FUGITIVE IN A CHURCH TOWER 1957

While I was frolicking through pepper plots and coffee groves, totally oblivious toward the realities my parents and the grown-ups were experiencing, there were still pockets of persecution and resistance toward the Gospel and changed lives. 

At times I wondered whether my name was "Gringa", the term we white girls were referred to but other than that I was that child in LaLa Adventure Land, lost in my own world which did get me into trouble a few times.

No churches at that time had been given permits to operate.  The state of Puebla had a governor directly opposed to the Evangelicals and the Christians were still persecuted by the Roman Catholics. 
According to Mexican law, no building was to be used for public worship where titles have not been legally transferred to the district and federal governments.   So the unfinished church was used as a home for the boys Home for a time and services could be used to worship in a private atmosphere.
After intense fasting and prayer a permit was issued.  (that is a story in its own right)

The Sears Photo Booth at eight

Meanwhile somewhere else in Indian land in 1957, another man with a strong conviction that God answers prayer, was  living his life.

 FUGITIVE IN A CHURCH TOWER  ~ by James G. Dale 1957 MIM Bulletin MAY/JUNE/JULY
Don Antonio Hernandez was a follower of Christ, elder in a Presbyterian church, and one of the most respected men of his town.  He had been a soldier, and was a very brave defender of his country.
About 500 Revolutionists from the ranches invaded the area.  The authorities fled to the mountains, and the people asked Don Antonio to get together a band of men to defend the town, because when the Revolutionists came, they would kill and plunder.
Don Antonio gathered sixty picked men into the tower of the local Catholic church.

From this high point, these men, like snipers, killed so many of the Revolutionists in the street below that the invaders fled to the mountains.  However, they knew that Don Antonio was leading the defenders, and they sent him word they were coming back to get him.
A few weeks later they did return, and they came so suddenly that Don Antonio did not have time to leave the town.  He chose as a hiding place the tower of the evangelical church, and there he hid for 12 months.
Nobody knew that he was there except the pastor and his wife.  He was a tailer.  His wife would take him cloth and he would cut out clothes, and she did the sewing.  Each day she carried him his food.
He felt he was safe in the tower until one day he heard the wife of the pastor talking about him being there, and he felt sure that the news would be spread abroad, so he decided to leave.   But all the streets leading out of the town were picketed, and how would he get away?
Don Antonio was a man of prayer.  I have heard him tell many times how he asked God to open a way for him to escape.  One Sunday dawned bright and clear, and somehow he felt God was telling him to go.
Early that evening a storm broke over his town, and the rain fell in torrents, so everybody sought shelter, and the pickets, too, sought protection from the storm.  Don Antonio knew they would do so, and knelt down and thanked God that he was now opening the way for him to go.  Then walked out of the town without hindrance.  God had delivered him with that storm.
For one year Don Antonio did not hear from his family, and he decided to go back, even though doing so might cost him his life.  Again he knelt and asked God to open the way.  He rode 25 miles on a very slow train, getting off at a little station where the only house was the home of the station master.
The conductor begged him not to get off there, because on a nearby hill bandits were in hiding, just waiting for the train to leave to come down and rob and kill whoever would leave the train.
But he felt God was opening the way for him.  Tall grass had grown around the station, and he hid in it until dark, then he set out on a 30-mile trek to his home.  He could not go by a main road, but made his way through the woods.
Though at times he was not sure of the way, he knew God was his guide, and would take him safely home.  He reached home at last, and learned that the Revolutionists had left, and he was safe.
Shortly thereafter, Don Antonio and his family moved to another place to live, but he left with a strong conviction that God does answer prayer."