TAPACHULA MISSION

TAPACHULA, MEXICO

Rev. Ed Cadle, the Founder and Director Emeritus of Mission On The Move, went to Tapachula in 1985 to begin a ministry for the poor people of Mexico and Central America.  He started a refugee center, and he did not give up, and todayMission On The Move is reaping the harvest.

In the late 1980s, Mission On The Move's first team went to Tapachula to begin the construction of the refugee center called the Good Samaritan Home. It was used as a refugee center until 1996 when it was converted into a home for street children. The home was closed in 2001. The home was reopened as a home for boys when the first missionaries for MOM went to Tapachula in 2002 to run the ministry. This time, the home was not for street children, but for children who live in the prisons with their fathers. In 2004 the boys’ home was once again renovated to house 15 boys.

 

Because little girls also live in the prison with their fathers, a home for girls was opened in January 2003. This home was loaned to Mission On The Move at no charge. In 2005 a new girls’  home was completed.  

At the present time, there are 40 children living in the three homes, 16 girls and 24 boys. They are the sons and daughters of prostitutes, murderers, kidnappers, thieves, and drug dealers. 

When the children come to the homes from the prison it is not always easy for the staff or for them. They have lots of issues from physical and sexual abuse, like Glendi and her sister Mari and Janet, who were all abused by inmates in the prison.

Their spiritual growth and maturity is far beyond most children in the USA. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it.” This is a scripture that the missionaries and the staff try to live by and trust in the Lord each day for His guidance and direction of this ministry.

Through this ministry, the children are developing a hunger and desire for spiritual things, so they will hopefully want to follow God no matter what happens in the future.

Most of the children do really well in school. Many of them have never been to school or are behind their grade level when they come to live with in the homes because children do not go to school when they are living in the prison. 

Children don’t live in prisons just in Tapachula, many prisons in Mexico permit children to live with their fathers. When a man goes to prison, his wife and children can live with him if they do not have a home. When there is no one else to take care of the children, they live with their father in prison.  Only babies who are breast feeding are allowed to live in the women’s prison. The living conditions are horrible. The men don’t have cells like you see in the United States. It is a big commune of men, women and children living together: murderers, drug dealers, rapist, thieves, kidnappers, and the women and children.

Four to six men share a room and the children live in that room with the other men. When the wife of the prisoner lives with him, she shares that same room. The children sleep on the cold cement floors, and if they are lucky, they have a cardboard box to sleep on.

The men have conjugal visits from women outside the prison every Tuesday and Friday night. If their wife is in the women’s prison, she comes over to the men’s prison on those same nights. This is why we continue to have babies born in the prisons.

The children have no rights and the parents have total control of the children; regardless of what their parents have done and continue to do within the prison. 

Mission On The Move continues to try and remove the children from this situation but we cannot take a child from the prison without parental consent.