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A Beacon of Hope in Tijuana
In 1987 a newly married couple took a trip to Tijuana, Mexico. They went not to honeymoon or sightsee, but to look for something quite different: God’s will for their lives. The groom felt called to serve as a missionary in Mexico. His bride, the daughter of a missionary doctor to Taiwan, felt called to serve in China. After a short visit, they both knew the answer: God wanted them in Tijuana. Their lives, and the lives of those they would serve as missionaries for Latin America Mission, were about to change forever.
Greg and Kathy Saracoff’s ministry began in a squatters’ community in nearby Grupo Valley. Together they answered God’s call to work among the people, living in squalid conditions without water or electricity, even after the births of their own two children. Though they faced danger, frustration and a level of sacrifice unknown to most American families, the Saracoffs believed the Lord would bless their labors.
And He did. Out of those hardscrabble years came deep relationships with local pastors and church leaders that enabled the Saracoffs to assist with the growth of several local ministries. At Esperanza, a drug rehabilitation center, Greg works alongside founder and administrator Pastor Javier Marquez, teaching woodworking, discipleship and Bible studies to the recovering men. At Campo de Fe, a hospice facility, Greg and Kathy help minister to the homeless and injured who find their way there. At El Refugio, a home for the elderly, they do the same.
Over the past 20 years, the couple’s vision for working with the poorest people of Tijuana has united a team of local Mexican ministries called Team Tijuana, to work together as ministry partners with LAM. This small but committed band of Christians faithfully ministers to drug addicts, victims of violence, single mothers, abandoned children, neglected elderly, and the destitute. Their courageous outreach brings physical and spiritual healing to men, women and children who otherwise may never have come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Team Tijuana and the Saracoffs are just one example of how God is using LAM missionaries across Latin America and beyond to break the repeating life cycles of drugs, prostitution and violence. By partnering with local leaders, LAM employs holistic outreaches to help the lost and needy, including working with local organizations to:
- Build churches, hospitals and schools right in their communities.
- Offer vocational training and small business opportunities to recovering men and women who desperately want a way to earn an honorable living.
- Provide health care, meals and safe haven to street children who have nowhere else to go.
While other organizations have more recently adopted this collaborative style, LAM has modeled “indigenous partnership” since 1921, successfully uniting with local Latin ministries to reach deep into the hearts of communities and create lasting change from the inside out. Today LAM is ably building on its long-term, hands-on success by encouraging the Latin American missions movement, helping to send Latin missionaries to open new doors of hope in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Esperanza: The Miracle of Hope
“Latin America Mission is about transformational partnership,” explains Steve Johnson, LAM’s recently appointed president. “We are a mission agency committed to developing strong partnerships between North Americans and Latin Americans. God has given the Latin Church an agenda. At LAM, we believe our calling is to work alongside their Church and institutional leaders, or even under their supervision, to accomplish their agenda. Together with their leadership and our resources and training we believe we can do a better job of fulfilling the Great Commission.”
And nowhere is that more evident than in Tijuana. Recently, Steve and his wife, Shellie, made a special journey to Mexico to visit the Saracoffs and Team Tijuana. There they visited both the men’s and women’s rehab centers. Esperanza means “hope” in Spanish, and as Steve notes, “In almost every way, hope is what the centers represent to these people.”
The 100 men and 20 women housed in the centers all come in as drug addicts, dealers or both. For them, Esperanza often stands as their last chance — for becoming clean, for a changed life, for a new future. Many choose to come to the center knowing their lives will be in danger should they return to the streets. Esperanza’s system helps them to find not only a new spiritual life in Christ, but a new physical home in another location, if necessary.
It works, too. Today, with 10 Esperanza centers in operation across Mexico, even the Mexican government recognizes the institution’s success. “They send men and women to Esperanza because they know they will be rehabilitated on many levels,” says Steve.
