Why We Exist
Our Vision - To see the Tarahumara Body
of Christ transform every corner of their nation in our lifetime.
Our Mission - To forge Tarahumara disciples, churches, ministries, and alliances that catalyze the Tarahumara Body of Christ to finish her race well.
Our Strategic Vision – To see the Tarahumara Body of Christ rise up - as a body - and send out their own pastors and missionaries in 5 years.
Opportunities
If you're a Christian serving Tarahumaras as a missionary, pastor, or as part of a Christian ministry, then join the Maranatha Alliance! We're lifting each other up, serving and loving one-anther. We're becoming the Tarahumara Body of Christ - united but distinct, like the different parts of a body. You were designed to be a functioning part of the Body of Christ, and the Body is disabled without you.
The Tarahumara Body of Christ is edified and built up as we learn to love and serve one-another through working together! Does your ministry, church, or mission field in the Tarahumara nation have a need? If you're an Alliance member then make a proposal! Projects are considered if they're more about forging disciples than completing construction projects, and they must create durable, formal connections within the Tarahumara Body of Christ. The idea is that we all have giftings, resources, and needs - and by working together we can accomplish more, rejoicing when others rejoice.
Ask questions, join the Alliance, or partner with us to transform lives across the Tarahumara nation.
Our Work in Action
Forging Tarahumara Teens
Pastor Kike Almanza and his wife Edna have been faithfully serving outside the small city of Guachochi in the remote Tarahumara area Loma del Manzano for 8 years. Their Tarahumara church, Rarámuri Baptist Church, now serves 50 - 70 people and is a shining light in the area. Like all Tarahumara villages, the children can’t read, write, or do math at grade level, and most have almost no ability at all. Seeing an opportunity to continue discipling the children while also meeting a critical basic need, they opened an after-school program in their church to teach these skills to the local Tarahumara children. The program is very popular, with between 35 - 50 children now attending.
As the program grew it was necessary to divide the children into age-appropriate classes. At various times they’ve had adults as teachers, even including a trained teacher. However, beginning this school year, those adults are no longer available to participate. However, over the years, approximately 10 - 15 of the children who progressed through the program are now teens that are growing in their faith. In part through participation with LightShine’s Joshua Program and exposure to Maranatha Alliance principles of raising up youth, Pastor Kike believes now is the right time to 1) switch his after-school model to rely primarily on training and equipping his own youth that they’ve spent years investing in to become the teachers for the children’s classes. 2) move from an ad-hoc curriculum to a professional structured curriculum that his teen leaders can more easily teach well.
This $21.5k USD project includes: 1) Purchase one year of student and teacher LAM curriculum – the same Christian reading / writing / mathematics that LightShine utilizes – very similar to Abeka. 2) LightShine and Joshua Program provides an immediate immersive 4-day training in LightShine for all of Pastor Kike’s potential youth leaders. 3) A modest grant to be used for better equipping the classrooms including basic school supplies. 4) A modest weekly stipend, for one year, for the 5 youth that are primarily involved in teaching the classes. Because poverty is a constant issue, this stipend is critical to enable the youth to participate long-term, providing stability for the youth and the program. 5) Follow-up training directly by LAM in 6 months.
Most of Pastor Kike’s youth have never been outside of their region, so a Chihuahua City training trip and participation in LightShine will be highly motivational, an incredible opportunity for worldview growth and discipleship!
This project is a high-impact, low-cost, low-risk easy win for the Maranatha Alliance. It targets two core principles of the Alliance – raising up Tarahumara youth, and connecting ministry to ministry within the Alliance to form the Tarahumara Body of Christ. This is a simple project that has immediate effects that can be celebrated during the next annual Maranatha Alliance Conference in March 2026. It has e a measurable impact on Tarahumara Teens in the Guachochi region, and will enable them to eventually have an impact on the Tarahumara children from their same regions.
Words of Life
Andy and Deborah Kramer, founders of Sierra Send, began working among the Tarahumara in the early 2000s and are Rarámuri-language fluent. Sierra Send has a powerful testimony of more than two decades of faithful service across the Sierra Tarahumara – equipping leaders, developing and distributing audio/video/print Scripture and songbooks in Tarahumara, and most recently in 2023 - after many years of development - launching a Bible based Tarahumara literacy program. The goal of the program was to open 30 Tarahumara villages to the Gospel in 5 years, and in only the first year alone God has exceeded that number – arguably the most effective Evangelization program for the Tarahumaras ever to exist.
Sierra Send’s proven ‘alfabetización’ literacy model allows weekly access to otherwise closed Tarahumara villages through 60 one-hour reading, writing, and numbers and basic arithmetic lessons delivered via small projectors in Rarámuri and Spanish. Students receive the audio Bible device loaded with 700+ Scripture recordings and 200+ worship tracks by lesson 10. Facilitators -often local believers - receive materials and very importantly, a modest stipend. The program now sustains approximately 34 classes, with demand exceeding capacity.
However, the literacy program has greatly exceeded projected costs and available funding. This 1-year Maranatha Alliance project proposal - “Words of Life” - allows Sierra Send and the literacy program to be sustainable. But it also unites Sierra Send with JUCUM (YWAM) in Creel to open a new region, doubling the program’s footprint into the dark corners of the Sierra Madre by engaging JUCUM students and graduates as paid class facilitators—expanding coverage while raising new youth leaders from within the Tarahumara Nation!
This $71.5 USD project perfectly aligns and furthers the Maranatha Alliance vision and mission – uniting the Tarahumara Body of Christ for multiplied impact while raising up new leaders. “Words of Life” is a high-impact, relatively low-risk easy win that is the perfect first project for the Maranatha Alliance to celebrate together and use as a catalyst to continue building momentum, reach, and efficacy.
