Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:
Our wonderful and God-sent Quechua friend Simon and his wife Daria have begun a church that meets in their house here in Sucre. The participants at this point are all Daria's relatives, and they want Leah and me to come and begin teaching stories from Scripture to them that they can then share with others. What a blessing and encouragement this is for us, and it was completely uninitiated by us, which makes it even more exciting! These Quechua believers are beginning to do this on their own!
Prayer Necessities:
1. Please pray diligently for Nelly, our sister in Ayuma who has battled some long-term, undiagnosed health issues. But her bigger problem is the crippling worry over her health that plagues her constantly and is beginning to alienate her from friends and family. She remains interested in hearing God's Word, but the worry is an enormous barrier to her focus. Please pray that she would trust in the One Who truly controls her health and that she would seek first His Kingdom.
2. Begin praying for this church in Simon and Daria's house. Pray that they would be unified and would be determined to exalt Jesus' name here in Sucre. Pray that they would learn the stories from God's Word and use them to reach others for Christ.
3. Please pray for Ester and Soledad, two of the young women who had planned to participate in our missionary training. We recently discovered that the reason they could not participate was related to their alcoholic father. Please pray for their father Guillermo, that he would see the difference Christ makes in their lives and would surrender himself to the One Who can change lives.
Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:
We recently made a short trip out to Ayuma to visit our dear friends, and especially to invest more time in Nelly, the one woman there who has consistently been interested in memorizing the stories. We are so excited about Nelly because she has already learned eight stories from the life of Christ!
However, this trip was a little discouraging for us. When we first saw Nelly, she began to talk to us, once again, about her health problems. Ever since we met her, she has had some sort of medical issue, a problem that no one has really been able to diagnose, predominantly because she lives three hours from the closest modern medical care and doesn't usually return to the same doctor for follow-up.
The problem is that Nelly assumes the worst. Her mother died from something that was probably cancer, so Nelly assumes she also has cancer and is going to die from it. It doesn't matter that her symptoms are nothing like what happened to her mother; she is assuredly going to die from this cancer that is causing her problems.
As a former medical professional, this is highly frustrating for me. But, truly, as a believer, it's even more frustrating. Our good friend is just worrying herself into a frenzy all the time, crying every time she sees us and beginning to alienate her friends and family there in town because of her constant fretting. And I honestly don't know what to do.
During this trip, Leah and I tried the compassionate approach, saying, "We're so sorry, Nelly. We can't relate to what you're going through, but we know that the Lord loves you so much and has this situation right in His hands." We tried the harsh approach with, "You have to stop worrying. You're just making yourself miserable, and you can't even do anything about the situation! Trust God!" I even spent an afternoon memorizing Matt. 6:25-34 in Quechua to share with Nelly. At least four times in that passage, the Quechua Bible specifically says, "Ama phutikuychischu!" (Don't worry!). Still, the words from that story still hung in the air when Nelly started asking us once again, "Sisters, what will I do? My children are so young. What will happen if I die?" I just wanted to bang my head against the wall.
One story that Nelly has learned that has spoken to her is the story of Jesus calming the storm. Just so your memory is refreshed, here is Matthew's version (the parallel passages can be found in Mk. 4:35-41 and Lk. 8:22-25):
"Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, 'Lord, save us! We're going to drown!'
He replied, 'You of little faith, why are you so afraid?'
Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, 'What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!'" (Matt. 8:23-27)
Nelly enjoys this story and has even told us that the Lord has used it to calm her when she has awoken in the middle of the night worrying. So Leah shared it with her again on this trip, hoping to remind her that the One Who has command of the wind and waves surely has control of her health also. After sharing the story, we returned to our house, a little discouraged with everything that had gone on. And the Lord tested our own belief in that story that very night.
