The Resurrection and the Life

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

Leah and I just returned from a two-week trip to Lima, Peru, where we attended our annual team meeting. We now have five teams of missionaries working in Bolivia and Peru, and over half of these missionaries are from South America! (Check out the picture of our team below.) This excites all of us because it means the local people are grasping the vision for doing this work, and they are far more effective at it than we North Americans.

Prayer Necessities:

1. Please be in prayer once again for our visa process. Leah and I have begun the process to receive our two-year visas to live here in Bolivia, and we are hopeful that it won't be quite as dramatic - or traumatic! :) - as last year's version. Ask that the LORD would once again grant us favor with the Bolivian immigration officials so that we can continue with our work here.

2. Continue to lift up the community of Ayuma and its church there. The believers love us so much and are so wonderfully hospitable to us, but there doesn't seem to be much love shown toward one another. Please pray that, as we begin to teach stories of the New Testament church, this little church would grasp the concepts Scripture gives them and would love one another as they love us. Pray that this love shown toward one another would be attractive to the non-believers in the area and that the disciples would begin to multiply there.

3. Please pray for our upcoming women's evangelism conference that will be held in July or August in Ayuma. Pray that God would send women who will be workers in His harvest field and that they would learn and share the stories we will teach.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

Since Leah and I no longer have short-term missionaries on our team, our role has transitioned from that of team leader to more of a frontline role in the work. Our goal in the community of Ayuma is to teach a set of discipleship stories (eight from the life of Christ and eight from the New Testament church in Acts), followed by a short set of stories for evangelistic purposes. The women with whom we work are already believers, so the goal is to give them these stories so that they can effectively share the Gospel with non-believers.

All of that means we have recently been spending more time out in this village of about 75 people. It's definitely a difficult life, but we are encouraged by Nelly, who has now learned all eight Jesus stories, and by Marina and Agripina, who have recently begun learning the stories as well.

On one of our recent trips, something happened that really drove home for me the reason that we are doing this work. Leah and I were spending a Saturday with Nelly, who had asked us to go to her field with her to bring back some onions. We agreed, not really realizing exactly what that entailed. For those of you who are agriculturally challenged like me and have no idea where onions come from, they're a root that you dig out of the ground. (I'm pictured to the left digging up one of them.)

We set out in the late morning and soon discovered that Nelly's field is on the other side of the river. No big deal, right? Yeah, that's what we thought, too.

But we were in Ayuma during the latter part of rainy season, and the river was raging. It wasn't all that deep - maybe just up to my knees - but the river was raging.

Now, there is a bridge over the river, but it's not quite finished. That means you climb up to it by means of two rickety wooden ladders tied together - up to a height of about 20 feet. Once you're up there, you just walk across the bridge to the other side, where a few wooden planks pushed together make a makeshift ramp down to the dirt path. (You can see a picture of it below, but it's not very good quality.)
Oh, and have I mentioned that I'm terrified of heights?

So, yeah, there I was, clinging to that wooden ladder and refusing to look down for fear of losing my nerve. I finally made it to the top of the bridge and over to the other side, where I just wanted to kiss the ground under my feet and forget about the fact that we would have to get back across that river again later.

But there was one problem: Riley.

We couldn't take our dog up the rickety ladder with us, but she loves the water, so we assumed she would just cross the river on her own and meet us on the other side. We didn't count on her being afraid of the fast-moving water just as we were.

So I wound up going halfway back across the river to pick her up and carry her to the other side. Thankfully, we both made it across with no problems.

On the way back, things were a bit more harrowing. I was carrying about 25 pounds of onions in a bundle tied across my shoulders (see the photo to the right) and 20 more pounds of Riley under my right arm as I tried to navigate the fast-moving, shin-high river waters. Once again, we made it with no problems (aside from sheer terror on my part! :)), but I was more than happy to be back.

Once we made our way to the town plaza, we learned some distressing news. Emiliana, one of the older ladies in town and a local believer, had just a few hours earlier been swept away and killed by the very same river Riley and I had just crossed!

Death in Bolivia is, of course, just as sad a thing as it is in the US, and funeral customs are relatively similar. But one major difference is that, because of the lack of embalming, there is a legal requirement to bury within 24 hours.

So, on Sunday afternoon, Leah and I, along with nearly everyone else in the community, went to Emiliana's house to pay our respects. We ate all that was offered to us, while Emiliana's body lay on a table in the room up above us. Once everyone had finished eating, they loaded her into a black wooden coffin (pictured below), and we all began the short walk outside the village to the cemetery.
As we followed the procession through the plaza, Emiliana's granddaughter began to cry and, as I reached out my hand to rub her back in a meager attempt to provide some comfort, I was surprised to find tears streaming down my face, too.

If you know me at all, you know I'm not a crier. As a matter of fact, I HATE to cry. And we had barely known Emiliana. We had never spent any significant period of time with her, and the only time I had ever even spoken to her was when she asked us to pray for her. So I wondered why I was so emotional over this woman I had hardly known.

That was when I thought about the shortest verse in the Bible. You know, "Jesus wept"?

We laugh about knowing that verse, but do you know the context in which it was written? If not, let me share it with you because it was a very similar situation to the one I was in. Lazarus had died and, despite his sisters' request for Jesus to come quickly, He had arrived four days later. When He did come, Mary went out to meet Him, and the story goes like this:

"When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.'

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 'Where have you laid him?' he asked.

'Come and see, Lord,' they replied.

Jesus wept.

Then the Jews said, 'See how he loved him!'" (Jn. 11:32-36)

Jesus cried because His friend was dead, and He cried because of the grief He saw and felt in those who loved Lazarus. And I'm sure He cried because of the cause of it all, the sin that would eventually send Him to His own death.

I think my tears were for similar reasons. Though I didn't know Emiliana, I could see and feel the grief of her granddaughter, who would never again see on this earth someone she loved so much. And I cried because of the sin - MY sin - that caused it all.

But I rejoice to know that there is a cure for this sadness, that Jesus' sacrifice makes Emiliana's - and my - eternal life possible. This is why we must keep going to Ayuma, why we must keep impressing upon these believers the importance of allowing the Spirit to work in and through us so that the life of Christ may be seen in us, why we must keep sharing the truth with those who don't know Him.

Jesus said, "He who stands firm to the end will be saved" (Matt. 24:13).

May these words be said of me!