Part 3

A light in the darkness

“It was a rough environment. There were no police. State police would come, but it had to be a big deal to go there," Alan Thompson said. "There was a lot of fear. I had to be wise because I could lose favor with someone, and that could be dangerous. I had to learn to adapt to whoever I was talking with. If I offended someone, it was no problem for them to shoot me.”

There was such a lack of control that most people, including children, carried weapons.

“Younger kids, 10 to 13-years-old, formed groups together and grew marijuana. They made money and got guns. These kids carried high powered automatic weapons,” Thompson said.

Marijuana and opium trafficking was a major source of crime in the area, and a source of danger for Thompson as well. As crime continued, he had to be more careful about the villages he visited. Many people he knew and befriended were murdered, or became murderers because of drug trafficking.

Amidst the dangerous climate, Thompson continued with his mission and the people continued to accept him.

“They were finding out there was really a God, and they were coming to the Lord. We would visit them and love them. We weren’t partial. We fell in love with them and they fell in love with us. They wanted you to talk about the Lord if they knew you were a Christian,” said Thompson.

Time went on, and people became extremely interested in the Bible. As the children learned to read, their parents would have them read the Bible aloud to them. Thompson also left the cassette tapes and tape-players for people to keep and listen to. Maria Zamorano eventually used these tapes as she traveled to other villages to share Jesus with others.

Faith in the face of trial

Though Thompson enjoyed his missionary calling, his time in Mexico was not without discouragement. Some people who had come to Christ began to return to their old lifestyles, and “those were tough times,” he said. “I would wonder why I was here.”

The fear of being shot lingered at times, and Thompson also found himself hungry and cold many nights.

There was often not a bed available for him to sleep in during his mountain treks, and a family he was staying with would offer him a makeshift bed. In one instance, a family had Thompson sleep in the storage area where they kept all their harvested corn. He laid his sleeping bag across the corn as his bed for the night.

Another hardship Thompson faced was traveling in the rough terrain of the mountains.


“I didn’t even know where I was going a lot of the time. Sometimes there were foot trails, or I would have a topographical map, but I would have to overcome those fears,” he said.

During one trip to the mountains on his horse, Thompson got lost taking a shortcut on a trail he had never used before, through a village called Los Muertos.

“The trail disappeared under pine needles. I kept riding, only to find myself on a plateau in the mountains,” Thompson said. “I prayed and I said, ‘Lord, I know You’re with me. I’m lost, would You just help me?'”


It was after this prayer that Thompson stumbled upon a trail. He followed it until his horse came to a sudden stop. After many efforts to get the horse to move, he decided to turn the horse around, and then bring him back up to the same point in the trail where he had stopped. To his dismay, the horse stopped a second time in the exact same place.

“I couldn’t see anything around to explain why the horse was doing this,” Thompson said.

He turned the horse around again, this time having the horse gallop down the trail. As the horse galloped back up the trail, he stopped a third time in the exact same spot. This time Thompson sat quietly and listened.

“The Lord spoke to me, again in an inner audible-voice, and He said ‘let go of the reigns.’ The horse went to the left by himself, about 15-20 yards, and all the sudden there was another trail that I couldn’t see,” said Thompson.

As his horse continued down the trail, Thompson spotted an orange peel and some peeled back sugar cane, and knew that he would soon find people. The trail continued to wind around, and opened into a large, dark canyon.

“An hour or more later I came out in Los Muertos,” he said.

Though many of these times were extremely trying, Thompson chose to endure. What kept him going was “the joy of being able to share with people and see fruit, and be encouraged that God is really, truly working in their hearts, and that they are following Him, knowing Him and loving Him,” Thompson said.

Life lessons

Thompson continued to go to share the gospel in the Sierra Madres for about ten years. During this time he met and married his wife Julie, who was a student at the Calvary Chapel Language School a few years after himself.

Eventually, the church in Alamos, Thompson’s home base, was in need of a new pastor, and he and Julie took the new position. Though trips to the Sierra Madres weren’t as frequent during the next 12 years, they never forgot the people they visited, or the lessons they learned.

“I learned that I can trust the Lord with my life. I can take the steps of faith to step out where He calls me. If I called upon Him, He answered.”

“I learned who my God was. That’s a big deal. I saw time and time again His faithfulness, goodness and grace. He is with me. What can’t you do if He is with you?”

“My dependency is on the Lord, not on myself.”

“Life is about living for the Lord. He can do whatever He wants with us.”

“The goal of a missionary is to love people into the kingdom of God. It’s not presenting information, it’s taking what God has placed in your heart, and sharing it with those people who God loves so much.”

Thompson, living in the states since 2002 with his wife and two children, still muses about his experiences in Mexico.

“I miss the people the most. I miss the warm friendly faces of the Christians and the non-Christians. They would tell me that I was one of them. They would say, ‘You’re not an American, you’re one of us.’”


His life, he said, has been very rich and he couldn’t have planned it better, but there is one thing he is curious about.

“We don’t know the eternal impact of what we do on earth, but I am looking forward to going to heaven and seeing what God was doing through me, and why he had me in certain places."