April Fools. 2010
“The Life is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace (Eph 1:7).
I awake while it is still dark with the sensation that a small animal is brushing against my leg. A rat? A tarantula? I strike at it blindly, but the offending creature merely flops against me like a landed trout. I strike at it again, this time with both hands. Suddenly, I realize that the animal I am trying to kill is really just my other hand! My artery was pinched off completely at the elbow. I quickly clench and extend my fingers like a hydraulic pump to get the stagnant fluid moving. A million tiny needles prick my dead arm back to life.
How vital is the circulation of the blood! Moving blood unites and coordinates the body in action. It powers grip and grasp, sensation and control. It gives the members life. Without it, I am a fool, while the limbs are foreign intruders and dead weight, rats or flopping fish.
Dual Planting. April 11, 2010
An agriculture professor from the public technical college in Riberalta asked if he could bring his class to the school this weekend to do their practicum. He had brought his class last year and said it was a really good experience for them. They arrived Sabbath morning and attended the church service and a few of them even accompanied us on our house visits in Yata in the afternoon. Alexander and Gabriel, two of the Riberalta visitors, accompanied my group and seemed to enjoy the songs and scripture reflections. At one house we read from Ecclesiastes how Solomon found that all the riches and pleasures of this world do not bring happiness or satisfaction.
The next day we started work at 6:00 a.m. Students and visitors divided into two groups: one began to plant our banana chaco while the rest of us tried to finish harvesting the last hectare and a half in the rice chaco. The morning went quickly, and in the afternoon the groups changed jobs to give the students a broader experience. In the banana field, I soon discovered that I was the only non-visitor in the group as everyone turned to me to ask for tools, where to plant, and how to organize the work. I took them all down to the tool shed to check out shovels, hoes, and machetes. Back at the site I shared my limited knowledge on banana planting. We dug the holes deep and wide so that the roots can establish quickly in the loose soil. The field had not been completely cleared of tree trunks and debris, and frequently I had to be the voice of conscience against tool abuse: “please don’t use the shovel handles as pry-bars to move fallen logs!” and “don’t twist the ax like tha…” snap! Too late! I went to look for another ax.
After a while, I finally had things more or less organized and we started to advance when I realized that in my preoccupation with directing the work, I had neither prayed silently, nor aloud with the group, for God’s guidance and blessing. That was a wasted opportunity. I thought. Sorry Lord.
Fortunately, God had plans in spite of my negligence. They were a talkative group, and it wasn’t long before several of them started to quiz me on extra-agricultural topics.
“So which Bible character do you want to meet first when you go to heaven?” one of the girls surprised me with her question. Before I could respond, one of the boys piped up. “I want to meet Job!” I thought he said.
“Job? Yeah, I’d like to meet him too” I replied.
“No! Not Job! Job’s daughters, man! You know, the most beautiful girls in all the land!” he laughed.
“I want to meet Solomon because he had hundreds of women, and he was the wisest man who ever lived” the compañero smiles at his one-upmanship, and I saw that the conversation could deteriorate quite rapidly.
“But Solomon was unhappy because he realized that seeking pleasure was vain and that true wisdom is in seeking God. Like the reflection on Sabbath, right?” It was Alexander, from the Yata visits who redirected the conversation!
The questions continued: “Does your church forbid marriages with unbelievers?”
“Well, actually, the Bible itself counsels against marriage with unbelievers (Amos 3:3, Mark 3:25), and as a church we believe in following Bible principles.”
“Your church promotes vegetarianism doesn’t it?” We continue to talk about different topics from healthful living to the philosophy of Christian education. They seem impressed by the school atmosphere and the work-study program.
As the afternoon sun maxed out on its ferocity, the majority of the visitors gravitated to the shade. I continued to dig, and although their work period was over, three or four of the visitors clustered around, and the questions kept on coming. They wanted to know how old I am, how I survive as a volunteer, and how long I plan to stay here. Soon I was merely standing on my shovel, but somehow I felt like I was still planting...
