October Newsletter

Dear Praying Friends,

     Thank you for your faithfulness in prayer. I will explain what happened in just a minute. I apologize to those of you who received a blank email, and especially to those who did and still prayed anyway. Thank you.

      Yesterday, early morning, a military helicopter went on patrol preparing for an operative today in which they would seek out the trouble spots in Jalisco. It was a combined military, Federal and local police operative. The patrol yesterday was just looking over things when they discovered a column of the bad guys moving along a back road. The bad guys opened fire with a 50 caliber machine gun mounted in a pickup truck. They killed three soldiers and managed to down the helicopter in a hard landing. Obviously, that brought out everyone in a shootout.

     The reaction of the bad guys was to start stopping cars, buses and trucks, blockading the roads and burning the vehicles. We were made aware of it when my cat jumped scared at the sounds of
"fireworks." Within minutes, the highway in front of our house was stopped completely in both directions. By the time I got to the highway to close our front gate, the police were zooming up the wrong side of the highway past our gate at a high rate of speed. Cheyenne actually saw the smoke from two cars. They were slightly above us where the highway passes over a hill. They had burned one car in each direction after approximately ten men jumped out of vehicle fully armed. For the next two and a half hours, there was a steady stream of police vehicles flying past our door. The bad guys continued to move out the highway away from us starting more fires.

    By the evening hours there had been 39 blockades started in Guadalajara plus many others along different highways leading into and out of Guadalajara. The damage spread from the line with Michoican on our East to the state of Colima on our South and included some damage in the state of Guanajuato to our Northeast.

     There were banks burned (closed for the holiday), sixteen gasoline stations affected directly, many buses and trucking vehicles as well as many private cars and taxis. By the time I was writing the blog, all bus transportation was cancelled, all gas stations closed in three states and the general warning to the public to shelter in place. We live in a city of millions, so that is no small task. Also because of back-to-back vacation days, some people had both Friday and Monday off, making for a long holiday.

     Today, Saturday, it APPEARS that all is normal. I guess if it was YOUR burned car that went by here on a flatbed truck, it is not normal. However, it seems that things are nearly back to normal. Some businesses will not re-open today. 

     In all, there were seven people killed and probably millions in damage. The police and fire units worked without rest to keep the fires at minimum, although several fires were severe in the buildings.

     We never felt directly involved, but it would be easy to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The cars near us were less than a mile from our door, so it was real. I could never express our true feelings to know that some of you prayed and made contact with us, even though you did not get the real message. You are real prayer warriors. Thank you for caring.

     I have waited since early morning trying to get a good Internet signal. I truly pray that this does go through to all. May God bless you today.

Gary & Ann