Lessons on Dogwalking

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

Misty (in the center of the picture) and Amy, our two journeygirls, have both recently returned home to the United States to begin the next phase of their journey with the Lord. Though Leah and I both miss them desperately, we are so thankful for the time we had with them and for the great blessing it was to know them. They taught us so much, and it will be awesome to see how our Father uses them both in fresh and new ways in their homeland.

Prayer Necessities:

1. Be in prayer for Nelly, the woman in the village of Ayuma who has now learned eight stories from the life of Christ. Please pray that the Scripture she has memorized would change her life and that she would have a burning desire to share it with others. Pray that, through her, God's Word would spread like wildfire through this region.

2. Please pray for Leah and me as we have recently been disappointed by a lack of interest in our missionary training that was to be held from late November to mid-January. As we no longer have team members to lead, we will be spending more time in the villages doing this work directly. Pray for us during this time of transition that we would be encouraged and unafraid in the face of so much change in our ministry and such disappointment after so much hard work. Pray that we would "not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (Gal. 6:9).

3. Pray for Misty and Amy as they transition back to life in their home culture, a task that is often more difficult than adjusting to a new culture. Pray that they would refuse to return to the people they were before but that they would ever draw closer to their Lord and become more like Christ.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

As some of you perhaps already know, Leah and I recently got a puppy. And, despite the fact that some might consider me biased, I know it's true that our dog is the cutest dog EVER. If you don't believe me, just judge for yourself:
However, despite the exponentially high cuteness factor, Riley has her problems. She's energetic and rambunctious (like most puppies) and, at times, that wears on the patience of a 40-year-old human. So, in an effort to curb some of that endless energy, I began taking her along on my daily walks... only to discover that was even more frustrating! The problem was that she wouldn't listen to me or obey anything I said.

Those of you who have had puppies and trained them understand what I'm talking about. I'm sure it's a little like having children. The cuteness only goes so far before you're ready to stuff them in a closet and forget about them forever. :)

So, after a little advice from my boss, I decided that I needed to train Riley, as much for her benefit as for my sanity. The fact of the matter is that dogs, also like children, need boundaries in order to feel safe. I'm a dog person, and I do love Riley, weird though that may sound to those of you who aren't pet people. I want what's best for her, even if that means I have to be the disciplinarian.

So there we were, on a bright, sunny morning, Riley looking quite dapper with her bright red leash and me looking relatively chipper for 6:30 am. And, by "relatively chipper," I mean my eyes were open. Well, mostly. :) We set out, and we had walked all of five steps before I realized this was going to be the longest walk of my life.

When you first start training a dog to walk with you, you are supposed to hold the leash tight and close to you. The minute the dog starts to lead you, you are supposed to snap it to pull them back toward you while making a sound to let them know that is not proper behavior. If they lag behind, you are supposed to continue ahead, even if that means dragging them for a step or two. They should eventually learn that they are to stay with you.

Well, Riley was pulling so hard against the leash that I had to switch hands after about two minutes. Five minutes into the walk, the leash was beginning to wear blisters into my hands. At the seven minute mark, two dogs passed by on the opposite side of the street, looking strangely at us both as I dragged her through dirt and rocks up the hill. I lost my voice telling her to "come" while she alternated between giving me blank stares and looking intently at the other dogs. Ten minutes into the walk, I opened the door to my yard, took the leash off of her, and deposited her in the front yard while I went to finish the rest.... alone.

OK, so all of that was an exaggeration, but those of you who have ever trained a dog can certainly feel my pain. No matter how smart the animal is, obedience training will make you believe they have the IQ of an amoeba. And almost all of that has happened to us (not my losing my voice, though I'm not ruling that out for the future), but not all on the same day.

But, through Riley, I've learned a lot about myself and the relationship my Master has with me. You see, I'm rambunctious and disobedient, too, and He has to rein me in a lot as we're walking. After I got Riley, I began to wonder about the size of the blisters I've worn into those nail-scarred hands and the fact that He's probably developed calluses at this point.

There have been a few things that have really hit home with me. Riley is at her worst when distractions come along. If she sees another dog or a person, she just wants to play with them. When that happens, it doesn't matter how many times I command her, she will not obey me. It's as if she can't hear me. She's no longer listening to her master's voice because her attention is focused elsewhere. The only way I can regain her attention is to get down in her face, block her view of the distraction, and grab her chin so that she is focused only on me.

And how many times has my Lord had to do that to me?

Just the other day, Riley and I were walking together with no problems. She was doing so well that I had even taken off her leash because she had learned to stay right beside me without it. Everything was great until a bigger dog surprised her from behind. I continued walking without paying any attention to this dog, hoping she would trust me and my lack of fear and would follow her training and stay with me. She was terrified, though, so everything she had learned went right out the window. She immediately turned and ran and, no matter how much I called her, she just kept going. I went after her and, when I got home, there she sat in front of the door, tail tucked between her legs.

