Rachel Chapman is involved in church planting among the Nahuatl people of Mexico.
“One of the moments that I loved from my recent trip to Arizona was hearing the story of the earliest days of God’s work with the Nahuatl. My own mission journey started around 1994 when I was 12 when God called me to missions. I started praying for “whichever people group I will work with” in 2000; I went to Mexico in 2006 and joined the Nahuatl work in 2009. But God’s work for the Nahuatl started many years earlier. In 1990, God started working in the hearts of a church in Phoenix to be more engaged in missions. They heard about this little group of unreached indigenous people in the mountains of Mexico, and as a group [they] decided to “adopt” them. They started fervently praying for the gospel to come to [the Nahuatl] and began to help prepare the way physically. They financed and personally helped the people build an airstrip and started doing dental trips to create an opening for full-time missionaries. In 1993, our co-workers, the Elkins, moved in and continued doing the community development which drew the attention of the village, Las Moras. Around 2000, the people of Las Moras built the road that we now use to access the village and a few years later built the airstrip. They sent representatives to the Elkins asking for them or other missionaries to come live with them in Las Moras. In 2009, after several visits, the village gave us formal permission to live among them. Those believers in Phoenix have been committed to the Nahuatl ministry for 30 years and are now seeing the fruit of their prayers. There are believers in the village where Elkins worked and in Las Moras, and there are Scriptures available in Nahuatl. Please pray for God to continue to build His Church among the Nahuatl and for His protection on them during this time.”