Sitting in a crusty, smelly Jail cell, Mario Matos begged a God who he did not know but spent most of his life ignoring to help him out. “God, let’s make a deal,” Matos cried looking up to wherever God was supposed to be. “If you get me out of this mess, I’ll give you my life.” That was it. A short simple type of deal that many times seems to go unheard or at least unanswered. Two hours later, Mario walked out of the courthouse jail and into freedom. He had no money for bail, so he almost assuredly was looking at doing some time. The next week he walked into church.
To say Matos is a Christian in the wilderness is an understatement. He’s the kind of follower of Jesus that many pastors love AND get annoyed by. He gives away a ton of what he makes as a master plumber and the owner of Super Mario Plumbing in Massachusetts. He gives his time and serves others, especially in the field of plumbing, but certainly not only there. And he and his wife, who he met in the same church he walked into after prison, recently started “A Hand Up group”. HUG is an organization started to reach out with God’s love and offer a hand up to those in need.
But he also asks questions. A lot of them. He’s not the type to go with the flow without holding someone accountable, and this can make pastors and leadership in churches uncomfortable, specifically in the area of finances. Why do we spend all of that money on that technology? Why does that mission trip cost so much? Why doesn’t more of our tithes and offerings go to the poor? Such questions cause the most secure pastors in America to squirm, so instead of confronting and answering the questions with transparency, many times they attack the question asker and push them elsewhere.
Mario has little time for insecure leaders. He’s impatient, conflicted, and is a man of action. Why aren’t things getting done? Why isn’t the church doing its job taking care of those in need? Why does it feel like corruption abounds within the church, and why are most church goers not holding their leadership accountable for it?
Great questions.
So years ago, Mario decided to start doing something. His first international mission trip turned out to be his honeymoon. He met his wife at church, they got married, and decided to go spiritual on their big first vacation. Matos doesn’t recommend it. He jokes, though he’s serious, that on most mission trips the guys stay in one dorm and the ladies stay in another – a detail he hadn’t thought through when making the plans. The event however, started what would become a lifelong routine of service towards the poor for the Matos family. They’ve served the hurting and the poor in 2 hurricanes, the Ivory Coast, Belize, Guatemala, and most notably, Haitian refugees in the Dominican Republic.
For years, Mario travelled to to the Dominican Republic and served a hospital in La Romana. The church he travelled with and the groups serving gave thousands of dollars and man hours, essentially building and helping to launch the hospital in the DR’s Caribbean coast. They worked hard and Mario was proud of the work they accomplished there.
Then he began to notice some things that didn’t add up. Why did it cost so much for the group from America to take the trip in the first place? Why did the hospital charge the group to use a bus that the group had bought, paid for, and given to the hospital? Why didn’t the doctors who worked in the hospital and made good money volunteer their own time to go out into the mountain regions to take care of the poor in some of the villages, but then charged the church group for accompanying them into the villages to take care of the children?
Per usual, all of the questions bothered the group leaders. Eventually it turned out to be too much and the leaders invited Mario to make his sixth year on the trip his last. “Perhaps this trip isn’t for you anymore” he was told. Perhaps it wasn’t.
It was on that last trip that the leader asked Mario to travel to a nearby village to help with some plumbing work they needed. Apparently they had some major issues. But it was clear that the issues ran more deep than their plumbing. This village turned out to be brutally poor. Haitian refugees who had nowhere to go but there, and there was a life of indentured servitude and an inability to make any kind of a better status for the people and their families. Matos quickly built a connection with the local pastor. He found his new home.
When Mario got out of prison and went to church, he set two goals for himself. First, he wanted to give away more money than he spent on drugs and alcohol, and second, he wanted to be the opposite of his father. Mario’s dad physically abused all of his kids, and fed Mario alcohol in his bottle as an infant. Being the opposite of his dad wasn’t going to take much, but sometimes the internal conflict that thought brings can produce its own difficulties. Mario struggles with anger. Mario struggles with trust. But he fights those things with service. He serves this Haitian community by giving it money and food.
He’s now travelled scores of times to this village and they look to him as a brother who loves them and has invested mightily in their community. In April, Mario brought 2 groups of 37 people with him to the village. The cost for the week long trip was $1150. The last mission trip he participated in that he didn’t lead was to Belize, where he was charged $2100. If you’re wondering, airline tickets to Belize don’t cost $1000 more than airline tickets to the DR. The group though, also raised money for donating food and supplies to the village. In total, both groups raised $30,000 in extra donations and gave away 1300 bags of groceries and 1300 half gallons of oil.
I asked him about his favorite “fun” highlight of this last trip. Almost immediately a smile came to his face. He reminisced about a 3 wheeled motorcycle dump truck he was driving. There were 5 guys in the back. Mario really enjoys driving in the DR, maybe a little too much. As they drove from one place to another at around 40 mph, and right before he prepared to turn left, the brake pedal broke, and he had no way to stop. On top of that, cars perpetually were passing so he couldn’t swerve. He drove the vehicle, the five guys, and himself into a pile of trash. The only injury was a tiny scratch on his leg, and maybe a small ounce of pride as he hadn’t been in an accident during his previous trips to the DR.
Opportunities like that don’t happen unless you are willing to take a risk. The joy of telling me that story came because he risked driving a 3 wheeled motorcycle dump truck in the first place. The joy of bringing groups and food and supplies to the poor in this village came because he risked walking away from a group that was doing good work in another place. And the joy of serving Christ by feeding and loving on the poor came because at his low point, he risked a conversation with someone he didn’t even know if they really existed.
If you’re interested in joining Mario and his wife Patti for one of these trips, or even if you would just like to support the Hand Up Group financially or in some other way, please go to ahandupgroup.com. But please listen to Mario and don’t do it on your honeymoon.
#missions #service #church
written by Marty Holman
