Mexico is a country situated in North America, with about 134 million inhabitants. According to UNICEF there are 39.2 million children and teenagers in Mexico; data shows that 65% of the children do not have access to books, what will affect their school future. One in each 2 children is in a poverty situation, being 2 in 10 in an extreme poverty; although the advance in the education, more than 4 million children and teenagers are out of school.
PEPE intends to reach these children and their families with the Kingdom of God, drawing them to experiment the divine love when they are assited in their spiritual, physical and emotional needs. Nevertheless, there are many challenges to be overcame, for that, emotional problems, dysfunctional families with broken homes and abandonment by the parents, relatives in the drug trafficking and the lack of God’s love, among others.
Six Years ago PEPE was implemented in the country, but it stayed two years without an active unit. Only two years ago we were able to reactivate the program with the opening of new units in partnership with visionary churches that are worried about the children and are working to help them not only secularly, but also emotionally and above all spiritually.
We assist today, 30 children in the pre-school age in our units. Besides that, 20 bigger siblings participate in the program of school tutoring, reaching the number of 50 children. There are sis missionary-educators that voluntarily dedicate their lives to help the children to have a better future. Besides developing educational activities with the children assigned at PEPE, we also offer regularization classes for the brothers of our pepitos that are in different public schools in the community. In Mexico is common for the older brothers to be responsible for taking and following the younger ones, that’s why we developed a project which aims to change this time that these children spent waiting for their younger brothers into a special time. Through the school tutoring, help with the homework and biblical classes, among other activities, we have reached these brothers avoiding that they may even get involved with bad companies and addictions during this idle time of waiting.
A the unit “Growing in Love” from the First Baptist Church God is Love in Zacatepec, in the State of Morelos, is registered Erick. His cousin Dominic participates in the school tutoring. Both lives with the grandmother, because Dominick’s mother was murdered and father is arrested by delinquency and Erick’s parents left him with the grandmother since he was very small. When arriving at PEPE, both of them had very difficult attitudes like continuous crying and anger. The grandmother always had a very sad appearance. Nowadays, both of them had meaningful progress in their attitudes and educational process, and above all, they like the Bible stories and they understood that God hears when they pray. Their grandmother has a smile in the face now and is thankful for the attention and care given to her grandsons. The church has done activities with the parents aiming to improve the family relationship and to reach these families with the love of God. We hope to see this family restored for the glory of God and the joy of boys.
We go on strengthening the three units that are working with the intention of showing the churches the efficiency of the program as to strengthen a church as to expand the Kingdom. We are planning the opening of more units, having already two prepared to start their activities next month of August in the city of Huatulco, Oaxaca. Pray for the work of adaptation of the pedagogical material to the national curriculum and also for the partnership that we intend to make with the Ministry Roots to give the recognized certification for the PEPEs and the use of their books for a cheaper price.
