Mexico and the Seeds We May Never See

I know it’s been a while, but I’ll skip the formalities and bring you straight into this reflection with me—one that has taken time to find its true shape, I guess. This is about our LifeBearers trip to Mexico, though not in the way trips are usually measured.

There are, of course, accomplishments I could list. Meetings with the Secretary of Health, specifically about the state of Maternal Care in the country. Serving in the public hospital. Gathering women in missions and stirring their hearts for maternal healthcare. Throwing period parties for nearly 100 girls. Hosting reusable pad workshops. Traveling by boat to rural parts of Baja California that are often overlooked and hard to reach.

There were disappointments too. Never witnessing a birth. Never being allowed into labor and delivery despite doors that once seemed wide open. Running out of water on the ship for nearly a week. Teaching classes no one came to. Sending a teammate home early due to illness.

But when I look back, I realize I almost never think of the trip in those terms. It wasn’t a story of wins and losses. It was something far more honest and far more holy. It was beautifully challenging and painfully glorious—a place where God met us again and again, often in ways I didn’t recognize until much later.

This outreach was already different from the beginning. It was the first time I was leading a team. The first time actively trying to implement maternal healthcare in Mexico through LifeBearers. We were small in number, deeply committed, and almost completely unaware of what awaited us. Looking back now, I see how fragile the plan was—and how sturdy the love of God proved to be. That love carried us when nothing else could.

We held orphaned babies, fully aware that we could not change their circumstances in any measurable way. We held them because it was what Jesus would do. Because love is never wasted. Because, as our translator said so beautifully, we trust that one day in heaven we might discover that what felt small was actually a seed—quietly planted, faithfully tended by God Himself.

We sat with postpartum mothers, not because we could offer the skills we had trained for, but because presence is sometimes the most powerful form of care. We know the tenderness of God in our own vulnerable moments, and we hoped—perhaps prayed—that these women would come to know that same tenderness as they stepped into motherhood.

We visited villages and hosted community classes, not because crowds gathered or entire systems were transformed overnight, but because there is a God who sees every one of His children. Even the hard-to-reach. Even the overlooked. Even those whose hearts have grown guarded. He does not stop pursuing them, and neither should we.

In many ways, we were a pioneering team. But more than that, our time in Mexico gave clarity to something essential: our time in Mexico did not start or end with this outreach. Our time there was about vision. About laying groundwork. About understanding how to build a network of maternal healthcare workers, teams, homes, and places of restoration that could one day truly impact the Americas.

Because the reality is dark—and it is witnessed. A lack of education and access makes many Latin women deeply vulnerable to exploitation. Their suffering is not accidental; it is profitable. There is a supply, and there is demand—often fueled from the U.S., but also within their own countries and neighboring ones.

I think of one woman we met in San Vicente, in northern Baja California. She was impregnated by her own father, abused until she fled, then exploited again by family members who sold her for sex and later impregnated her once more. Her children were nearly taken from her. Her life nearly erased. Her only refuge was a women’s home that opened its doors and refused to let profit have the final word over her body or her story.

So what is the solution to this reality?

Who will stand with the poor and the widow? Who will open their homes to the lost and the hungry? What do we truly have to offer—with our hands, our lives, our hearts?

I ask these questions not because I have the answers, but because I want to be part of them. I want to be the solution to stories like hers. And yet I continue to find it to be true over and over again: the only real solution is Jesus. Everything else flows from Him.

We must be compelled by His love. Knit together by His Spirit. Woven into a net strong enough to catch the falling. I believe—deep in my bones—that God is building something right now: a network of homes and hubs, birth teams and gathering places, spaces of refuge and restoration. And that belief is why we keep showing up to odd locations with little to offer but ourselves. Why we keep going back. Why we keep choosing presence over polish.

Because in those places, we remember we are not alone. We are being strengthened. We are being connected. We are being sent.

I didn’t expect this reflection to go where it did. But maybe that, too, is part of the lesson. God often does His clearest work when we let go of the outline and allow our hearts to be open, raw, available. So I’ll end with an invitation rather than a conclusion.

Pay attention to what stirs in you as you read this. Not guilt. Not pressure. But the quiet nudge of love. Ask the Lord where He is inviting you to show up—maybe not across borders, but across the street. Maybe not as a professional, but as a willing presence. The work of restoration is not reserved for the qualified; it is carried by the available. If you feel that stirring, don’t dismiss it. Pray into it. Talk about it. Take one faithful step. God is building something, and there is room for you in it.