The houses in Ayuma are made predominantly of mud, though the inside walls and floors are often concrete. The roofs are usually tin that is not attached to the house but is held down by heavy rocks. Our beds are straw mats on the floor with our sleeping bags on top. These pictures should give you some idea of what our house looks like:
Well, the night that we had told the story of the calming of the storm to Nelly, there were heavy winds in Ayuma. This is normal for them, and they don't think about it at all. But for us to hear the wind howling in the trees and the tin roof being banged against the top of the house was a little nerve-wracking. I was asleep when the winds began around midnight, and the sound of tin against concrete is not a pleasant way to wake up, let me tell you.
I've never lived in a place where I've been that scared of wind. I've lived through two hurricanes and a few tornadoes, any of which would have been strong enough to destroy my house, roof and all. But I've never been in a place where just an ordinary wind was frightening. Of course, I've never before lived in a mud house with a tin, non-attached roof.
So, as I listened to those winds howling and thought about all the ways I could die if that roof came off, I was reminded of how the disciples must have felt when they felt the strength of the wind and saw the water pouring into their boat. As fishermen, they had been on that sea all their lives. They knew what a deadly storm looked like, and this evidently appeared to them to be one.
But when they wake Jesus to tell Him they are going to drown, He says they have little faith. And I knew I was exactly the same as they were. Here I had been so confident in telling Nelly not to worry, that the same Jesus Who calmed that physical storm could most certainly calm the spiritual storm in her life. Yet, here I was, lying wide-eyed in my bed in the middle of the night, fearful of a physical storm. How ironic and how fitting.
I resolved that night to trust the Lord to keep the roof on that house, and He did. Obviously, we made it out of Ayuma alive. :)
But I've been thinking about the story ever since and would love to hear input on it from any of you. Why did Jesus say they had little faith? There was no guarantee they would not die as long as they were His disciples, so why was their asking Him to save them a lack of faith? What is the significance of Jesus sleeping during the storm? And how did their amazement (or terror, as Mark describes it) at seeing Jesus calm the storm affect them from then on?
Would love to hear from you! Until next time, thanks for your prayers for us and for these people. We all desperately need them!
Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:
Leah and I were able to spend a wonderful Christmas with our friend Simon and his wife Daria, along with their children, Ruben and Cesia. Check us all out here in the picture below. We ate authentic Louisiana gumbo (very well done by Leah!), read the story of Christ's birth from Luke 2, and watched "A Christmas Story" in Spanish. And I'm glad to report that "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!" is funny in any language. :)
Prayer Necessities:
1. In just a few days, Leah and I are headed out to Ayuma for a 10-day trip. Please pray that we would learn how to teach the women there to obey everything He has commanded us.
2. Please continue to pray for Nelly in Ayuma and begin to pray for Ilaria in Taramarca. These two women have learned 7-8 stories from the life of Christ and are beginning to share them with others in their villages. Please pray that they would hunger for more and would long to share the Truth with those around them.
3. Please pray for wisdom for Leah and me as we confront some problems tomorrow.
Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:
I had something else in mind to blog about, but this was too good to pass up. I figured y'all might like to get a little taste of what life is like in Bolivia. You'll get the other blog idea at a later date.
We recently had to make a trip to Cochabamba to meet the president of one of the local denominations. We are hoping to get his support for some upcoming evangelism conferences that we plan to do, so it seemed like a great idea to go and meet him in person. Plus, Cochabamba is probably the most western city in Bolivia, and they have some really nice restaurants, so we were not all that disappointed to make the trip. :)
So, on a sunny and beautiful Tuesday morning, we got in the truck to make the 8.5-hour drive. There is not much in between Sucre and Coch, so we had packed snacks and planned to eat Chinese food when we arrived. We made it there without incident at around 5:00, checked into our hotel, ate Chinese, and even went to see a movie that evening. We were pretty much happy as clams.
On Wednesday morning, we got up to go to our appointment with the president and arrived at his office promptly at 10:00. However, if you know anything about Latin American culture, you know that the time they give you for an appointment is usually 30 minutes to an hour prior to the time you'll actually be seen. It's kind of like a visit to the doctor's office in the States. :)
As expected, we did make it into the president's office at around 10:30. What we DIDN'T expect was the presence of his Executive Council, two pastors from other local churches, and his wife. It made us just a little bit more nervous, but we wound up getting through our presentation with no problems.
