Written by Spectrum Ministries Founder, Pastor Von:

Isn't it strange when a Youth Pastor has to be forced into a mission focus by one of his own youth group? That's what happened to me. When it came to missions, I was blind.

Almost fifty years ago David Rule, one of the teenagers in my youth group, asked me if we could visit an orphanage he knew of in Tijuana. I wasn't interested and gave him the standard reasons. "There are a lot of poor we could minister to here in the United States and Mexico was another country. You see David, foreign work was for missionaries that are specially called." Well, he didn't seem to buy my answer and continued pestering me ... I finally gave in.

As David and I drove down to Tijuana I was hoping he wouldn't remember how to get to this orphanage. Work in Tijuana wasn't my type of thing! I didn't particularly like Mexicans and I knew Tijuana would be full of them! Unfortunately he remembered the location. It was a cold, wet and muddy trip through narrow dirt roads. We arrived at the Rose Park Orphanage and parked by the wall on the dirt road. As we walked through the big iron gates more than a hundred dirty and love-starved little kids ran to greet us. This was a surprise and I stood there rather awkwardly adjusting to this greeting. David enjoyed the time but I wasn't impressed. Everything was wet, cold and dirty including the kids. As we returned home I lectured David on why this kind of thing wasn't for us; it was for missionaries. When I arrived home I took a long hot shower and tried to wash the whole experience away. Mexico? Dirty little kids? No way!

Several weeks passed and David with a few of his friends begged me again to visit the orphanage in Tijuana. They persisted and I finally gave in and drove them into Tijuana and on up to this Rose Park Orphanage with those dirty little rag-muffins. This trip led to more trips and gradually the Lord changed me. I fell in love with these poor little kids and our ministry in Mexico began.

Now, I was the one challenging our youth group to become involved in ministry.

For years, almost every week, I would fill my little Volkswagen bus with a small team of my teens and head across the border to work in Mexico. Our orphanage ministry grew into working in the Tijuana dump and later to a variety of poor orphanages and Tijuana neighborhoods. The work continues today in the form of Spectrum Ministries. (See our 'IN THE BEGINNING' video)

During those years more than fifty of the teens in my youth group headed to New Tribes Mission Bible schools; of those fifty, many became foreign missionaries to tribes in Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Indonesia even Africa resulting in hundreds of tribal people hearing the Gospel of God's love for the first time! Most have their own Scriptures translated in their own tongue. Other teens in our youth group became youth pastors and pastors.

If you were to ask many of those missionaries and pastors, they would tell you that the one thing they had in common were those trips to Mexico and the ministry there in Tijuana.

David Rule doesn't know what he started when he "dragged" me across the border that day. Indeed, once I was blind but now I can see!