It made me think about how many times I've allowed fear to send me in the opposite direction from where the Lord was telling me to go and how many times it made me disregard His call. Then, when it was all said and done, there was nothing to really be afraid of at all because my Master had been in control the whole time. If only I had remained beside Him and trusted that He would not lead me where He could not protect me, I wouldn't have to return to Him with my tail between my legs.

I can summarize what it's like to walk with Him like this: There are times when I get ahead of Him, and I hear His voice and feel the tug that admonishes me to stop and wait. There are times when I lag behind, and I hear Him calling me to come forward and join Him. And, if I don't, He just drags me along until I catch up. But, if I'm right there beside Him, I often don't hear His voice or feel His presence at all. Maybe I should learn to be OK with that... because it means I'm in step with Him.

Oh, the things you can learn from walking a dog. Maybe you non-pet-people should take note.

The Government is Upon His Shoulder (Part V)

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

The training preview weekend that Leah and I had a while back was a great success! We had four young women participate, and it was amazing to watch what the Lord taught them in such a short time. Ester, Fabiola, Ximena, and Soledad (left to right, pictured below) all learned the creation story in Spanish, and all four expressed interest in participating in the full training that will begin at the end of this month!

Additionally, we recently made our last trip to Ayuma until the beginning of next year, and it was wonderful! Nelly (pictured here with her son Oscar) learned four new stories in just two days and was hungry enough to continually ask us to teach her more stories. She has now, in total, learned eight stories of the life of Christ, and we are hopeful that she will begin sharing them with those in her community.

Prayer Necessities:

1. Please pray that God will call out exactly the women that he wants to participate in our upcoming missionary training. This involves seven weeks of living in primitive conditions, going on short trips to Quechua communities, memorizing great portions of Scripture, and learning a lot of material. The timing requires the participants to miss spending Christmas and New Year's with their families, so there is a lot of sacrifice involved. Pray that the Lord will remind the women He has called that "anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:37-38).

2. Be in prayer for Nelly. She has had some health problems recently, so pray that the Lord would be glorified in that situation, whether that is for her healing or otherwise. Please pray that God's Word would burn in her heart like a fire that cannot be quenched and that she would only have relief if she shares those words with others.

3. Please pray for Misty (pictured here with me as we were waiting at the airport for her flight), who has recently returned to the United States after the faithful completion of her two-year term of missionary service here in Bolivia. Transition back to the American culture can often be more difficult than coming to the country of service originally, so please pray that she would remain close to the Lord during this time and that she would be faithful to obey.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

Please go back and skim through parts I-IV of our visa process if you can't remember what's happened up to this point.

After leaving Cochabamba, we arrived back in Sucre late on a Thursday night with hopes of leaving on the following Sunday evening on a bus bound for Lima, Peru, to attend our team meeting. Since we had not been able to obtain our visas in Cochabamba and were having to essentially begin again in Sucre, we didn't entertain much hope of getting the visa itself and were really just hoping to come out with a letter that would allow us to leave the country without penalty. There was a part of me that was hoping the Lord would come through and give us our visas... but it was a very small part that was continually being crushed into submission and told that it was an idiot by my larger, more rational side.

Our visa runner from Cochabamba had very kindly offered to come to Sucre to help us begin the process there. So, first thing Friday morning, we met her at the immigration office. She had already been there for an hour or so and told us that she had explained our situation to the immigration official, so we quietly followed her into his office to listen to the requirements we would need to complete in order to receive our letters.

What we heard next had my head swimming and my heart pounding in disbelief. The official told us that, if we could get him all of the paperwork necessary by the time his office closed at 6:30 that afternoon, we would have the visas within 72 hours.

I blinked at looked around at the others in the room with me just to see if I had misheard or misunderstood the Spanish. But the stunned looks on the faces of my colleagues told me I had understood correctly and that the man had just said we should have our visas by Tuesday!

We solemnly agreed to the plan and left the office quickly. Once out on the street, we nearly jumped for joy but were quickly brought down to earth by our visa runner, who explained that we were about to understand why she was called a "runner," because that's exactly what we would be doing for the next eight hours or so.

And run we did. Our first stop was the hospital to obtain a medical certification that claimed we were healthy. The doctor at the hospital assured us that all we needed for that was a negative HIV test, so our next stop was a clinic to get this done. Once there, our visa runner had to convince the doctor that we did not need the version of the test that required three days for results. We already had negative results from that test in Cochabamba but, absurdly, each city's doctors usually require their own laboratories to perform the testing. However, after much begging and explaining of our situation, the doctor reluctantly agreed to perform the less accurate one-day version.

