About Me

I was born in Saltillo, in the state of Coahuila, Mexico in 1967. When I was born, my parents were serving in a rural ministry 400 miles south of the border. At the end of 1968, we moved ten hours further south to Cuernavaca, in the Morelos state, a city 60 miles south of Mexico City. My dad was attending a Bible college in Mexico City, while my mom and I were hosted by missionaries in Morelos. We waited for my dad who came back home on weekends. He finished in 1969.

Larry Cuyler, an American missionary, invited my dad to work at a missionary project in a rural area very close to where he grew up. So we moved to Sandia el Chico where six American families and a single lady were planning to establish new churches in a forty square mile area.

My Mom -Rosario Samaniego (1942-1990)-

This was a rough area. It consisted of roads that existed only for carts pulled by animals. There was no electricity, no vehicles, and the closest medical clinic was three and a half hours away. A three hour walk was needed to get the bus on the state highway.

The missionaries bought around 1200 acres and built their own houses, a clinic, and a landing strip for a four-passenger plane. They started to plant sorghum, potatoes, and corn. It was a huge project that worked for two to three years.

During that time many good things happened. The clinic was a blessing to the people because it provided surgeries, baby deliveries, and care for the sick. The missionary project provided jobs, shared the gospel of Jesus Christ, and evangelized each weekend to approximately fifteen different villages by vehicles and plane.

This mission ended when the father of the surgeon died. He decided to put the body in the plane and fly to the state capitol, Monterrey. When he landed in the airport and was on his way to the authorities and American consul, one of the people in the airport saw the body and reported it to the airport security, so they detained him. The local government went to the mission to investigate. A newspaper reporter wrote about a religious “sect” and their clandestine runways in different villages. Of course, that scared the missionaries there, and that afternoon they packed what they could and returned to the U.S. Essentially, this was the end of the mission project.

My dad and three new preachers are the only ones who continue serving there. Around seven of those churches still exist, and they are now trying to plant three new churches. They hold a family camp with around 300 people attending each summer.

So, I grew up there. Our house was a 10 x 10 rustic room. My dad added another room and a kitchen with a fireplace where my mother cooked our meals. To go to school two miles away, we used bicycles. I am the oldest of three brothers. My mother died when I was twenty three. I gained one stepbrother (Sammy) when my dad married with Mrs. Maria Cruz Sanchez again four years later on April 16, 1994.

Filemon Castro & Maria Cruz

At the end of my sixth grade of school, I was twelve years old and ready for middle school. But we did not have that level in our area, so I went to live at a mission ranch near Saltillo three hours away. I lived in one of the rooms in the camp and had all my meals and expenses covered by the Tate’s, a family from Illinois (Lowell & Brenda, Tim and Todd), for 2 years and one year by Robert Walker, a single man who was a teacher for missionary children in the city. When I finished my ninth grade, I went to live with The Sanchez family to attend a technological institute for one year. It was in this place, one year later, when I was sixteen years old, that I received God’s call for the ministry.

My family experience that I had during my twelve years at home helps me to understand my cultural values today. I think that my parents always did their best to give us a healthy home. We never had a nice house, a nice vehicle, or everything we wanted because they could not do that. When I lived there we never had TV, but to stay together as a family was nice. That is something that now I am trying to give to my own family.