during a stop at a mountain pass overlooking the Rio Grande in the Big Bend.

American missionaries to go to closed countries. Last year, we sent our first missionary to India. ... We hope to (continue) to send missionaries to India and the Muslim countries of the world."
___The training center offers two intensive courses per month, providing training in the biblical basis of missions, missions philosophy, cultural anthropology and other studies that help ministers present the message of Christ to people whose cultures seem almost foreign to the gospel. The center also prints missions materials for use in other settings. Last year, the center sponsored a conference that presented the missions mandate to 500 professional young adults from throughout Mexico, resulting in more than 100 individual commitments to mission work.
___The faculty is comprised of retired Southern Baptist International Mission Board and Wycliffe Bible Translators missionaries.
___Students have gone out to proclaim the gospel not only in India, but also in Nigeria, Azerbaijan, China and Yemen--including places where white faces would be suspect, Juarez said.
___The center's facilities include dorm space for the students, which also can double as a staging area for mission work in Mexico.
___And in a reversal that delights missions workers on both sides of the border, the center also is shining the light of missions across the Rio Grande, back into Texas, Juarez said.
___"The sleeping giant in the United States is the Hispanic church," he stressed. "There is a lot of potential, and they can do a lot. God can use the Hispanics to evangelize the world."
___And God is using the Transcultural Mission Training Center to help them get ready.
___



The Baptist Standard