God’s alarms. May 11, 2010.
“…He wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.” Isaiah 50:4
Last night I asked God to decide when I should wake up to spend some time with Him, so I couldn’t complain when I awoke to the cry of the neighbor’s baby at 3:45 a.m. That was the first alarm: God started early because He knew it would take awhile to rouse me. I knelt up in my bed to pray. Bad idea. I soon awoke the second time, face down in bed. I doubt I’d prayed one coherent sentence. I tried again and the next thing I knew I awoke with the rising sliver of a moon shining on my face. Wow. I thought. I make Christ’s disciples look good! They couldn’t pray for one hour: I can’t even handle two minutes! I knew if I didn’t get out of bed I would never wake my sleepy head in time to study and pray before the day began, so I got up and splashed cold water on my face, drank half a quart of water, and went to my desk.
As the horizon lit up with the forerunning rays of the sun I prepared to take a short walk to the corner of the driveway. The thermometer registered 14º C, (about 57º F) but with the high humidity the cold seeps into your core and chills your bones, like biting a Popsicle. Strange how it can feel good to don a jacket in this jungle!
I walked down the driveway and smelled God’s goodness in the crispness of dawn and heard it in the song of the birds and saw his glory in the trees and on the grass that shone with silver dew, and in each little cloud of my condensated breath that was His ever before it passed through my nostrils.
Dust on Dust
“For dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return” (Genesis 3:19) “For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told… So teach us to number or days, that we may apply our heats unto wisdom.” (Psalms 90:9,12).
“There’s an accident” someone exclaims, and all the people lean forward and crane their necks, and those on the right side of the bus raise in their seats to get a view.
“Who could it be?” the woman across from me asks. Is it mere morbid curiosity, or is it the dread of personal disaster? She looks worried. Perhaps she has a familiar or other conocido who frequents this stretch of highway.
I’m on my way back from Guayara, and we’re just approaching the small community at kilometer 21 when I hear the announcement. At first all I see is a motorcycle seat, and I know this is going to be bad. Bits of bike are strewn from the stakes in the narrow part of Route Eight to the village just beyond, where I see the remains of the twisted frame embedded in the crunched hood of a Volvo. The windshield is collapsed inward and cracked in the design of a spider’s web.
Trucks of police and a crowd of people throng the scene. As we slowly navigate the accident, I suddenly glimpse the prone corpse of the cyclist. He is lying on his back, facing the vast blue sky, looking too peaceful and perfect for such carnage. The paramedics pull a white sheet over his head and neatly folded arms. The blood seems lost in the red dirt of the road.
“At least he no longer has to suffer in this world,” Lyli says.
He’s just left all his suffering with the living.
Back at the college we have news that Dorca’s uncle died today. I think it might be the man on the road, but its not.
Later, in the shower, as I shed the grime of the day, I wonder how they bury the dead in Bolivia. If the corpses aren’t cremated in the morgue, I’m sure they’ll clean them up. There is altogether too much dust in this land: Too much dust, and too little of God’s breath and spit and sculpting hand.
In Spite of Myself. 6/19/10
It’s 1:30 p.m. I’m droggy and my whole body feels heavy like a typical Sabbath afternoon after a big meal and a hot morning full of services. The last thing I want to do is go visiting in Yata, especially considering that the truck is out of commission and we’ll be walking the six kilometers in full sunlight. At least I have about 45 minutes until we leave. I grab a book and sink into my hammock: The Heavenly Man. I’m immediately ashamed of my lousy attitude as I read about the joy and zeal of brother Yun, a leader of the persecuted house churches in China.
By the time we arrive at the beautifully shaded vacant church property in Yata, my shirt is soaked in sweat and smudged with the dust of the road. All I want to do is jump in the creek. But the hardships the Chinese believers endured in order to share the Word come to mind, and I am re-ashamed at my selfish weakness. I really have so little experience in suffering for Christ. It is nothing to sweat for the Lord!