The next step was to go to the police station to get a background check done and to ask them to come to our house to verify that we lived there. By the time we went to a local bank to deposit money into the account to pay for those things, it was almost lunchtime. So what, you say? Oh, if you only knew...

If you've ever lived in a Latin American country (or Spain), you know that things shut down from about noon to 2:30. Bolivia is no exception to that, but we knew we couldn't sit on our hands for 2-1/2 hours while they ate lunch and napped. But, thankfully, the police were receptive to being paid overtime for coming to our house during their lunch hour.

So I drove them to our house while Leah and the girls went to get our witnesses. That's right, witnesses. We had to have two Bolivian citizens who knew us and would vouch for us that we lived where we said we did. The receipts for our bills were not enough; we had to have our friends say that they knew we lived there. We are blessed to have wonderful brothers in Christ who were willing to come to our house during their own lunch hours in order to help us out.

During that time with the police at our house, anything that could go wrong did. Earlier that morning, we had locked ourselves out of the house and had to break a window to get back in. What do you think THAT looked like to the cops? :) And the police officers asked for multiple copies of every document we had, causing our printer/copier to run out of ink, forcing us to go down the street to our friend Trent's house to make copies. Then, Trent's copier ran out of ink, forcing him to have to speed into town to buy more. But, finally, after two hours, it was all done, and the police agreed that we lived where we said we did!

We drove the cops back to the police station and set off to find a lawyer to draft an official letter requesting permanent residency in Bolivia. After obtaining that letter, we separated into three groups. The visa runner ran off to find a notary to notarize various documents, Leah went to the clinic to get our HIV test results, and I went back to the police station to pick up the official documents for the background check and verification of legal domicile.

After all of that, we all met up at the notary's office to sign a variety of documents, then flew back across town to the immigration office. The last customers of the day, we were led into the official's office... at 6:24!

He glanced over the documents while we held our breath and, after several minutes, he looked up and told us we were lacking the medical certification we needed. We were crestfallen. The doctor in the morning had told us the HIV test results were all we needed but, evidently, there was an official document that certified more than that. The official then proceeded to tell us that, if we would bring him the medical certification first thing on Monday morning, we would still have our visas by Tuesday afternoon. Wow!

We walked out of the office that day rejoicing! We still had two more things to do - the medical certification and the payment of some fines - but we would have the visa on Tuesday!

On Saturday, we stood in line at the bank for two hours to pay the fines. On Monday, we got the medical certification and then took it to the immigration official, who told us to return at 5:00 the following day to pick up our passports and visas.

That Tuesday afternoon, just as he promised, the official handed us our passports, complete with shiny new Bolivian residency visas inside! A few hours later, we boarded a bus bound for Peru and, a couple of weeks later, I boarded a plane that would take me on my first visit to the United States in eighteen months. It was fantastic!

We had spent eight months waiting for a visa in Cochabamba, and my faith had been sorely tested and been found lacking. But my God is faithful. After months of waiting, He granted our visas in just three days!

"In the LORD's hand the king's heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him" (Prov. 21:1).

The Government is Upon His Shoulder (Part IV)

Check out the bottom of the blog for some fun pictures!

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

Misty and Amy have had an encouraging time in the community of Taramarca, where they are particularly focusing on teaching their stories to three young women. One of the women has already learned the most recent story and is planning to teach it to her family this week! (Here is a shot of Amy with a young family from Taramarca.)
Additionally, Misty and Amy made a short trip to Ayuma and began teaching the stories to Isadora, who kept asking for more. She then happily proclaimed, "I can't read or write, but I now have the Word of God in my heart!" Wow, that is what we have been hoping for all along, so please thank the Lord for His answers!

Prayer Necessities:

1. Please continue to keep the women in Taramarca and Ayuma in your prayers. Pray that they will continue to learn the stories and that they would grasp the importance of sharing them with others and would obey in doing so.

2. Misty's overseas term is complete in October, and she will be leaving to return to the US in about a month. Pray that we would be comforted as we lose such a vital member of our team, and pray that she would continue to use the things the Lord has taught her here when she returns home.

3. Leah and I are conducting a weekend preview of our missionary training for the women who have expressed interest. On September 18 and 19, we will spend the weekend on the land that we will use for training. We plan to teach them the story of creation in Spanish, along with allowing them to get a good feel for what their living conditions will be like. Please be in prayer that the Lord will use this time to draw us closer to one another and that He will make it clear who is to participate in the upcoming training.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

The drive from Cochabamba to Sucre is a long one, roughly eight hours. The four of us were pretty quiet as we drove out, and I was consumed with my own thoughts. The major concern I had was about mishearing the Lord's voice. I have often wondered whether I'm confusing His voice with my own thoughts, something I'm sure most of you can relate to. But I was just distraught with this situation. I kept wondering how I could ever obey the Lord if I couldn't hear Him correctly.

