My name is Marcus Reyes, and this is Orizaba, Veracruz, in the country of Mexico. Orizaba is very special because it has all these mountains that are around me, and the mountains live the people who are Nahuatl speakers, who are descendants of the Aztecs. There's 145,000 people who live here in the region. They have no gospel witness, and our vision is to reach the unreached here in Mexico.
So as I began to travel into these villages, I would approach their homes and ask them if I could read a portion of scripture with them. Most of the time it would be inside of a little wood shack. The woman would be cooking. The woman would be making tortillas.
And one day as I was watching them, I saw them burning black walnut. And I said, can I see that? I said, do you know how expensive this is in the United States? And they said, oh, we have those trees here. And well, there's a bunch up in the mountains.
So black walnut is a beautiful tree. It's one of the most darkest woods naturally. And of course, it has these beautiful blonde streaks through it. But everything all begins as we hike up into the mountains. There's no way we're able to get vehicles into the mountains. There's no way we're able to get machines into the mountains. The only thing we're able to bring is chainsaws.
So these Nahuatl believers, they actually travel with me and they're hiking an hour and a half, two hours. Then we have to cut the tree down. And after several, an hour and a half of hiking, two hours, then after we chop the tree down, which is another half hour, and then they actually make boards freehand with the chainsaws. And it's amazing how accurate they are. This is what they do almost every single day. This is what they work in. And after many years of working at this, they're very accurate with their skill.
Then after we have the boards, then we have to dry them. Black walnut is one of the woods that usually takes the longest to dry, and it's usually between six months and a year. After we have wood that's dried, that's workable, then we have to make all the correct cuts. But after we see the finished product, I think very few people realize, at least in the Mexican mountains, all the work that's being put into it before they have a finished product in their hands.
I am very excited about these frames, not only because they're being used to celebrate great men of church history, but I am also very excited because it speaks about God's work, activity, both now, presently, and in the future. Because these frames are a testimony of God's grace among the nations to the Nahuatl people, the descendants of the Aztecs.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
The Christian Heritage Collection seeks to honor the memory of the giants of the Christian faith.
The prints are framed in Black Walnut from the forests of southern Mexico by Marcus Reyes, a “tent-making” missionary and pastor in the mountainous regions around Orizaba, Mexico. The hand crafted frames are produced from wood hand hewn and carried down the mountains by the Nauhua (descendants of the Aztecs) People. Marcus's ministry among them speaks to the fact that there is still much work to be done.