At the first house I’m impressed to ask Doña Rufina if she has any Bible questions or specific topics she would like to discuss.
“I’m Catholic” she responds. I'm not sure if she understood my question, so I try to clarify, but she remains uninterested. “But I like it that you visit and sing and read the Bible. How can I deny you that?"
When we ask Don Angel and his niece Zulema if they have any Bible questions or topics of interest, she just smiles, but he takes advantage of the opportunity immediately.
“Why is it that there are people who go against the Lord and say the world is going to end in 2012 when the Bible says that no man knows the day nor the hour, not even the angels in heaven?” (Matthew 24:36).
“Well, the very existence of such deceptive and erroneous theories is an evidence of the last days.” I explain. We read Matthew 24:11 and look for other texts like 1 John 4:1, and 2 Corinthians 11:13, 14.
Half an hour later we move on to the next house, where Frieda has some questions about the H1N1 vaccination. Apparently some recent propaganda labeled the shot as the mark of the beast! I tell Frieda I don’t know much about vaccinations, but I can assure her that it isn’t the mark of the beast. The mark of the beast is Satan’s counterfeit for God’s mark, or seal. (Revelation 7:2,3; 14:6-7; Exodus 20:8-11, and Ezekiel 20:12). It’s an intense topic and requires a solid biblical background. She says she’s up for it, so we set an appointment for Wednesday morning. Frieda is blind and her daughter will join the study to look up the Bible verses for her. She seems even more excited than her mom. Funny how we’re so often afraid to bring up the apocalyptic topics when the end of the world is of such popular public interest!
It’s already 5:30 when we leave Frieda’s. We were supposed to head back to the school by 5:15 to arrive before dark, but I really feel that I should go visit our last family. I feel bad I’ve missed Don Ignacio the last couple weeks because we always run out of time. There are just too many houses to visit in a couple of hours.
Another group is passing on their way back to the school, and I tell my kids they can either return with that group, or come with me. I have no takers. Ni modo. Alone, I jog the couple hundred meters off the main road and down the path between shoulder-high grass to Don Ignacio’s hut.
“Buenas tardes” I call out. The place seems empty. I’m about to dismiss my impression to come visit Ignacio as a whim of my own invention when I suddenly see a little boy sitting on the patio.
“Hola, ¿cómo te llamas?”
“Ignacio” he says. This must be junior.
“Donde está tu papa?”
Dad is bathing in the creek, and the boy motions down the hill behind the house. He’ll be back any minute. I strike up a conversation while I wait. Junior is in fourth grade and attends the public school in Yata. Right now they’re on vacation.
“Do they teach you about the Bible there?”
“Yes.” He says.
“What are your favorite Bible stories?”
“I don’t remember any.”
“Not even one? Who’s your favorite Bible character?” he looks at me blankly
“Do you know what a ‘character’ is? No?” I explain. He can’t think of any.
“How about I tell you about the boy David? There are some great stories in the Bible!” He grins and nods his head. I tell about David the shepherd boy when he defended the flocks from the bear. Junior says he’s seen a bear before. I ask him if he was afraid. He says no, his dogs were with them and they were hunting the bear.
Don Ignacio come up from his bath in the creek behind his hut dressed in nothing more than a towel, but he seems genuinely happy for my visit. His eyes squint to slits as he smiles, showing a solitary tooth, and he laughs as I dramatize the climax of David’s confrontation with Goliath.
It’s after 6:00 by now, but we have a prayer before I go. I ask Don Ignacio if he has any prayer requests. He says yes, and then starts praying. It takes me a second to realize what’s going on because he mixes some direct address to me into his prayer, thanking me for my visit. I leave running. Just as I reach the main road, a pickup truck is passing, and they stop and give me a free lift! I pass my students right before my ride drops me off at the entrance to the school driveway. I wait for them there.