We always listen to music when we drive long distances, and I had put in a CD of Christian music that I had burned. One of my favorite songs, Avalon's "You Were There," came on, and I began to pay more attention, especially when it came to this part:

"You were there when obedience, Seemed to not make sense."

Those particular lyrics are referring to Abraham and how God was right there with him even as he raised the knife to kill Isaac, the child of promise. And I began to think about how Abraham surely must have wondered if he had discerned the Lord's voice correctly. Really, how could he not have wondered? God had just said this:

"Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." (Gen. 22:2)

But Abraham obeyed anyway, and Scripture says he did so for this reason:

"By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, 'It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.' Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death." (Heb. 11:17-19)

He obeyed because he knew that God could raise his son from the dead, and he believed God would do that. It hit home with me at that point what faith really is... and what it looks like. What it is is believing that God is able to fulfill what He has promised to do, even when it looks impossible, and what it looks like is obedience even in the face of insurmountable odds.

I meditated on that passage of Scripture and on the life of Abraham as a whole for the rest of the long journey to Sucre, and I wish I could say that, from that point on, I had great faith in my all-powerful God. But the truth is that I felt almost betrayed by what had happened in Cochabamba. I still didn't understand what I had done wrong there, and I was scared to get my hopes up again. But the LORD was beginning to show me great things about my faith - or lack of it - and about how to pray according to His direction.

What I learned was that putting a timetable on God is putting a limit on my faith. When we prayed that He would grant us the visas before we left Cochabamba, we were essentially saying, "We will only believe You until we leave Cochabamba but not a minute more." But who are we to tell Him such a thing? Once again, Hebrews shows what real faith looks like:

"All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance." (Heb. 11:13)

These great warriors of faith died without ever receiving what God had promised, yet they still believed Him. But I had the audacity to try to control how He would accomplish what He had told us to pray for. That, my friends, is pride, and God has promised never to bless that:

"God opposes the proud but grace to the humble." (Jas. 4:6)

Thankfully, though, my Father is ever forgiving. I began to ask for His forgiveness and to seek how to trust Him more, and He answered that prayer in an amazing way.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion in part V. Coming soon! :)

And let me explain the pictures below. In our cultural learning, we have noticed some things about the way the Quechua take pictures. They never smile (they're supposed to look more sexy when they don't smile), and they love to hold up random objects in their pictures. As you can see from the photo to the left, they especially like holding up the Bible or musical instruments. So, one afternoon, Amy, Misty, and I decided to have a little fun taking pictures Quechua-style. Let me know what you think of our impersonation of our people group? Have we got them down or not? :)

The Government is Upon His Shoulder (Part III)

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

After I asked for your prayers for God's financial provision for our upcoming missionary training, He miraculously provided the total cost... through one donor! So please praise Him for His answer to your prayers.

Also, on our last trip to the community of Ayuma, Nelly learned two more stories of the life of Jesus. But what was even more incredible was that we got to watch her share the story of the birth of Christ with one of her friends. (Click below to view the video. It's in Quechua, but you can still get the idea.) Wow! That is a HUGE step towards our goal of Quechua reaching other Quechua with the Gospel, and we are so excited about this!



Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:

1. Jeremiah once said, "If I say, 'I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,' his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot" (Jer. 20:9). Please pray that God would instill in the people of Ayuma a passion for His Word that will burn in their hearts as it did in Jeremiah's such that they would not be able to hold it in but would HAVE to speak it to others. Pray that His Word would spread like wildfire from this community to the rest of the province.

2. Please lift up Misty and Amy, as they have 3-1/2 more weeks to go in their last trip to Taramarca. Pray that they would remain faithful to share the stories with the people there, and pray that the people would really grasp what the girls are trying to teach.

3. Pray that God would send us exactly the right women to participate in our missionary training that begins November 27. As of now, we have 13 who are interested, but a smaller group of 4-8 is preferable. Pray that He would show them and us the ones who are to be trained at this time. (We are pictured here with two different groups of girls who are interested in being trained.)




Inquiring Minds Wanna Know (Bonus for the Readers):

OK, so where did I leave off last time? Oh, yeah. After reading Mk. 11:23-24, we had just prayed that God would grant us a miracle and give us our Bolivia resident visas in a mere three days. Never mind that we had waited eight months, and it seemed impossible. We had no idea how He would accomplish what we had requested, but our God is a big and powerful God, and we knew that He could do it!

But then, the unthinkable happened.

