Josephina Lopez Ojeda with her husband, Roberto Morales Cruz, and 3 of their 7 children, in front of their simple house. The door on the right is the entrance to the kitchen, the inside of which you can see in the photo below.

Jason and Nicole Fitzpatrick have planted over 30 churches in the impoverished mountain villages of Peubla, Mexico’s poorest state. Many of those villages were previously untouched by the gospel. Today we traveled two hours up winding, mountain roads to reach one of them, the village of Ozomatlan, inhabited by descendants of the Totonaco Indians, who are cousins of the Aztecs. Most live in small, wood or concrete block shacks with dirt or concrete floors. Their poverty is almost unimaginable to most North Americans.

In Ozomatlan, we stopped at the tiny home of Roberto Morales Cruz and his wife, Josephina Lopez Ojeda, both of whom came to Christ through Jason and Nicole’s ministry.

In December of 2010, Josephina was dying, but she didn’t know why. She had suffered for eight days with pain in her abdomen, fever, loss of appetite, and no bowel movements. On December 22nd, I received a concerned call from Nicole regarding Josephina, and we immediately wired funds to Mexico for tests and medical attention. Those tests revealed a ruptured intestine, and doctors were amazed Josephina was still alive. They ended up removing a section of her small intestine and colon. Her full recovery took months.

As I interviewed Josephina and her husband today, they expressed their profound gratitude, knowing that she would have died apart from the compassion of God’s people. Josephina said that during her long recovery, none of her blood relatives came to visit, but the family of God continually ministered to her. I told her that the money Heaven’s Family had sent during her trial was not from me, but from many of her spiritual family members outside of Mexico—whom she will one day meet in heaven.

David

Josephina (at left) in her dirt-floor kitchen. Notice the cut branches in the upper left-hand corner of the photo, which are the fuel for Josephina’s stove below.