Print

Captivating a Nation

captivating//Tim and Rhonda Rogers

It takes faith to move to a city teeming with 18 million people—a city where you don’t know even one individual and have nowhere to live. But faith is exactly what Tim and Rhonda Rogers, 1983 and 1990 RHEMA Bible Training Center graduates, relied on when they did just that in January of 1996. Carrying a few suitcases and with children ages 5, 3, and 2 in tow, they moved to Mexico City with less than $2,000 a month in promised support.

“It was a time when we were literally walking on the water,” said Tim. “We left our jobs, our family, our home,
and our security. We sold everything we had to make the move. This was really our first opportunity to see our faith in action.”

For Tim and Rhonda, this move to the mission field was really no surprise. Tim was called to missions at age 19. Then, while he was on a long-term missions trip to Guatemala after graduating from RBTC, the Lord supernaturally gave him the ability to understand and speak Spanish.

“I remember taking the Spanish Bible one day and it was as if a veil came off my eyes,” Tim recalled. “I began to understand and read it as well as I do English.” In a month and a half, Tim went from not knowing a word of Spanish to teaching in Spanish-language Bible schools without an interpreter.

While Tim was in Guatemala, RBTC officially became a two-year program, and he knew he needed to return. He came back to RHEMA for what he
thought would only be one or two years—and ended up staying nearly 12. Today, he recognizes just how vital those years were. Not only did he meet his wife, but together they were able to join their hearts with the Hagins. “Building those relationships and investing that time has brought us to where we are today,” Tim acknowledged. “RHEMA has had a huge impact on our lives.”

Even with all their training, Tim and Rhonda had a lot to learn—and a lot to overcome—when they moved to Mexico City. They had never been pastors or pioneered a church. And though they didn’t realize it at the time, because of strict laws against Christianity, they were in Mexico illegally. “Most Christian churches were underground,” Tim recalled. “We had to work as tourists the first few years, and any promoting we did was all by word of mouth.”

In spite of the odds against them, Tim and Rhonda began their church in 1997. A handful of people gathered in their home each week to hear the Word of God taught. In 1998, they announced they would also open a Bible school. Reforms to Mexican law allowed the school to become a legal entity, which in turn allowed the church to meet on Sundays in a public, rented facility—something they had been unable to do previously. In fact, they had been kicked out of two hotels and a cultural center when it was discovered they were Christians.

Today, thanks to God’s amazing favor, both the church and the training center are officially recognized by the Mexican government. With over 600 members and new growth each month, Iglesia Bíblica RHEMA (RHEMA Bible Church Mexico) is thriving and has outgrown its current rented facilities.

Centro de Entrenamiento Bíblico RHEMA Mexico (RHEMA Bible Training Center Mexico) has also far exceeded Tim and Rhonda’s expectations. The school graduated its first class—35 students—in 2000. As of this year, RHEMA Mexico has trained nearly 400 graduates.

Local pastors who once feared having their members taken now embrace what RHEMA is doing. “Pastors send us their people all the time now,” Tim said, “because they know we’re going to train them and send them back.”

Tim and Rhonda are also passionate about training the pastors themselves. Nearly 10 percent of RHEMA Mexico’s student body each year is senior pastors—many of whom travel two to three hours each way on buses and other public transportation to attend school. “When you can train a pastor, the message of faith also gets filtered through him to his people,” Rhonda said. “So our efforts are multiplied.”

RHEMA Mexico Prayer Requests

» Pray for a new building big enough to house both church and school. “We rent our current church facility and have to set up and tear down for each service.”

» Pray for finances to pay for the building and all needed equipment. “Mexico City is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in.”

» Pray for protection. “We want—and need—to be completely led by the Holy Ghost.”

Fast Facts

» Tim and Rhonda are 1983 and 1990 RBTC graduates.

» Today, Mexico City’s population is more than 20 million.

» On an average day, two million cars roll on Mexico City’s roads.

» 89.7 percent of Mexico’s inhabitants are Roman Catholic.

» RHEMA Mexico has nearly 400 graduates.

» 48 RHEMA Mexico graduates serve as senior pastors.

www.rhemamexico.org


The results speak for themselves. Tim and Rhonda have 48 graduates who are now pastoring and teaching thousands each week. They’re taking what they learned in school and preaching it on Sundays to their people.

Another of RHEMA Mexico’s graduates—with Tim and Rhonda’s help—began holding crusades throughout Mexico. At one point he was seeing 1,000 people won to Christ each month.

