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Pastor José Padilla sat on a rock one hot, dusty August afternoon, praying for hours for his community in the rugged Mexican desert. Already, on the few dirt streets in Kilometro 29, a squatter village of seven cardboard shanties on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, there were too many niños de la calle—street children living with drugs, alcohol, and abuse in place of loving parents and food. His heart heavy, Padilla asked God what could be done.

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God showed him.

With rugged mountains towering to his left and a seemingly endless desert to his right, Padilla gazed at the scene in front of him and received a vision.

"The vision was that God was interested in helping the children of a destroyed place," said Padilla, who 13 years ago saw images before him of pale yellow school buildings, a wedge-shaped church with lofted ceilings, and children praising God. He whispered the words Dios es maravilloso—"God is marvelous"—and asked God how these images would come to be. "This is when God told me I was going to make a school."

A former street child himself, Padilla had no money, no training, and practically no education. But after fasting and praying for 15 days, he put into motion the one thing he did have—faith. Out of his vision came Gabriela Mistral.

Gabriela Mistral opened its doors in September 1992, meeting in a pallet-and-cardboard shack the size of a small garage with two of the pastor's daughters as teachers. Excited, they prepared tables and papers for 50 people on the first day of registration. Only four came.

"People said, 'You guys are crazy. This is not a school, just a cardboard house,' " said Padilla. Some thought a Christian school would just teach songs, while others accused them before the government of being frauds. Classes began with just 2 children in kindergarten and 2 in first grade, but attendance grew to 45 after the students learned to read by December.

Every year brought new challenges. Witchcraft in the community, which affected the students' worldview. Government demands for teacher training and safe building conditions. High teacher turnover because the school was tuition-free and teachers didn't receive a salary. "Often our family didn't have food to eat," said Padilla, "but God never left us. We had hunger, but we never lacked the presence of God in our house."

Two significant events transformed Gabriela Mistral. First, the constitution of Mexico underwent a significant revision in 1993, allowing religious organizations to sponsor private schools. Previously, churches could only operate schools as civic associations, with restrictions on religious expression—an outgrowth of Mexico's secular 1910 Revolution and historic anticlericalism. Padilla applied for a permit, and, in October 1994, Gabriela Mistral became one of the first Christian schools sanctioned by the Mexican government.

Then church groups began to come. Assemblies of God teams from Oklahoma, Indiana, and Illinois built classrooms. A Missouri church constructed a two-story dining hall, and Baptists from El Paso erected a sanctuary the size of a small stadium. Churches from Colorado, Washington, the Carolinas, and Canada all came and left their mark, blessing the school with a facility unparalleled in the community of 2,500 factory workers and day laborers.

Gabriela Mistral swelled to almost 500 elementary school students before a shortage of teachers limited enrollment to 200. The school now registers each incoming class in about three hours, turning away more than 100 students. Teachers at Gabriela Mistral must meet government requirements, and students take the same standardized tests as public school students, whom they frequently outperform.

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December 2005, Vol. 49, No. 12