Immediately after we prayed together, Leah and I went to the immigration office in Cochabamba. When we walked back to talk with the immigration official, we explained everything: That we had begun the visa process in Cochabamba but now lived in Sucre, that we had been telling the truth about where we lived when we began the process but that our location had now changed, that we had been waiting eight months to receive the resident visa. And then we listened as he very politely explained that there was nothing he could do and that, according to new immigration regulations, we would have to begin the process over again in Sucre.

We were crushed, but we weren't quite ready to give up yet. I asked the official if we could just get a letter from the Cochabamba Immigration Office stating that we were in the process of receiving our visas. Such a letter would allow us to leave the country for our meeting (and my vacation in the US) and return to Bolivia without penalty.

We were very much looking forward to the team meeting but, if we left the country without that letter, we would have to spend time outside the country trying to obtain special temporary visas to allow us to re-enter Bolivia in order to get the permanent resident visa. And there was not even a guarantee that we could get those temporary visas, as they're next to impossible to get in Peru. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that spending any more time away from the Quechua meant losing invaluable time teaching them stories from the Word of God. So I can't begin describe to you the feeling of my heart sinking when that official gave us a very firm no.
We returned to our apartment sad and discouraged, and the girls felt the same way upon hearing the news. But we still weren't ready to give up. After all, God was more powerful than this Bolivian government!

For the next three days, we talked to everyone who could possibly help us. We talked to the immigration officials. We talked to lawyers. We talked to our visa runner. We talked to other missionaries. And we talked to God.

But, in the end, we wondered if He was listening.

During those three days, I struggled with faith like I rarely had before. Our friends suggested that we focus on trying to obtain the letters that would allow us to leave the country, rather than pursuing the visas themselves, but that felt like doubting God's power. And, while I didn't doubt whether God could grant us those visas, I did doubt whether He would. And I wondered whether that made me the double-minded man that the Scripture talks about:

"...when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does." (Jas. 1:6-8)

So I prayed and cried out to God for wisdom and for understanding. I read the roll call of faith and was troubled by this passage:

"All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance." (Heb. 11:13)

Did that mean we were not going to receive the visas before we left Cochabamba? I knew that, if that were to come to pass, it would not have been because God had been untrue to His Word but rather because our prayers had somehow been amiss.

But I struggled tremendously with the implications of our prayers being amiss this time. The four of us had been in agreement that this was a word from the Lord and that we were to pray according to that word. And there had been no doubt in my mind that God had taken me directly to Mark 11. If we couldn't hear Him correctly when we were all in agreement, and if I couldn't hear Him when He had spoken to me so clearly through His Word, how could I ever trust that I correctly discern His voice?

On Thursday afternoon, we met with our visa runner, resigned to having to begin the visa process over again in Sucre, and she agreed to accompany us to the immigration office there the next day in the hopes of getting the letter from there before we left the country the following Sunday.

But, as we drove out of Cochabamba without our visas, I felt nothing but despair and doubt, and the one thought that kept going through my mind was this: How could I have misheard my Lord so badly?

The Government is upon His Shoulder (Part II)

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

Leah, Misty, Amy, and I recently spent some time in the community of Ayuma, where our friend Nelly learned two of our stories and is so excited to learn more. (The picture to the left is me telling the story of the birth of Christ to the village women.) In addition, Leah and I went to Sijcha Alta, another nearby village, and shared the birth of Christ with Evarista, who quickly learned it and wants us to return to teach it to her daughters as well. The LORD is at work in these women!

Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:

1. Please be praying that God would provide for our upcoming missionary training at the end of this year. We have around 15 Bolivian women who have expressed interest in receiving this training that will prepare them to serve as missionaries in their own country and beyond, and we are so excited about that! But we need the funds to train them, and we need for God to specifically call those that He wants to participate. Be in prayer for those things and that these women would persevere in His call despite any difficulties that may arise.

2. Please be in prayer for the women in the communities of Taramarca and Ayuma, where the four of us have been working recently. (I'm pictured here shepherding sheep in Ayuma while Misty talks to Piscinta, one of the local women.) We will be heading to these communities next week to share more stories with the women and to teach them that they are to share them with others. Pray that God will continue to work in the hearts of the women and will embolden them to teach the truth of His Word to those around them who haven't heard.

3. Lift up Evarista and her daughters, who live in Sijcha Alta. (Evarista is pictured below with two of her daughters, Maria and Ana.) Pray that they would learn well the stories of Christ that we are sharing and that they would understand that they are not just to keep them for themselves but are to share them with others.
Bonus for the Readers:

To continue the story of our visa process, in late April, we made the eight-hour drive to the city of Cochabamba to speak with Bolivian immigration officials there about our resident visas. We had been waiting eight months to receive them and were getting ready to leave the country to attend a team-wide meeting in Peru. However, we were apprehensive about doing so because we had just been told we would not be granted the visas in Cochabamba and would have to begin the process over again in Sucre.

