AMERICAN COUPLE ( STRANGLED ) KILLLED IN MEXICO ( CHURCH TEACHERS)

EL CERCADO, Mexico (AP) — John Casias found his calling when he joined a Texas church group that came to preach the Gospel in the little Mexican town of El Cercado in the early 1980s.

He later wrote that he saved nine souls, but worried how the villagers would grow without a teacher. By the time he returned to Texas, he knew his future would be as a missionary. When he told his wife, Wanda, she asked only what they would take and when they would leave.

A NEW LOW FOR THE CARTEL OR CRIMINALS OF MEXICO

"We were called to Mexico," son John Casias said his mother told him. "These are our people."
The bodies of John and Wanda Casias came one last time Thursday to the church they began, the Primera Iglesia Bautista Fundamental Independiente, in the violence-plagued region of northern Mexico, where mourners paid homage to the couple who were discovered strangled in their home two days before.
Dozens came from the community in the hills about 95 miles (150 kilometers) south of the Texas border, where the couple had many friends and ministered to the poor.