“Teacher! You beat us! We should have stayed with you to visit the last house!” I just smile.
Prayer List:
The church project in Yata. We’ve dug the postholes for a temporary thatched roof church while we await God’s timing to build a permanent structure.
The radio. We have the option of requesting a transmitter for our tower (which we are in the slow process of erecting) to repeat the signal from the Adventist radio station that recently opened in Guayaramerin.(They are still waiting on equipment to do their own programming.)
Bible studies in Yata.
Corenelio and Susie and the project in Las Amalias
For the doors to open to obtain Spirit of Prophecy books in large quantities at an economical price.
For the Holy Spirit to come in power upon God’s people and finish the work!
Today I'm looking into printing some Spanish Glow and Signs literature for the churches here in Guayara. The price I was quoted was $120 for 20,000 pamphlets.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
When we ought to be shameless. Colombia Missions Conference. Sabbath, February 20, 2010.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes” (Rom 1:16).
After church we go door-to-door giving surveys to probe the neighbors’ interests in health and exercise classes and stop-smoking seminars. A trendy looking young man answers one of the first doors we knock on.
“Don’t worry, its nothing religious…” I hear an echo of my tendency to palter in my friend’s hasty clarification. “We’re just doing a quick survey on health and fitness.”
Why do we so often tend to proselytize with an apology? We operate with a defeatist attitude, under the assumption that people don’t want to hear the gospel, sometimes before we even ask them! But why wouldn’t they want it? Could it be because we ourselves seem hardly sure if we really want it, because we are so often lackluster and equivocating, lax and halfhearted? If we have really experienced the power of the gospel it would seem we would be willing and excited to share it, and able to present it in practical, tangible power. Indeed, such is our duty and our mission: “From door to door [God’s] servants are to proclaim the message of salvation. To every nation, kindred, tongue, and people the tidings of pardon through Christ are to be carried. Not with tame, lifeless utterance is the message to be given, but with clear, decided, stirring utterances” (8 Testimonies for the Church, 15.5). This is no call for half-hearted repetition of regurgitated truths that have been masticated for us by others and that we pass on out of a sense of guilty obligation! This is the heartthrob of a personal, daily experience of the creative power of God transforming our lives and out flowing to the benefit of all those around us!
As Ellen White points out in the book Education page 233, too often we underestimate the power of authentic enthusiasm to command interest and attention. The arch bishop of Canterbury once asked a famous actor how he managed to so powerfully impact his audience while speaking of things imaginary while gospel ministers seem to affect their audiences so little by speaking of things real. “’With due submission to your grace,’ replied the actor, ‘permit me to say that the reason is plain: It lies in the power of enthusiasm. We on the stage speak of things imaginary as if they were real, and you in the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imaginary.’”
Do we really believe the word of God? Do we really care about the world around us? Or are we simply posers, and thereby quiet opposers of righteousness? “But we are Christ’s!” we say, and we are! We are His backstabbers and assassins. May God forgive us and grant us repentance and His power to live a deeper, authentic experience.
Faith: Alive, Growing, and Green. February 20, 2010.
The university campus grounds are immaculate. I’ve never seen so many creative tree sculptures in real life (only in advertisements). One is cut in the shape of an open hand; another has the word faith engraved into its foliage. Perhaps my faith, too, emerges from a cooperation of personal growth with God’s careful pruning.
Trials and Errors. April 14, 2010
“Kowing this, that the trial of your faith works patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing” (James 1:4).
