Entrusted with the Gospel

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

This entire blog is one huge praise report about my friend, Brooklynn. She got to hear the Gospel and now has a Bible! Read below to find out more.

Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:

1. Continue to be in prayer for Brooklynn, that she would read her Bible and that the Holy Spirit would continue to draw her to Himself.


2. Pray for us as we finish up our time of Quechua study here in Cochabamba and say goodbye to those with whom we´ve developed relationships here (pictured here are Bea and Annie, believers from Sweden with whom we became good friends). We will be leaving here Wednesday to return to our home in Sucre. Pray that we will "make the most of every opportunity" and would be wise with the time we have remaining.

3. Pray for us as we prepare to make a short community trip after Christmas. Pray that God would give us wisdom in choosing the parts of His Word to share in a community of people who are believers but without access to the Bible, and pray for the people there, that they would be doers of His Word and not hearers only.

Inquring Minds Wanna Know (Bonus for the Readers):

As I was reading the book of Jude this morning, I was struck by the great responsibility with which we as believers have been entrusted. This verse really hit me:

"Dear friends,... I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." (Jude 3)




This week, God gave me the most amazing opportunity, and it can be directly attributed to your prayers. I´ve been asking you to pray for Brooklynn, the Belgian-Canadian woman with whom I previously got to share my testimony. (She´s pictured here with Misty, me, and Amy.) Well, this week, I got to talk to her even more in-depth, and it was certainly a God-ordained appointment.





We had learned that Brooklynn would be returning to her home in Belgium this past week, so I asked her to have dinner with me before she left. Being from Canada originally, English is her first language, so I was excited to be able to talk to her more about Jesus with no language barrier at all. I´ve so come to appreciate that!

God had prompted Leah to give a Bible to Brooklynn, so I took that with me to our dinner, along with a list of stories from the Word for her to read. I was hoping to get her to see the big picture of the Bible, culminating in the Gospel, without being intimidated by the sheer size of its 66 books. And, during the dinner, it was my hope to be able to share something of the Good News with her.

Have you ever tried to share the Gospel with someone who has very little or no background in Christianity? If so, you know how difficult it is. Even if the person has had some exposure to our faith, we often do them a disservice by just presenting a cursory Gospel presentation and pushing them to a quick decision. Following Christ is hard, and Jesus Himself told us we need to count the cost of being His disciple (see Lk. 14:25-34). This is how Paul described what it means to truly be His disciple:

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." (Phil. 3:10-11)

If we just show that He is all joy and love without describing the demands of discipleship, we wind up with people who fall away from Christ at the first trial. And what´s worse is that they think that, because they once prayed a three-part prayer over a Gospel tract, they now have eternal life, though their lives show absolutely no evidence of that. These are the people to whom Christ will say, "I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness" (Matt. 7:23). And how much of that blame for that must be laid at my own feet?

So I really consulted the LORD about how to lay the foundation for the amazing Truth of the Gospel in this young woman with very little understanding of Who Christ was or why He came. How exactly does one explain thousands of years of the history of sinful man and the prophesied, personfied grace of a redeeming God in the span of a dinner?

But the LORD gave me the opportunity and the words. Brooklynn listened as I talked about Santa Claus and how I´d always wanted that to be true, for there to be someone out there who is so good that he brings gifts to all the children of the world, regardless of who or where they are. But then I´d realized that we have a "fairy tale" that is honestly true in that we have a God Who freely offers us salvation and the opportunity to know Him, even though we´ve been nothing but naughty for our entire lives.

When I explained that Jesus had come to earth with the express purpose of dying and that all of our sins, both before and after coming to Christ, were nailed to that cross with Him, she was excited. She explained that she had known about Jesus´death but that she had never before understood why He had to die.

When I told her that she had many people praying for her and that God was calling her into a relationship with Himself, she was moved. "Really?" she asked. She couldn´t believe that so many people who didn´t know her would be praying for her, and she was overwhelmed by the idea that God was pursuing her.

But this girl is not one to just blindly follow without questioning. She wanted to know why God would cause certain people to be born into such abject poverty when she and I have both had such great financial riches. She wanted to know what happens to those who will never hear about Jesus.