When we arrived in Cochabamba, we immediately went to the office of our visa runner. We sat down and listened carefully as she began to explain what had happened. Evidently, in the past, the immigration officials had never verified the applicant's address with a physical visit but, very recently, they had begun sending the local police to confirm that the visa applicant lived where they said they did. And, of course, when they arrived at the address in Cochabamba that we had given (the apartment where we lived during language school), we no longer lived there, and they now thought we had lied about the address.

This was news we expected, and we had come to Cochabamba for this very reason, to try to explain to the immigration officials that we had lived at that address when we first began the visa process but, because it had been eight months, we had since moved to Sucre. However, the next thing our visa runner said was not something I expected. She pulled out a map of Cochabamba and asked me to mark on the map where in the city we lived. She handed me a pen and nodded at me, assuring me that, if I would just mark the spot and make a quick calla to our former landlords, they would be glad to tell the government officials that we still lived there, and we would have our visas within the week.

Here I was, looking at the expectant gaze of this woman who had helped hundreds of people through this very complicated process, feeling the heavy stares of the others on my team as they awaited my decision. We had been waiting eight months for this, and here was this great promise that we'd have it in a week if only we bent the rules this little bit. After all, why shouldn't we? Didn't the Bolivian government, who had been nothing but a barrier to us every step of the way, deserve this? And, really, what difference did it make?

But, even with all of that, the offer wasn't even tempting. I couldn't think of anything besides this verse:

"A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold" (Prov. 22:1).

And I kept thinking of the One Whose name I was really representing:

"We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us" (2 Cor. 5:20).

There was no way I could lie and say we lived in Cochabamba, knowing we were Christ's representatives. So I told our visa runner that I couldn't do it and that we needed to go talk to the government officials instead. She looked at me like I was out of my mind but told us where we needed to go.

After that meeting, the four of us went back to the place where we were saying to rest before going to the immigration office. I pulled out my Bible and began to read from Mark 11. As Jesus was going into Jerusalem with His disciples, He was hungry and went to search for fruit on a fig tree that was in leaf. When He found none, He cursed the tree and, the next morning, Peter pointed out to Jesus how the tree had already withered. And Jesus' response to him just jumped off the page at me:

"I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours" (Mk. 11:23-24).

I read those verses over and over, wondering if the the Lord was telling me what I thought He was telling me. Finally, I read the passage to Leah and Amy, who were both in the room with me. I then asked them, "This government bureaucracy over our visas is really a hindrance to the Lord's work here. Do you think it's a mountain that the Lord is telling us to cast into the sea? Do you think we should ask that He would give us the visas while we're here in Cochabamba?"

Amy immediately responded that she and Misty had just been learning about great faith and told me that the Lord had them both reading about Abraham and his faith. And, when they had finished reading about Abraham, the Lord had told them to go and read about him again. They had both been thinking so much about faith that they had been wondering what God was going to do. Amy was pretty convinced that we should pray that we would receive the visas.

Leah then shared how she had been praying for months that we would receive our visas prior to our team meeting in Peru and how she had been asking her prayer supporters to be praying the same. She, too, was convinced that we should ask God to give us our visas.

When Misty came in later, we asked her what she thought, and she said that she really wanted to see God do something big, something that only He could do. Getting those visas would certainly fit the bill, so we were all in agreement that the Lord was telling us to do this.

So, on that Monday afternoon, Misty, Amy, Leah, and I prayed together as a team, asking that God would grant us our resident visas by Thursday when we left Cochabamba. It was a step of faith for us, but we knew that our God was big enough, and we couldn't wait to see what He would do!

Stay tuned for part III, coming soon to a blog near you... :)

The Government is upon His Shoulder

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

All four members of our team received our one-year resident visas here in Bolivia... just in time for me to go home for a three-week vacation. Thank you so much for praying, and praise Him for answering!

Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:

1. Misty, Amy, and I are leaving in the morning for a trip to the village of Ayuma. While there, we will be sharing stories especially with a young believer named Nelly (pictured here), who has specifically asked for discipleship. Please pray that we would be effective in teaching her the stories and that the Lord would ignite in her a passion to share God's Word with others.
2. Misty and Amy will be returning in August to the community of Taramarca, where they will be working for the remainder of their time overseas. Please pray that the people of this village would grasp the vision of Quechua reaching Quechua and that God would use them to begin a mighty work among this people group.

3. Please be in prayer for our Bolivian men's Xtreme Team, as they begin to work with a new people group in a different part of Bolivia. Also, Efrain (pictured here), one of the young men who has been part of the team for the last few years, is leaving us tomorrow after four years of faithful service here, and it has been a sad time for all of us. Please be in prayer for him that he will be refreshed as he gets to spend some time in his home country of Colombia, and pray that he will remain obedient to do the next thing to which the Lord calls him.