I’m assuming its normal for a boarding high school teacher to receive a sheaf of schedules at the onset of a school year, but not everyone gets a personalized schedule with their name on it in Monotype Corsiva font! If that isn’t anomalous enough, Sunday is a school day, while every Wednesday is dedicated to community service. The students are divided into various work groups named after the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance… (Gal 5:22) The fruit of the spirit is not monocot nor dicot, but nona-cot). I lead el grupo amor. ;) Each group participates in community service projects every other Wednesday. (On their “off” week, students stay at the school where they have the option to work or attend a study hall in the morning, with a mandatory study hall in the afternoon. If they need to go to town, they also have the option to submit a solicitud, which the administrative committee grants or denies at their discretion.) Service day provides the students with real-life, sermon-in-shoes opportunities to share the love of Christ with others. This does more to break down prejudices and open hearts to the truth than could all the best-prepared presentations and exhortations of the millennium.
When we visit Don Ángel, he is laying in his hammock, his shoulder-length white hair falls unkempt around sunken cheeks and a nasty cough wracks his body. He has a rice chaco to harvest, but he doesn’t have the strength to do it. The stocks are dry and the weight of the ripe grain bends them to the ground where they will rot with the next rain. (I wonder if harvests like the one in John 4:35-38 work the same way?)
I love the harvest! Breathing the morning air is invigorating. Maybe its because the oxygen molecules are closer together. The day soon heats up, however, and I begin to drip sweat and soon become a nectar feeder for all insects with a stinger with the next half-mile. I’m a walking bee’s nest with a constant buzzing in my ear, and the occasional deeper drone of the larger wasps with the big stingers. They’re the more aggressive ones because they don’t die when they sting, unlike the honeybee kamikazes that at least compensate by paying the ultimate price for the pain they inflicted. I’ve learned to notice the difference in the tickle of the wasps and the different walk of the little sweat bees with their irritating miniature straws. To distract myself, I wonder how many hours of work are in one bowl of rice. I try to work the problem out loud, including the clearing of the land, the planting, the harvesting, and the threshing, but I get stuck when I have to estimate the number of bowls in a hectare (2.47 acres).
While I try to learn patience under the hot sun, the only clouds in the sky are made of buzzing insects, Joel, our senior senior (he’s 21 years old and the only student this year who was here during my first stay here in 2005-2006) is learning his own lessons on patience and self control. Here is a translation of his story more or less as he told it in church during testimony time April 17, 2010.
“Teacher Ruan and I were coming back from Guayara. He was feeling kind sick with a headache, and I was in a bad mood in general when we arrived at the tranca (checkpoint) I think the police officer needed some money. Maybe he had a debt to pay off at the billiards club, or maybe he was short on the month’s rent, or maybe he was just in a foul mood. Anyway, Teacher Ruan was a natural target because he’s a gringo and so everyone thinks he must be made of money. The officer asked for Ruan’s Bolivian driver’s license.
‘I have an international license’ he said. I was in the truck waiting and I saw them out there giving Teacher Ruan a hard time and I suddenly had one of those moments where my blood gets hot, and for those of you that know me, when I get angry it can happen really fast, I just snap… so I got out and went and stood behind teacher Ruan, like a bodyguard (and he struck the pose, legs apart, arms crossed, chest out, with a stern scowl on his face.) ‘And who’s this guy?’ the police asked ‘Oh, just a compañero’ The police kept on about how teacher Ruan needed a Bolivian license and Ruan kept telling him patiently that the international license has always sufficed in the past, but the police wouldn’t listen to him. Finally I just snapped. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about! You need to go read your own constitution.’ After that I went and got in the truck again. A minute later they called me in.
‘What do you mean, disrespecting a police officer like that? Who do you think you are?’ I think it made him even angrier that I’m Brazilian and I told him he didn’t know his own laws. He hit me hard in the shoulder to try to provoke me to fight him, but I wasn’t going to open my mouth again. They called in another police and he took me to put me in the town jail until 9:00 that night. I think they were hoping Teacher Ruan would pay to release me, but he just let me go. When I got to the jail they took my pants and searched me. They always just keep whatever money you have on you for them.