On Thursday, we got up early to make the trip home. We had a few errands in Sucre that we planned to do when we arrived, so we left Cochabamba at about 9:30, expecting to make slightly better time and arrive in our home city at about 5:30 (most offices in Bolivia close at 6:30). Since our trip to Cochabamba had been uneventful, we expected more of the same on the return drive.
Boy, were we wrong.
I should explain a few things about Bolivian roads. There are some very nice paved roads in my adopted country. The one between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz (the largest city in the country) is one of them. Half of our drive between Sucre and Cochabamba plants us firmly on that very nice highway. However, the other half of the drive is a road that is pavement for about an hour, cobblestone for about 90 minutes, and dirt and gravel for the rest.
Even the dirt and gravel isn't the problem, though. The worst part is an hour-long detour through a riverbed that is dirt and large rocks. It's not so bad when the river is dry, but this is rainy season.
And it rained Thursday morning.
We had just gotten into the dirt and gravel section when our problems began. We topped a dirt ridge only to find what amounted to a small, muddy pond waiting for us on the other side. By that time, it was too late to stop, so we tried to plow through it with our trusty four-wheel-drive.
The problem? We've never really learned how to use the four-wheel-drive.
The truck got stuck about three-quarters of the way through the pond, so I got out to try to find some rocks to give the tires some traction. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take off my sandals before I stepped into a foot of muddy water, which only added to my already stellar attitude. I tried to traipse around in the mud for about 30 seconds before taking off my shoes and angrily flinging them into a nearby field.
Yeah, my temper is not a pretty sight. But it can certainly be amusing. :)
After putting rocks next to all four tires, I asked Leah to get in and try to drive while I watched the tires to figure out if there was one in particular that was our traction problem.
Where did I stand to do this, you might ask? Well, directly behind the truck, of course.
Genius.
As you might expect, the minute Leah hit the accelerator, mud went rocketing all over me. My hair, arms, shirt, shorts, and legs were all covered in it. (This picture was taken after the fact, but you get the idea.)
Nice.
And I was in my only Mississippi State T-shirt. And it was a white one.
I repeat, I'm a genius. :)
At that point, I was hopping mad. But, thankfully, a local Quechua man had seen our little adventure and come out of his house to help. He got me in the driver's seat and directed me with some reverse and forward movements until we made it out of the mud. We were more than a little grateful.
Once back on the road with Leah driving, I changed into a clean(er) shorts and T-shirt and put on my only remaining pair of shoes. But that wasn't the end of our adventure.
We had decided to avoid the detour and stay on the dirt-and-gravel road, which was mostly finished. People kept stopping us to tell us the road was closed, but we decided to remain on that part until someone told us to turn around. We had heard stories of cars getting stuck in the riverbed below and decided our chances were better with the dirt-and-gravel road.
We had been driving for about 45 minutes when we came to a giant dirt mound blocking the road. We got out to look at it and discovered there was no way around it. We were stuck, and there was nothing we could do. We keep a shovel in the back of our truck, and I was seriously considering pulling it out to dig us a path when several other cars drove up beside us. Most of them were either cars or SUVs like ours, all too small to try to plow their way through the river below without fear of getting
stuck.
They informed us that a bulldozer was on its way to dig a path for all of us to continue on the road. One of the women kept telling us, "El rio es peligroso! (The river is dangerous)," and we were definitely in agreement. We made some new friends in the ten minutes or so that we waited on the bulldozer. And one woman laughed at me when she saw the mud in my hair. I explained what had happened, and then they all laughed!
We finally made it back to Sucre at about 6:30, none the worse for wear, if a little muddier than we had expected. (Check out the truck after our arrival, pictured to the right.) We were happy to get to meet some new people, though. I guess that made it worth it. :)
Seriously, this sort of thing can only happen in Bolivia. :)
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.
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).
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? :)
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. A
s 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?
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 a
ny 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... :)
