Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:
Leah and I received our two-year residency visas last week! We will not be here for two years longer, but we are glad to have in our hands the documentation we need to be able to legally live in Bolivia until our mission term ends in May of next year.
Prayer Necessities:
1. Please continue to pray for our friend Nelly, who continues to have some health problems. Despite several visits to doctors and a few rounds of antibiotics, she still has intermittent abdominal pain that remains unresolved. She is often worried about this, so please pray that the Lord would resolve this and that she would trust Him with her health.
2. Be praying for our friend Sabina, who lives in Ayuma. She is a non-believer and is well-known for her drinking and for making the local alcoholic beverage for others to drink. We have heard that she says she will just drink herself into the grave, but we have had an opportunity to build a friendship with her. We got the chance to share the Gospel with her through Quechua Bible stories this past weekend, so please pray that His Word would touch her heart and bring her to salvation.
3. Please pray for Leah and me as we very soon make the transition into working with another people group, the Guarayo, in October or November.
Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:
The second weekend of our women's conference was August 13 and 14, and the results were not what we had hoped. When we began this conference, we had the intention of teaching seven stories from Scripture over the course of three weekends. The goal was for the women to learn the stories, then to go home and share them with at least one other person.
We had made those expectations very clear and had told them that we would be asking two questions when they arrived on August 13: 1) Did they still remember the stories? and 2) With whom did they share them?
We knew that most people would not share the stories, but we were hoping for a few who would. When we got there, we asked the two questions. When we asked the first question, several of the women raised their hands, and we were excited. Then we asked who all had shared the stories, and there were still a few hands raised. But, when we began to ask them individually with whom they had shared, only one person could say that she had shared the stories.
But we were excited about the one! Yhovana is 17 and had shared both stories with her mom and with two friends from school. Wow! We gave her a can of milk as a reward (milk is kind of a precious commodity in the village), and we also gave milk to Nelly, who had missed learning the second story but had shared the first one with her family.
We then set about teaching the next story - the story of God testing Abraham's faith by asking him to sacrifice Isaac. Just like the previous week, it was very obvious that many of the women were not interested at all, but there were a few, including Nelly and Yhovana, who were really trying. Leah asked for Nelly's husband Oscar and one of the local boys, Luis, to come up and help her as she told the story (in the picture below, Luis is to the far left and Oscar is beside him as Leah teaches the story), and they played the parts of Abraham and Isaac. I think it was a really great visual for them to get to see what it might have looked like for a man to sacrifice his son. Afterwards, the question time went really well, as one of the women confessed that, if God had asked this of her, she would not have been able to sacrifice her child. And Yhovana offered the insight of the night, as she told us that, just as He did with Abraham, God also wants to test each of us to know whether or not we will obey Him. We went to bed that night truly encouraged by Yhovana and Nelly, who continued to impress with their quickness to learn and willingness to share what they had learned.
But Sunday brought great discouragement when Yhovana didn't show up to learn the story. We had seen her at her house that morning and knew she was healthy, so we didn't know what happened. It was my turn to teach, and I just looked around at everyone and wondered why exactly we were doing this when no one really seemed to care. But Leah encouraged me by reminding me that, even if everyone around us was disobedient, we still had to give our all. Our great God deserved that.
I knew she was right, so I got up to teach the story of the woman at the well from John 4, determined to give my best effort in teaching it. It is an incredible story that always touches my heart so, after the second time of telling it, I was really into it. In acting the story out in front of the women gathered there, I really thought about what that woman must have thought when Jesus told her He was the Messiah, this long-awaited One Who knew everything she had ever done... and yet still promised to give her living water. I knew how excited she was to meet Him, and it made me remember the excitement that I had - and still have - 
when I really meet with Him and feel that spring of living water flowing inside of me.
Among the 40 women or so who were gathered there, I could see a few who were really interested. There was one woman in particular, a lady named Ines, who would crane her head as I moved, just to be sure she could see what I was doing. It was encouraging to know there was someone who really wanted to know this awesome story of love and forgiveness, so I focused most of my attention on her and the few others who were interested (pictured here are Nelly sitting down by the "well" as Jesus and Noelia as the Samaritan woman, while I help coach them with the story).
At the end, I asked several questions about the story. One of the questions was about what the Samaritan woman did after Jesus told her He was the Messiah. The answer? She went back to her town and told everyone to come and hear Jesus. When we talked about that, Ines spoke up and explained that they didn't have time to go and tell others. They were all so busy cooking and washing clothes and working in their fields that there just wasn't time to go and tell the Catholics about Jesus. (Ines is pictured below with me as we go through the story of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well.)
That might have been the most discouraging thing I heard that weekend, but I know I do the same thing. I get so caught up in what I want or "need" to do that I don't take the time to tell others the Good News, that the Messiah has come and offered us living water so that we might never be thirsty again. When Ines said that, I wondered how the 5% of Quechua people who are believers can withhold such a valuable truth from the 95% of their people who don't know it? And I wonder how can I withhold it from so many around me who also don't know Him?
Scripture tells us this:
"Be very careful, then, how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil" (Eph. 5:15-16).
Since our lives are nothing longer than a vapor and then are over, let's heed this advice. Let's spend ourselves in His service, making Him known and telling everyone about the living Water. There is NOTHING we do that is more important!
Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:
We are so blessed and grateful for the help of our friend Lidia, who translated for us in the first weekend of our women's conference (I'm pictured here with Lidia in the middle and one of the students, Mariela, on the right). Not only did she do a wonderful job of translating, but she was also a great encouragement to the Quechua women, as they could see someone of their own culture who was doing the Lord's work. She exhorted them to go out and share the stories with others, and we are hopeful that they will take her words to heart!