How Esperanza Works
The Esperanza approach to treatment is a combination of tough rehabilitation, Christian love and hard work. The men’s facility is a collection of primitive bunkhouses, located on a hillside 11 miles outside of Tijuana. The men start their journey toward wellness in “the tank,” a large rectangular room with a concrete platform for a bed and a hole for a toilet. “Everything a man goes through coming down off drugs, he goes through in this room,” says Greg.
As the men heal they transition from isolation into greater levels of freedom, eventually graduating to a separate property, where they can learn vocational skills, like making cement blocks and stained glass windows.
Through LAM, Greg assisted Pastor Javier in obtaining a grant to re-wire their shops to start a welding business there. “It’s very important to keep these men busy,” describes Greg. “If they can gain a job skill, it will help keep them off the streets and give their lives a new purpose.”
The Most Important Partnership of All
Ask Kathy Saracoff what means the most to her after 20 years in LAM ministry and she’ll tell you simply: long-term relationships. She shares about Josephina, a young woman she met in the squatters community, who now joins Kathy every week at the women’s rehab center. Together they lead praise and worship and a women’s Bible study. “Every week we study a different attribute of God and spend an hour praying for our children and the schools,” Kathy says.
Kathy chose the format because so many of the women have had their children taken away from them. “We specifically ask God to turn the hearts of these mothers back to their children,” she says.
One young woman wanted nothing to do with Kathy’s group—until she learned they were praying for her children. Today, Marie’s life has completely changed. She’s a leader at Esperanza, helping other women find the same freedom through Christ. Her daughters have been returned to her. She’s even engaged to marry a graduate from the men’s program.
“That’s really our goal at LAM,” says Kathy. “We know there’s no way we can meet the needs of all these people. But if we can help equip the leaders, pray for them and encourage them, then we feel they can do a much better job than we ever could.”
Campo de Fe: A Place to Heal Body and Spirit
Campo de Fe, also located on the outskirts of Tijuana, is run by a single woman named Flor (“flower”). Through guidance and support from LAM, Flor has managed this hospice home since 1998, rescuing the sick, the wounded and the dying from the streets of Tijuana. Most are throwaways with no family or money. Some come with bullet or knife wounds, broken bones or diseases; others have injuries so severe they can’t get out of bed.
Flor cares for them all 24/7. No matter how sad the situation, Flor’s focus remains staunchly spiritual. Through daily devotions and prayer, she gives each man or woman an opportunity to know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
As Kathy knows from her weekly visits, profound hardships abide here. Yet the story of Umberto is especially touching. Shot and left for dead in a drug deal gone bad, the boy somehow ended up at Campo de Fe. A severe brain injury left him unable to speak or walk. Kathy and her friend, Leslie, a nurse from San Diego, helped Flor care for him, bringing food and medical supplies. Miraculously, through long weeks of physical care and prayer, Umberto recovered enough to write down his phone number. When the boy’s mother came to take Umberto home, she was thrilled to know that he had become a Christian during his recovery.
“His mother had been praying for him,” says Kathy. “I’m convinced God honors the prayers of parents for their children.” A Heart for the Lord -- and His People For Greg and Kathy Saracoff, their twenty years of LAM mission work has been filled with ups and downs. Yet their vision to help equip local Mexicans to take on the ministries of the poor and disadvantaged remains unwavering. “We’re here to help, to encourage new ministries,” Greg explains. “We draw up the paperwork and help people get through start-up struggles. We also do micro financing for those getting started in a small business. For example, we’re helping Josephina get a donut machine to earn money.”
By Steve Johnson’s own observation, the Saracoffs’ commitment to serve the Lord in some of Tijuana’s darkest areas is nothing short of remarkable. “They work with the people everyone else has thrown away—the elderly, the addicts, the children who live in the city trash heaps. And at the same time they are training the local pastors and leaders. I’m not sure we can fully appreciate what they go through each day.”
The Saracoffs embody what LAM missionaries are all about: selfless, hard working and “in it” for the long haul. “They are perhaps the purest examples of what it means to not only believe in but live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ in today’s world,” states Steve.
For Greg and Kathy, they believe they’re merely doing what God called them to do more than twenty years ago — reach the lost and needy for Christ, one heart at a time.