One pastor who graduated from RHEMA Mexico is even taking the faith message he learned and using it to smuggle Bibles into Iraq and Afghanistan. On a recent trip, this pastor—Pastor S—had his suitcases filled with Bibles. In the past, the customs agents had either ignored what they saw or the Lord had “blinded” their eyes. On this trip, though, he was caught and taken in for interrogation. He could have been detained, imprisoned, and sentenced to death—at the very least severely beaten or imprisoned for life—but in the interrogation room something amazing happened.

“Pastor S told them the truth,” Rhonda said. “He told them, ‘We want to bring the Word of God into your country,’ and just basically began to preach. The man interrogating him pulled him aside and said, ‘Tell me about this Jesus guy.’ So he told him about Jesus and led him to the Lord.” And before he was deported—without a beating or imprisonment—Pastor S was even assured that the Bibles he had carried in would not be destroyed.

“This pastor came to us puzzled because the Lord had not protected him from being caught,” Rhonda recalled. “But he got to share the Gospel with a customs agent—one of the gatekeepers to the country.”

Stories like this encourage Tim and Rhonda to keep looking forward. Even though they have seen amazing fruit, they’ve got bigger plans for Mexico City and the entire Hispanic community. They recently launched a ministerial association, a pastors association, and a graduates association to provide accountability for all of their graduates—whatever type of ministry they’re in.

They’ve also got plans to increase RHEMA Mexico’s impact through four extension campuses opening in September in and around Mexico City. Leaders with a heart for RHEMA’s mission—what Tim and Rhonda call “special ops”—are already being trained to run the schools. And this missionary couple is excited about the possibilities.

“Mexico City is like the Washington, D.C., of the nation,” Rhonda explained. “The nation’s capital needs the Word—needs RHEMA Mexico—because everything trickles down from the head. When the Word of faith captivates the “D.C.” of Mexico, it will trickle out to all the other major cities. We’re pulling in the net—banding together—and making our voice bigger. And we believe the people—the entire nation—will have to stand up and take notice.

Setting the Captive Free //Tim Rogers

We had a lady—who now is a RHEMA Mexico graduate—come to us requesting prayer for her husband who had recently been imprisoned. You can’t imagine what Mexican prisons are like. It’s an unbelievably harsh environment. For 50 pesos (about $4.15 U.S.) you can take somebody out in prison—just like that. There’s probably more crime going on in prison than there is out of prison.

Understandably, this woman was extremely distraught. Her husband was a prosecuting attorney in Mexico City and very wealthy. Someone he defended had paid him with laundered money, though he didn’t know it at the time. As soon as he found out, he immediately withdrew it from his account and sent it back, because he didn’t want to have any trace of that on his hands.

However, the money had already been traced to his accounts and he was immediately thrown in jail. In Mexico, you are guilty until you’re proven innocent.

So, he had already sent the money back, but he was linked to it. The banks found out about it, prosecuted him, and sent him to jail. Now he’s in a 10-by-15 prison cell where about 25 other men are sleeping. His first day in prison, he saw people he had put there, and he knew that if any of them identified him, he would immediately be killed.

Of course, then, this man’s wife comes to us asking for prayer to get her husband out. He was sentenced to six years in prison, and by this time he had already been in several months. We prayed for the man and his wife, and both Rhonda and I went and led him to the Lord in prison. He was later filled with the Holy Ghost.

This attorney was going through the process of appeals, which is a very interesting thing in Mexico. You basically have to buy people off. So this man was selling all of his belongings—first of all to pay for a better cell that offered him more protection. He was paying thousands of dollars a month, trying everything he could to get out, but every appeal he made was denied. He was well-to-do but he was losing all he had and was still in prison.

Just to give you an idea of what this man did before this time, he would work for the banks and hire off-duty police officers to kidnap people who had outstanding debts—until they gave the money back. Consequently, he had a lot of enemies and even traveled in armored vehicles. Now he’s in prison and building up a lot of resentment against the people who put him there.

In the meantime, we are visiting him, praying with him, and feeding him Brother Hagin’s books. Finally, though, he was down to one last appeal. If this didn’t work, he would have to spend the full six years in prison. On the day of this final appeal, he was sitting in his jail cell reading one of Brother Hagin’s books and the Lord started dealing with him about forgiveness. The Holy Ghost told him, “You cannot walk out of this jail cell without forgiving those people for what has happened to you.” The man said that right there in his cell, the Spirit of God came in and he began weeping. He forgave those who wronged him—just totally forgave them—and broke before the Lord. He gave it all to the Lord and said, “I’ll do whatever it takes—whatever You need me to do—but I’m going to walk in love and walk in forgiveness.”

That afternoon when the judge came back for that final appeal, the man was totally exonerated. He was released from prison that same day. After he got out of prison, both he and his wife came to church. They eventually attended the training center and graduated. This man has completely changed, and both he and his wife truly love the Lord.