Murder Rate In Juarez Has Dropped In 2011; Ministry Believes Prayer Has Helped
Every morning, Barney Field looks in the mirror and gets ready for work.
Taped to the mirror is what he considers one of the most important things he does to prepare for the day. It’s a prayer for Juarez, Mexico that he has recited every day since the start of Lent.
The prayer asks for God to intervene in the violence in Juarez and Field thinks it is having an effect.
The murder rate in Juarez has fallen in the first three months of 2011 and an El Paso ministry believes its prayers for Juarez during Lent have helped.
The Chihuahua state attorney general’s office said through the end of March there were 626 homicides in Juarez, which sits across the border from El Paso, according to a report by Reuters.
The El Paso Times said Monday a computer model by a researcher at the Autonomous University of Juarez projected the annual homicide figures. If the downward trend continues, there would be 2,504 homicides in Juarez by the end of 2011 instead of the 5,000 originally projected.
El Paso For Jesus began a campaign, Prayers for Juarez during Lent, starting with Ash Wednesday with Christians praying for Juarez daily during Lent.
“We have churches going up to Scenic Drive and pray at noon and again at 7 in the evening,” El Paso For Jesus President Field told ABC-7. “He tells us to pray until something good happens and just have that faith. After we started praying, we didn’t see very much in the paper (about murders happening) then that attack in the bar. We think God’s really been hearing these prayers.”
There were 183 homicides in March, the fewest monthly deaths since February 2010. There have been 45 homicides in April.
Most of the victims are connected in some way to the drug trade, officials said, but the victims increasingly include a cross section of society, including U.S. citizens, according to the report in Reuters.
