The Sierra Madre Mountains of Northern Mexico are vast, rugged and beautiful. Ironically, that same beauty belies the underlying suffering of the region's inhabitants. Hospital Misión Tarahumara is located in Samachique, Chihuahua in the heart of the Sierra Madre Mountains. It serves as Mexico Medical Missions' primary medical center and includes outpatient facilities, a dental suite, adult and pediatric medical wards, a lab, X-ray services and a modern surgical suite. The hospital is staffed by 25 physicians, nurses and support personnel. It provides a high level of sophisticated healthcare to an area that previously struggled without it.

The El Cuervo clinic is a cooperative project with mexican missionary Rudolfo Rivero and his wife Elizabeth and includes a medical clinic, housing and a church. A landing strip is located close by to facilitate evacuation of critically ill patients. El Cuervo is a very remote village populated by 800 traditional Tarahumaras who previously had no access to any form of modern healthcare.

Santa Rita is a remote valley in the depths of the Copper Canyon populated by several hundred Tarahumaras. Missionaries Tom and Cathy Shank live in Santa Rita and operate a Community Health Evangelism program.

The Pamachi Clinic is located in an isolated community perched high on the edge of the Urique Canyon, right in the rugged heart of the Copper Canyon area. It is staffed by missionary nurse Mayra Rivera who was sent by the Methodist Churches of Mexico. This dedicated missionary nurse provides the only health care to the 700 Tarahumara Indians who inhabit this area.

The Coyachique valley is an area so remote that it is entirely inaccessible to motor vehicles. Missionary Jonathan Pinkham and his Tarahumara wife, Marta, live and work among the 1000 inhabitants of the area, traversing dauntingly rugged terrain on foot to reach the scattered communities of the region.

Pilot Mark Egolf and aircraft mechanic Dave Hardin operate the aviation program. These courageous men fly a turbine-powered Compair 8 aircraft into the most inaccessible areas of the Sierra Madre, flying in health care teams and airlifting out those patients requiring medical treatment.

The Birthing Center was built for the purpose of training Tarahumara women to attend the births within their own communities. This is only one of two tribal groups worldwide with no system of women helping women in childbirth, according to anthropologists. For more information on the ministry of Shelley Rivera and her husband, Edwin, go to www.riveraministries.org.

The vital well drilling operation we conduct is a cooperative program with Ameritribes. Using a "DeepRock" portable drilling rig, we are able to drill deep wells in the predominately granite rock formations of the Sierra Madre. In a region where potable water is amazingly scarce, this much-needed program has brought safe drinking water to many communities of the Sierra Madre. Please go to www.ameritribes.org for more information.