Bonus for the Readers:

As many of you know, I just returned to Bolivia from visiting the U.S. for vacation in late May and early June (I'm pictured here with a group of great friends from Virginia). It was a wonderful time of refreshment and rejuvenation for me and, afterwards, I could wholeheartedly relate to and agree with these words of the apostle Paul in Phil. 1:3-5:

"I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now" (Phil. 1:3-5).

While at home in Virginia, I had the privilege of being able to share with my sending church, London Bridge Baptist, a little bit of the miracle God did in providing us with our resident visas. But even LBBC folks don't know the whole story, so let me share with you just what a mighty God we serve!

Back in September of 2009, Leah, Amy, Misty, and I began the laborious process of obtaining missionary visas that would allow us to be legal residents of Bolivia. The process is complicated and constantly changing, so we use a visa runner who is familiar with the nuances and, even more importantly, who has lots of government contacts. The visa runner is expensive but far more efficient than us doing it ourselves.

I should stop and explain a little about the government here first. Bolivia is a third-world country with a third-world government. I don't mean that as an insult so much as a statement of fact. Let me illustrate my point here: Do you hate going to the DMV because its inefficiency will likely cost you an hour or more of your time? The DMV is an absolute model of efficiency by comparison with any Bolivian immigration office. You can ask for a list of the documentation you will need to obtain the missionary visa and walk into the office the next day with every last piece in your hand, only to be told you now need something else because the list has changed. It's a moving target that you can never anticipate, so you eventually learn to stop asking why and just do whatever they tell you to do in the hopes of one day getting the paperwork you need to legally remain in the country doing what God has called you to do. Visa work is a constant battle with frustration.

OK, now that you know the background, you can probably see more clearly why we use a visa runner. The particular one that other missionaries with our organization have used is located in Cochabamba, a city about eight hours north of where we live in Sucre. We debated beginning the process in Sucre but chose to begin in Cochabamba because our visa runner was there and because we would be there anyway to begin Quechua language school.

So, on a weekday morning in September, we gave our visa runner our passports and filled out the necessary paperwork to begin the process of applying for missionary visas. The whole thing took just a few hours, and our visa runner assured us that all we had to do was wait.

Little did we know we'd still be waiting eight months later. By that point, it was late April, and our annual team meeting was drawing near. The meeting is held every year in Peru and, without our passports, which were still in the hands of the Bolivian immigration officials, we would not be able to go. And I was hoping to begin my vacation right after the team meeting, so all of this did not make me very happy.

At this point, we got in touch with our visa runner, who assured us that the immigration officials would write us a letter allowing us to leave the country and return with no problems as long as we returned within 90 days. With that information, we began making plans for Peru, and I booked my plane tickets home.

But, a couple of weeks later, when we called to find out when we could expect our passports, we got the worst news we could imagine. Apparently, a new rule had been instituted that required the immigration officials in Cochabamba to verify that we lived at the address we had put on the application. The problem was that, though we had begun the process in Cochabamba during our time in language school, we no longer lived there but in Sucre. And the immigration officials now thought we had been deceptive and were refusing to grant us our visas or the letters we needed to re-enter the country. Our only option was to go to Cochabamba to talk with them in person.

There is much more to this story, and I learned so much through the experience. But, as you can see, it's a long story, and the Lord's work in this situation merits that I do it justice. So I promise to get you the next installment when I return from my community trip in a week. Truly, He has done great things!

Memories of Matt

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

Misty and Amy have returned safely from their latest community trip and, though it was discouraging in many ways, the LORD taught them so much everyday! Praise Him for His constant revelation of Himself to His children!

Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:
1. We are having some serious visa issues right now and will be traveling to Cochabamba tomorrow to try to sort those out with the Bolivian immigration officials. Please pray that we would be accurate representations of the character of Christ before these government officials and that we would be humble and wise in our words.

2. Please be in prayer for our upcoming women's Xtreme training this fall. We have several national women who have expressed interest in being trained to go out and serve as missionaries, and we are so excited about all of this! Please pray that God would call these women first to Himself and then to His service.

3. Please be in prayer for my partner, Leah, as she has been facing some difficulties and discouragement lately. Pray that she would be encouraged by our Lord and that I would be able to encourage her as well.

Bonus for the Readers:

This will be a little different than most of my blogs, and I know some of you might be very glad to hear that. :) I wanted to use this space to pay tribute to my brother, Matt, because this coming Monday, May 3, will mark the fifteenth anniversary of his death. In some ways, it seems like he’s been gone forever but, in some ways, it seems like only yesterday. Matt was my only sibling, and he was 17 years old when he died. This is one of the last family pictures we had taken, from 1993 just before Matt was diagnosed.

