Middle-Eastern Men Pretending to be Mexicans?
Monday, December 12, 2005
DRUGS, VIOLENCE, & HUMAN TRAFFICKING DRAW PASTOR TO U.S.-MEXICO BORDER TOWNS
Middle-Eastern Men Pretending to be Mexicans?
By Mark Ellis
Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS (ANS) - Dec 12/05 - When the sun goes down along the U.S border area surrounding Brownsville and Matamoros at least a handful of people will die each night. In an area where drugs and human traffic move 24 hours a day, accidents, assaults, drug use and gang killings all take their toll.
“Most Americans don’t understand the spiritual significance of the terrible evil constantly penetrating into the U.S. through border
cities,” says Pastor Roberto Morales, founder of Robert Morales Ministries. “This is where the enemies of America are coming in,” he says. “We cover the border in the name of Jesus.”
As the midnight hour approaches and the church slumbers, border cities spring to life. “There is a restlessness 24 hours a day,” Morales notes. “Once it’s dark there’s prostitution among girls younger than 13,” he says. “Marijuana and cocaine are sold in parks, stores and alleys.” Bars and nightclubs are the place to buy weapons, drugs, or hire an assassin for unfinished business, according to Morales.
In addition to a continual flow of immigrants seeking work, other influences are seeping across the porous border. “It’s not just illegal people,” Morales says. He cites drugs, disease, toxic agents, and
occult groups.
“They are here and more are coming,” he says. “They are enemies of God.” Morales believes their plans and intentions are meant to “annihilate the nation God raised” to proclaim the gospel to the rest of the world. “We need to have revival at the border before we have a war,” he says.
On two occasions Morales had contact with Middle Eastern men who seemed suspicious. At a center he runs in Oaxaca, a young, intelligent Egyptian man approached Morales after noticing his Texas license plates—something rare in Oaxaca. “He looked like a Mexican man,” Morales notes. “He wanted me to bring him to the border.”
In Reynosa, another Arabic man approached him about buying a car. The man seemed to have plenty of money at his disposal. “You hear a lot along the border,” Morales says. “The presence of these people is here,” he notes. “They’re not what they say they are.”
“They can buy their way in because they have money,” he adds.
Morales feels called to minister in the streets—on both sides of the border. “Street ministry is nothing new,” he says. “Jesus preached in the streets all the time.”
“The borders are full of people who steal and kill,” Morales says. “It’s a good place to fish and get them saved,” he says. “We give them the gospel and reach them at their point of greatest need.”
“If I reach my hands in the sewer sometimes I find diamonds,” he adds.
One of the unusual gemstones involved in his ministry is a man named Arturo Martinez de la Cruz, once an assassin for a Mexican drug cartel. “He killed 23 people and was the best gun in the cartel,” Morales says. In the past, he was imprisoned in Arizona and California. Almost every state in northern Mexico was looking for him, so he traveled south, hoping to escape detection.
“He got saved at our center in Oaxaca,” Morales says. A 16-years-old at the center saw Martinez de la Cruz walking down the street drinking a beer and called out to him: “Get the drugs out of your eyes. What you need is Jesus.”
Two days later, Martinez de la Cruz showed up at the center. “He stayed for one week without talking,” Morales recalls. “Then the Spirit of God fell on him and he started weeping like a woman.” Tattoos still cover his body and a bullet rests just above his heart. “Now he’s married and has two children. He’s a good preacher.”
Morales has another former gang leader involved in his ministry. This man led assaults on places where drugs were hidden by other gangs. “Please don’t ask how many people I’ve killed,” he said to Morales, after he was saved.
Both former gang leaders testify mightily to God’s transforming power. “You wouldn’t believe the joy in their families,” Morales declares.
To support his ministry, Morales and his team work with their hands, making concrete blocks or washing cars. Some are sent out into the streets selling candy. “I never thought I’d be selling candy,” one former gang member told him. “I used to sell cocaine.”
At his rescue center in Matamoros he teaches children the dangers of drugs. “It’s like a church without make-up,” Morales notes. “We have a few tables and chairs and we get into the Word of God,” he says. “Sundays we cook a big meal, play good music, and I preach.”
Morales hopes to set up rescue centers all along the U.S.-Mexico border. “We establish relations with the community and most of the time they want us,” he says. Some cry when they find out Morales wants to plant a church near the cheap hotels that cater to prostitution.
“We come here because we love them,” he says. “We believe God brought us here to love these
people.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Ellis is a Senior Correspondent for ASSIST News Service. He is also an assistant pastor in Laguna Beach, CA
