Greetings from Bolivia,
After having some cold weather and getting some colds, our family is doing well. It is a little tougher here when the temperatures get cold because there is no insulation in the houses, they are not sealed well and they don’t have heat. As a result, there are a lot of people with colds at the moment and that included our family.
In July, I mentioned us having a visiting church group here and that we had to do a funeral for a 7yr old boy. We were thankful the boy had made a profession of faith in the past. At his funeral, we did our best to give a clear presentation of the gospel to the family. I am excited to remind you that God can work through even tragedy!!! In the weeks following the funeral, we continued working with the family of this boy and several of them have now also made professions of faith!!! So far, both the father and mother, the grandmother and an uncle have made professions! How wonderful it is to see the Holy Ghost at work in this family! Please continue to pray for them and for us as we continue to work with them.
Over the last few weeks, we have been teaching on evangelism in the first church. We have been teaching that scripture gives us the command to go out and witness. This past week, we had a group come to the pastor after service and say they wanted to be a part. We were excited but in all honestly a bit hesitant. After all, this church is still less than a year old. As a result, we scheduled for them to come the next Saturday and we would start teaching/training them on going soul winning. With my little faith, I asked Pastor Francisco on the way, “think any one will show up?” He said he thought 2 would be there but they would probably be late as is customary here. As we pulled into the church we had 8 people waiting for us to open the gate and one more show up as we were opening it! What an encouragement!!! They have a desire to reach their people. As we were training them that morning, they really seemed to understand. I am excited to see what God does with this little group.
August 6th is Bolivia’s Independence Day. As this country celebrates 194 years of independence, there is a looming political climate of change and unrest. For the sake of our residency status, I won’t go into too much detail but there is a lot of tension right now. We generally try not to say much about such things because we don’t want to worry people, especially our family. So far, it has been mostly peaceful but we feel that is preparing to change a bit. The people have started scheduling “Paro Cívicos”. Translated, this means civil stop. These are days when the people are protesting and refuse to work or do anything for 24 hours. No one is allowed to drive. They block off streets and if you are caught driving it can be very dangerous. They schedule these by state and the whole state just shuts down. We have been through a few of these already and because we know how to act, we have never felt to be in any danger. As of right now, there is another paro cívico scheduled in August. Then there is also already an indefinite paro cívico scheduled in October. This means they will stop everything until they get what they want. As of now, this is planned for every state of Bolivia. The whole country will be shut down during these paro cívicos. As of now, everything will shut down indefinitely 10 days prior to the October 20th election. We plan to leave and take a small furlough long before this starts. If things get bad, this is when they are most likely to do so and I want to make sure my family is out before it does so.
So, as you think about Bolivia’s Independence Day, please pray for the country and its future. Our prayer is for nothing more and nothing less than the Lord’s will. Our desire is that no matter what happens, it brings people to Christ. After all, that is our whole purpose of being here.
As we close, we would like to ask that you pray for our family in the coming weeks. We have a lot scheduled and are going to be very busy. We are excited to have our pastor and a group from our home church coming to visit. With Pastor, I will also be traveling to help interpret during a conference in Colombia. This conference will include pastors from all over Latin America and even the Caribbean. I am very excited to meet some from Venezuela and talk to them about how God has worked through their country’s crisis to bring people closer to Him. We also have some very special plans and news for our first church that we will mention in our letter next month.
I apologize for this letter being longer than normal. However, we did want to make sure we let you know how to pray. We thank you so much for all you do for us! Only eternity will tell what God has done through your prayers and support here in Bolivia.
