The Ruiz Family
Serving the Lord in Tixtla de Guerrero, Mexico
November December 2024 Update
Dear Praying Friends, As I write those words “Ruiz Family,” it is such a joy to see the ENTIRE family serving the Lord, and, this last month together in TIXTLA. As my older ones leave home, I rejoice to hear how the Lord uses them in other ministries, but it has been so good to serve with them. December 5, I flew back to California with my niece Ava to take her home and enjoyed a short week visiting with my parents in Big Sur. Once Samuel and Hannah got out for Christmas break, we drove the 44 hour trip down to Tixtla in a beautiful, used Subaru that the Lord provided for our family. Although the trip was long, I enjoyed every moment with them in the car! The Lord provided for the trip in every way, including keeping us safe on those long, deserted stretches of northern Mexico. We brought the car down, packed with Samuel’s things so he won’t have to fly so much down here after graduation.
Two days after arriving in home, our church held its first youth conference here in Tixtla with about 120 teens attending. Our special speakers including all of our church college kids who have been studying to serve the Lord here and outside of Tixtla plus some of our local pastors. I enjoyed watching my kids serve teaching, song leading, singing special music, and organizing the games. Eight teens dedicated their lives to the Lord in full time service, but two of them are from our family’s bus route! Our hearts are overflowing with joy with this “paycheck.”
The same day that the youth conference started, the church’s cement roof was poured. Next week, they’ll take down the wooden frames. Pray that the Lord will supply for the cement floor. My husband’s goal is to move church out to our new property in March.
After enjoying our family Christmas, the brothers went up to the dam for their yearly men’s retreat. This year some other churches joined them, making around 50 guys. Obviously, I wasn’t there to be able to tell you about it, but I received the most beautiful text message from a dear friend of mine rejoicing over her husband taking the initiative to pray and lead their family in Bible reading after returning from the retreat. God was busy working in their hearts.
We celebrated New Year’s Eve in the mountains with Efrain’s family and the church there. My husband’s nephew Asael graduated from Bible college last May and has been riding his motorcycle to this village every other week to preach the Word (a dusty 3-hour mountain road trip).
We returned home to celebrate the new year here in Tixtla with a special service in which one of our neighboring families came, and I was able to lead their 3 children, grandmother, and mother to the Lord!
Unfortunately, our van hit a cow bringing believers to church one Sunday evening, damaging the front passenger’s side and sliding door. Thankfully, no one was injured. The van can still drive, but esthetically looks pretty bad. This is where we praise the Lord for giving us the Subaru before this accident. His timing is perfect.
January 5, Samuel’s girlfriend Gretchen came to visit us from Ohio. We had a wonderful time showing her our part of the world and feeding her all of our most delicious foods! We were blessed with a huge amount of candy bags and plastic balls at Christmas time from some believers in Mexico City. So we took advantage of these gifts and took them and our soul winning team to the mountains on King’s Day (January 6). We had a rough, long, dusty trip there with many a story to tell, but God was victorious again, and we were able to witness to over 700 people that day, including both children, teens, and adults in three different mountain towns. Hannah taught the Christmas story using all of my kids as different actors since the kids’ group was much too large for any hand held storybook. All of the adults who went with us took advantage of the crowd and witnessed in smaller groups to any other willing person. It was an awesome experience!
Our home’s addition continues. One room is done, and its bathroom is almost there. It’s been kind of hard living in a construction zone, but I’m thankful that all of this dust will have a reward.
Just this morning, my husband and I returned from Mexico City where we dropped off Samuel, Hannah, and Gretchen for their return flight to college. We spent the rest of the day preparing our home and minds to start school again and the “normal” church activities.
Our Bible Institute will be starting up again in February. This time we have a new enrollment of 3 different couples and two single ladies who are already serving the Lord on a regular basis. Efra’s desire is to train them even more so that they can more effectively serve the King of Kings. Since they are all older adults, they are a bit intimidated to be going “back to school.” Pray that the Lord will give them understanding and wisdom.
Thank you SOOOO much for your prayers. We definitely saw God’s hand of protection many times and His beautiful way of preparing hearts to hear His Word, besides providing us with the means to go and teach. Thank you for being part of that!
May God bless you this new year as we serve Him together.
With much love and thankfulness,
Laura Ruiz (for Efra, Samuel, Hannah, Grace, Lydia, Laura, Mark, Ruth, and Benji)
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