‘I am Going to Seek God:’ The Remarkable Testimony of a Christian Mother in Chiapas

Lupita begins each morning by praising God. As a domestic abuse survivor and a single mother, she can testify that while others may harm or neglect her, God never will.

“From the morning when we wake up and open our eyes, first of all, we give thanks to God,” she says.

Lupita lives with her family in Yajalón, Chiapas, in the south of Mexico. She works as a housecleaner when she is able to find work. Most of the time, she only earns enough to feed herself and her children for the day.

Seeking and Finding God’s Presence

Even though Lupita was raised attending church with her parents, she drifted away as she got older.

“I spent a good time away from the church,” Lupita explains.

But after a family emergency, Lupita found herself turning to God in prayer.

Her husband was electrocuted and seriously injured. Lupita watched as he lay on the ground, his body covered in third-degree burns. 

“At that time, I told the Lord, I'll look for you,” she says. “Even if he doesn't look for you, I do. So, thanks to God, he got up. He started walking. And then, from that moment on, as I knew the promise that I had made to God, what I did was look for a church.”

Lupita kept her word. She visited several churches, but to her disappointment, she did not feel God’s presence.

That is, until she attended the funeral of a local Christian man. There, she met a woman named Florecita, who encouraged her to attend church.

“On that day, in that church, I felt something, as if some extended arms hugged me inside,” she says. “I said, ‘I feel something here. Something special. I know that there is someone more powerful here.’”

Lupita and her children began attending a new church, where Lupita was finally able to feel at home and worship God.

“It was already a lot of my desire and my longing to be there,” she says. “And my desire was to sing and to do the things of God. In this church, they received me with open arms.”

Lupita adds that she felt her longing to know the Lord grow as her faith was strengthened in church.

“I already needed God,” this Christian in Chiapas says. “From that moment, I started to know the Lord. After I entered this church, I started to feel that I was being raised by something of me. A desire to seek God. And the truth is that I have seen many miracles of God.”

Forced to Choose: Church or Her Husband

Lupita’s husband became increasingly wary of her church attendance. Over time, he became dependent on drugs and alcohol, and his anger grew.

“There were days when he did not allow us to go to church,” Lupita explains. “And that bothered me because I was not doing anything wrong.”

If Lupita and her children went to church anyway, her husband forced them to wait outside, until they could sneak into their home late at night after he had fallen asleep.

“But then I took courage and said, ‘You know what? I am going to church and I am leaving,’” Lupita says. “‘I am going to seek God. And if you do not want [to], go ahead. Go to the street and look for what you want in the street. Here you will not find alcohol, there is no drug. The only thing you will find is love, if you want.’”

Lupita’s husband became violent, hitting her and throwing her into a stream, all while she was pregnant. She praises God that her son was born healthy despite the abuse. 

“All the things that I went through, I suffered,” Lupita says. “And I thank God that He was with me in everything—in the good and in the bad.”

Later, when their daughter fell sick, Lupita’s husband refused to pay for her treatment. Yet, through the grace of God and the prayers of her church family, Lupita was able to get the medicine her daughter needed.

“I saw God's help again,” Lupita shares. “I took it as a lesson.” She learned that, although her husband had abused and abandoned her when she needed him most, God would never leave her or forsake her.

Still, Lupita prays and hold onto hope that her husband will one day come to know the Lord.

“I believe and I have faith in God that one day, he will come,” she says. “One day, he will seek God together with us.”

A Christian in Chiapas Has Hope for the Future

Lupita says that she is grateful to God for the blessings she has received, and she holds onto hope for more grace in the future.

“In my children, I know that there is a great future because I know that God is going to give us something good,” she explains. “We expect something from God.”

GCR surprised Lupita with an audio Bible: a small, portable, solar-powered device that comes equipped with the Old and New Testaments in Spanish and other languages spoken in Mexico. Now, she and her family can listen to the Scriptures together.

“Thank you and thank God that you have come to my humble home to visit me,” she says. “For me, that gift that you have brought me is a lot. Thank you very much. I feel very happy.”

Lupita leaves us with a word of encouragement for other believers:“I encourage you to continue seeking God, and that you never part from God. Embrace more the things of God, because everything we need comes from God. And if we need help, it is God who will help us. Our reward from our Lord will come soon.”

As a Christian in Chiapas, Lupita asks for our prayers: for her children’s futures, for her family—incuding her husband—who do not know Christ, and that God may use her to reach them.

“It is my wish to advance more, to speak more about the things of God,” she says. “To speak to the people who do not yet know about God. And give them that word, so that they, too, are happy like us.”