Was I bothered by her questions? No way! I actually welcomed them, because it meant she was actually considering whether what I had told her was really true. She wasn´t blindly believing me in the moment, only to fade away from the faith at the first sign of struggle. She was counting the cost and, if she does choose to follow Christ in the future, I have no doubt that she will know what she´s getting into.

As we said goodbye to Brooklynn this week, it was sad for all of us. I will truly mis her. But I am encouraged that she carries back to Belgium with her in the Word of God the same power that transformed my own life, and I take great delight in knowing this Truth:

"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it." (Is. 55:10-11)

Please join me in praying that Brooklynn would be like the Bereans of old:

"Now the Bereans... received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." (Acts 17:11)

Pray that she will one day be able to proclaim with the Samaritans:


"They said to the woman, ´We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.´" (Jn. 4:42)

Two rainbows over our school in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Making God Big

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

Our Quechua has improved tremendously during the seven weeks that we have been here. Thank you so much for your prayers, and I hope that you will continue to pray for us in this area of great need!

Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:

1. Please continue to be in prayer for Brooklynn (pictured here with Amy). She is leaving to return to Europe this week to spend Christmas with her family. Pray that God would continue to work in her life to draw her to Himself.

2. We have only 1-1/2 weeks more here in Cochabamba and will return to Sucre on Dec. 23. Pray that we would finish our time here well, with remaining focused on language learning and with saying goodbye to different friends we've made here.

3. Continue to pray for our men's team - Efrain, Javier, Roberto, and David - as they investigate new areas in which to work.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know (Bonus for the Readers):

I started reading the Bible in Quechua a couple of weeks ago, and it was pretty intimidating at first. Aw, who am I kidding? It still is. :)

But it's also really enlightening to read the Bible in another language. To my ethnocentric, "English is best" way of thinking, I ought to be able to get everything that I need from the Word of God, and I never thought it would help to read the Bible in any other language. Why would I ever need to do that?

But then I read John 14:6 in Spanish, and it blew me away. In English, Jesus says in that verse:

"I am the way and the truth and the life."

Pretty straightforward, right? But it's even greater in Spanish. There are two verbs in Spanish that can translate the English verb "to be." One is used to describe temporary states like illness or location, but the other, the one used to translate "I am" in this verse, is used for things of permanence, for inherent characteristics like your gender or nationality. So the fact that Jesus IS the way, the truth, and the life is not just some fleeting thing that could easily change. It is an inherent part of Who He is, and it is not going to change. Very revealing.

So, when I started reading the Word in Quechua, I was excited to see what new things I would learn. I started in Luke, and it didn't take me long to find this one. In the English NIV, it says this:

"And Mary said: 'My soul glorifies the Lord.'" (Lk. 1:46)

In its context, this begins Mary's hymn of praise to the Lord when she goes to visit Elisabeth after being told that she will give birth to Jesus. In Quechua, the word used to translate the word expressed by the English word "glorify" here is the verb "jatunchay." I know that doesn't mean anything to you right now, but let me break it down a little further. The Quechua word "jatun" word means "big," and "-chay" is a suffix that means "to make someone or something do something." So the literal translation of "jatunchay" would be "to make big."

Have you ever really thought about what the word "glorify" means? I don't think I had. I've grown up in church, and it's been a part of my churchy vocabulary since I was a little kid. "Let's glorify God this morning by singing hymn number 166!" Or "To God be the glory." I'm not making fun. I'm just saying we throw a lot of words around without really thinking about what they mean. Words like "glorify" and "exalt" and even "church."

So it hit me like a ton of bricks that Quechua translates "glorify" as "to make big"! Mary was saying that her soul was making God big. It was doing everything it could to make Him seem bigger in the eyes of other people.

I realized a few years ago that my purpose on this earth - and the purpose of every other person and thing that God has created - is to glorify Him. In essence, my purpose is to make God big.

Because He is.

We so often make Him so small. We try to fit God into a one-hour time frame on Sunday morning when He should consume our entire lives. We offer up a beautifully worded prayer asking Him to fix our problems but then immediately forsake following His ways as we try to solve them ourselves. We sing, "Wherever He leads, I'll go" on Sunday, but we're quick to doubt His power when He leads us down a road of suffering on Monday.

But He's the same BIG God today that He was when He parted the Red Sea. He's the same BIG God Who sent fire from heaven to consume Elijah's offering and all the water that drenched it. And He's the same BIG God Who raised His only Begotten from the dead.