Let me tell you a little about him. He was born in October of 1977, when I was in the first grade. At first, I thought he was pretty cool, because I got to leave school early to go to the hospital to see him for the first time. But that was before my dad traded in our beautiful sports car (which had no back seat) for a more practical, but far uglier, van. From that point on, Matt was just my annoying little brother.

Because of the six-year age difference, we weren’t all that close as we were growing up. He had his friends, and I had mine. We fought frequently, of course, but I learned to stop fighting physically when he got big enough to beat me. :)

But we did more than just fight. I remember having some surprisingly in-depth conversations with him. When I was about 14, our mother decided to quit her job to stay home with us, and Matt and I took a walk around the block the night our parents told us that. I remember telling him, “We’re going to have to make some changes and not be as greedy.” And his response was pretty astute for an 8-year-old: “Yeah, we can’t ask for so much stuff.” :)

That being said, Matt never had many problems with asking for what he wanted. When I was in college, I worked as an assistant manager at a local movie theater when I was home from school. One night, one of my employees came to tell me that my brother was there to see me. When I came to see him, I discovered that Matt had brought along with him the entire youth group from church, all of whom seemed to think I would allow them in to watch the movie of their choice for free. And you know what? I did, and my brother just grinned as he walked by me on the way to his free flick.

I was in college when we found out that Matt (pictured here to the right) had lymphoma. We were all shocked, of course. He was 15, six feet tall, a robust and healthy football player. Until he wasn’t.

It’s funny how life can change in an instant. One minute, I’m a 22-year-old college student with a perfectly healthy family back at home. The next, my brother is a cancer patient. Cancer. That’s a really ugly word that inevitably leads to one even uglier thought: Death.

Matt and I had never talked about faith. As a matter of fact, at that point in my life, I wasn’t following the Lord very closely, so I never had any real desire to talk about such things. But, thankfully, my dad asked the tough questions. One day, he asked Matt whether he was afraid, and Matt said no. Dad was understandably surprised, but Matt just said, “Why would I be afraid? What’s the worst thing that could happen? That I could die. But that’s the best thing that could happen.”

Wow. My brother had never really talked much about his faith before, but that explanation showed so much of how the Lord had worked in his life.

In May of 1995, Matt’s faith became sight when he stepped into the very presence of God, never to leave again. I’m sure he heard the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I still have mixed emotions about it. Does that surprise you? I mean, really, why should I be mixed up about Matt’s death? Shouldn’t the only emotion I have be sadness?

Nope.

Don’t get me wrong. I definitely feel that sadness. Even today, fifteen years after his 20-month-long battle with lymphoma ended, I still miss Matt (pictured here after his bone marrow transplant). I miss how he used to start small fights between my grandparents just so he could sit back and laugh at their bickering. I miss watching “Beavis and Butt-head” with him and listening to him laugh his head off at the antics of two completely idiotic cartoon characters. I miss seeing him do the silliest things to entertain his best friends. I even miss things that never happened, like seeing his high school graduation or being a part of his wedding or watching him play with his children.

But I also feel happiness. Shortly after Matt’s funeral, my dad told me something that was completely beyond my grasp at the time. He said, “If I had the opportunity to bring Matt back today, I wouldn’t.” I didn’t understand that at all then, but I get it now. My brother is in the very presence of God! There’s no more pain, no more crying, no more darkness, and no more death for him. There is only worshipping in the loving arms of His Lord and knowing Him fully. Why would I ever want Matt to come back to this world when he has all of that?

Which brings me to the third emotion I feel: Jealousy. Not in the sense that I want to trade places with him but that I want to be there with him! I now understand completely what Paul meant when he said:

“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Phil. 1:21)

There was a time when that concept was completely foreign to me. I remember my dad once told me how much he was looking forward to going home to be with the Lord. I was a teenager, and I thought, “I don’t want to do that yet! I want to finish school and have a great career and get married and have kids. All of that heaven stuff can wait!”

Yeah, I don’t feel that way anymore. I have learned that this world has nothing that can possibly compare with eternal life with my Savior. Can you imagine what it must be like to be with the Lord, with nothing standing in the way? Yeah, I can’t either, and I know it would be beyond anything I can even imagine.

Jesus describes eternal life for us in the midst of talking to His Father:

“Now this is eternal life: That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (Jn. 17:3)

And Paul gives a little information on the subject in these words:

“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Cor. 13:12)

One day, I will know God fully, even as He knows me. This, my brothers and sisters, is eternal life. Until then, we just have to persevere in what He’s called us to do. But all my hope is beyond this life.

Can’t wait to see you again, Matt. I think it just took me a little longer to learn the lessons you got in seventeen years. You weren’t short-changed; you were rewarded!