Prayer Necessities:
1. Please continue to pray for the women's conference and the women who participated in it. Pray that they would go out and share the two stories they have learned and would return for the second weekend excited and eager to learn the next two.
2. Pray for wisdom for Leah and me as we think through the rest of our time on the mission field and some potential changes that are coming within the next couple of months.
3. Please be in prayer for our bosses, Trent and Kay, who will be returning to the US in September to begin a nine-month stateside assignment. Pray that they will have a smooth transition and an enjoyable time of reconnecting with friends, family, and stateside churches.
Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:
Well, our women's evangelism conference began this past weekend, and the only thing to be expected was that everything was unexpected. :)
Things did actually start out a little discouraging, though it was probably just a cultural misunderstanding. We had advertised the conference in April at a previous conference held in a larger city called Pocoata. We had brought posters and letters describing our women's conference and had talked about it in front of the approximately 300 people present. We had mentioned that it would be held over three weekends, with each Saturday's teaching beginning at 3:00 in the afternoon, and Sunday's beginning at 8:00 am and ending around 11:00 am, just prior to the morning worship service in Ayuma.
The people in Ayuma kept telling us they were expecting about 200 people to attend our conference and, to be honest, we didn't want that many. We knew there was no way all 200 of those people would actually want to learn stories and share them, and it's easier to really teach the Bible stories in a smaller group. But we figured we'd just try to handle it the best we could and, for the subsequent weekends, there would be fewer people, once they figured out what we were doing and expecting of them.
We had agreed to provide half the food, so we loaded our truck up in Sucre with about 80 pounds each of noodles and rice, about 50 pounds of sugar, and plenty of oil, carrots, onions, tomatoes, and a few spices thrown in for good measure. On Saturday morning just before 6:00, we picked up our translator Lidia and hit the road for Ayuma.
We arrived just after noon, expecting to pull up to a big group of people already cooking over a huge fire for the expected crowd of 200-plus. What we found was just the opposite: Ayuma was an absolute ghost town. One church member, Roman, and an elderly lady from another community were standing outside the church building, and that was it. After we knocked on a few doors, we discovered that almost everyone had gone to a market in another town and wouldn't be back until evening. And we were also told that most of the people who would come to the conference probably wouldn't even come until Sunday!
Now that was a problem because I was supposed to teach the creation story on Saturday, and Leah was going to teach the fall of man on Sunday. If most of the women didn't come until Sunday, t
hey'd already be a story behind. And creation is a really important story to set the stage for the Gospel.
So, needless to say, we were pretty discouraged by all of this. Our conference was set to start in less than three hours, and there were five people there, three of which were teachers or translators!
All we knew to do was to start peeling potatoes, knowing that would be the first thing our Quechua friends would do when they arrived, and a few people slowly began to arrive (here are some of our friends peeling potatoes). We had decided that we would start at 4:30, regardless of who was there. But, at 4:00, when there were still were no more than 15 people present, we decided to take a short walk to gather our thoughts and regroup.
Leah suggested that we pray, and we each said a prayer asking for the Lord's help and wisdom in how to go about things. And Lidia was very encouraging in her prayer, asking that the Lord would give us strength and wisdom to be able to proceed. After that, we all felt much better.
We returned to the town and decided to begin the conference at 5:30 with Leah teaching a health class. She was teaching on how to prevent back injuries and on good nutrition, and it went really well. We had about 30 women there, and they asked some great questions. It seemed like we were finally getting things rolling!
After that, we had some dinner (which was prepared mostly by the men) and then returned to the church building as I began to teach the creation story. At that point, we had around 40-50 people, some of whom had walked a great distance to come. There were three teenaged girls from the community of Saqa Saqa who had walked four hours to get there. So we were excited to see what the Lord would do with that great sacrifice on their part!
They and several others seemed very interested and, at the end of an hour and a half, they had learned the story and were able to tell it back with very little prompting. We had also explained to the women very clearly that they would be asked two questions when they returned for the second weekend of the conference: 1) Do you remember the stories? and 2) With whom did you share them?
Lidia, Leah, and I climbed into bed exhausted around 10:00 that night. We stayed with our friend Nelly, the lady who has learned nearly all of the stories we've shared in Ayuma. She had come and learned the story of creation on Saturday but told us she wouldn't be able to be present on Sunday when Leah taught the fall of man.
But the next morning, Nelly had changed her mind. She told us that she had gotten up early to cook for her family so that she could come and learn the next story. We were so excited to hear of her willingness to sacrifice to obey the Lord! We knew He was pleased with this!
We had planned to start teaching the story at about 9:00 on Sunday but, as usual, our plans were not what came to pass. Leah was finally able to start teaching a little after 10:00 but, once again, the women did well in learning. At Lidia's suggestion, we even broke up into two groups to do a competition: A drama of the story of Adam and Eve's sin in Eden. It went great, and it was obvious there were about 10-15 women who had the story down really well!
But we were saddened to see that Nelly did not come after all. She showed up for the last few minutes of the story, asked Leah to teach it to her, but left again before Leah had the opportunity. We found out later that she went to help make bread for the local school's upcoming celebration. It made us sad to see that, but we are hopeful that we will have the opportunity to catch her up with that story when we return to Ayuma next week. Or, better still, we hope that one of the other women who was at the conference will teach it to her.
We're not yet sure how successful the conference was, but we will know more on the second weekend. The ladies will arrive again (we hope!) on August 13 and 14, so please continue to pray that the Lord will work in their hearts and that they will be obedient to learn His Word and share it and will thus fulfill the Great Commission!
when I really meet with Him and feel that spring of living water flowing inside of me.