And yet, somehow, He's still big enough to dwell inside you if you're His follower. Now, if that's not a reason to shout His praises in the streets, to make Him big before everyone you know, I don't know what is!

The old King James version of Luke 1:46 actually translates the verse much better:

"And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord."

To whom will you make Him big today?

A man drinking from a dumpster on the streets of Cochabamba

Calling Them to His Marvelous Light

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

In the midst of great economic uncertainty, our organization is making some significant changes, and the likelihood is great that those changes will soon impact the ways in which our team works here in Bolivia. But it is amazing and comforting to know that we have a God Who is completely unsurprised and unaffected by any financial problems. We can rest securely knowing that He has promised to provide our needs if we seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33)!

Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:

1. We are going to meet with our European friend Brooklynn again tonight. Please be praying that the Holy Spirit will continue to provide us with opportunities to share His Truth with her and that He will grow the seeds that have been planted in her.

2. Please be in prayer the upcoming Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and for the IMB´s wisdom in its use of these funds. Every penny of this offering goes to support missionaries on the foreign field.

3. Pray for our men´s team, as they are currently scattered through various Quechua communities doing investigation and discipleship. Pray that God would give them His wisdom to know where we are to work next and to know how and what to teach to immature believers.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know (Bonus for the Readers):

One of the major advantages of our language school is that each of our teachers has at least some indigenous heritage and, as a result, we are able to learn about the Quechua culture as well as the language. To read some of the myths and legends of this people group has been enlightening, and reading about their customs has really taught me a lot.

This past week, I was able to have a prolonged conversation with one of my teachers, and he explained to me much about the history of the Quechua practice of the San Juan (John the Baptist) festival in the Bolivian community of Acacio.

The celebration begins with a bullfight on the eve of the holiday, with the winning bull and his owner both being showered with chicha (a corn-based alcoholic beverage that is a staple of every Quechua celebration).

The following explanation is a description of what happens on the San Juan holiday itself. I realize this is not the best English grammar I´ve ever posted, but I´ve translated it as best I can from the original Quechua, so I hope you´ll forgive me if there are some mistakes:

"From the sunrise, all of the people from Acacio and the surrounding villages come to the large, wide street in the plaza. Some of them arrive to fight again, still drunk and dripping blood [there were also a variety of drunken fights the previous evening], bellowing like a bull, and others are playing the charango [an instrument something like a ukulele].

"In order to fight, in that moment, they put on well a helmet, and they tightly envelop their right hands with something like a belt to make a good fist. To fight, they begin bellowing like bulls. And then, suddenly, jumping, they kick, they beat with their fists, and some fall to the ground. And when those are on the ground, the others kick heads, stomachs, or wherever.

"In that way also, sometimes the women defend their husbands. Sometimes the women fight among themselves while they carry their children on their backs; they hit each other with their shoes. Sometimes their families and those from their communities enter the fight. In that way, they have a big fight.

"Then, some of them stand up covered in blood, their heads cut, their noses broken, their mouths swollen. And, being like that, they are, of course, drunk.

"Like that is the San Juan festival in Acacio.

"But it is said that there is another, bigger festival in the month of September. Taht festival is called Exaltation [a celebration of another Catholic holiday]. In that festival, it is said that there is a bigger, uglier fight. Sometimes, it is said that they kill one another. ´If a man dies in the fight, the fields will produce well for the following year; and, if no one dies, the fields won´t produce well,´ they say.

"Like that are the customs in Acacio."

If this barbaric behavior disgusts you, good. I hope it makes you feel the darkness in which these people daily live their lives. I hope it makes you realize how DESPERATELY they need your prayers. Without them, the Quechua will continue to live in the bondage that tells them the blood of another human spilled in their fields will cause them to produce more crops, rather than knowing the Truth of the Creator God Who put a curse on Cain for spilling another´s blood:

"´Your brother´s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother´s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.´" (Gen. 4:10-12)

It breaks my heart to think of these people living in such abject darkness rather than in the marvelous light in which I walk. What a blessing I have received:

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." (1 Pet. 2:9-10)

Won´t you please join me in praying that, as we continue to declare His praises, these people walking in darkness will see that Great Light?

"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." (Is. 9:2)