‘I’m going to give you five’ threatened the first officer, tapping his baton
‘I’ll give you ten’ said the next one, and they threw me into a cell with eight or ten other prisoners. The first thing I noticed in the entrance of the cell was a sign that said if you don’t pay us 20 pesos, each of us will give you 20 patadas (kicks). But before anyone asked me for money, one of the prisoners called me over and told me to fan him with a towel. Soon another one came over and told me to fan him too. Finally, the cell leader, a tall, light-skinned guy with tattoos all over his body called me over.
‘Where are you from? ‘You’re a Christian aren’t you?
‘Well, yes. Why?’ ‘It’s obvious. You’re not belligerent or full of attitude like most guys that get thrown in here. What are you in for?’
‘Disrespecting a police officer’ When he heard that, one of the other prisoners said, ‘So you’re a Christian huh? Haven’t you ever read James 1:26? If any man among you seems to be religious, and doesn’t control his tongue… this man’s religion is vain?’ Here I was in jail and God used another prisoner to rebuke me for my lack of self-control. It was a lesson I will never forget.”
(Ruan picked Joel up from the jail later that evening).
Turning. April 16, 2010
“Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, until He come rain righteousness upon you” Hosea 10:12.
Today I occupied myself like an original aborigine and turned soil in the banana chaco. Tilling the soil: It’s a simple but strenuous activity that gets you back to the roots of human labor, among other, more literal roots like the stumps of downed shrubs and clumps of sub-sod mesh. Yet what a difference a timely turning makes! Turn the soil and the plants grow faster, higher and more fruitful. Turn the tortillas and they turn out perfect, neither burned nor raw. Turn to God and leave behind bad habits and he will make you grow and turn you out perfect, neither burned nor half-baked, neither barren nor stunted.
The Heavens Declare. May 14, 2010.
“He tells the number of the stars, he calls them all by their names…Praise him, sun and moon: praise him all you stars of light.” (Psalms 147:4, 148:3). The stars are so bright out here they seem to melt themselves and blend together in blotches that run into the Milky Way. When you look up through the tree branches, it looks like God has decorated the jungle for Christmas. So many lights, the centers of a myriad solar systems, and yet most of us wouldn’t notice if a third of them disappeared in the darkness. We’re barricaded under panoplies of tile, shingle, and tin, and we’ve replaced God’s lights with street lamps, strobes, and business signs.
I saw four shooting stars. Estrellas fugaces as they’re called in Spanish. Sounds like stars full of gas. Celestial flatulence? It makes me laugh. But wow, was the Psalmist ever right about the heavens and their declarations. God’s glory is blazing in every constellation. My neck is sore from looking up. Shoulder blades make poor pillows. But the vastness of space amazes me… and that God’s voice placed each star! I’ve heard they occur in patterns along the planes of what look like sound waves.
There’s so much I don’t know. I want to learn it all. Thoughts come to me like stars shouting, like reflections shooting past so fast I’m left without a recollection. One thing I’m sure of, if I could write one stroke for God’s goodness for every star in the universe, it would be but a residue of His benevolence and His sentiments for us.
Playing (Possum) With Fire. May 6, 2010.
“Flee youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22)
“We had a casualty in the fire” Josh announced when he arrived at the teacher’s meeting today. During the afternoon work period the boys had burned in the banana chaco and a possum decided that his alternate defense mechanism would work better than running. By the time he realized his mistake it was too late. Josh found its charred carcass among the ashes. Instinct is not always a bad thing, but when it comes to salvation from the fire, to trust to instinct is to burn.
(Bizarre fact: the Spanish name for possum is chupacara, or to transliterate, “sucker face.”)
“Come over and help us!” May 16, 2010.
Susie and Cornelio Moro and their eleven-year-old daughter Abigail are leaving us within the next few weeks to go live in Las Amalias, a small indigenous village of about fifty people, a boat ride of several days upriver into the interior.
This last December, Cornelio visited the village with Max, Noel, and a couple other students, the former of which wrote about the experience in his journal for my class. We have two students, Rodolfo and Paulina, who hail from the village. There is no airstrip in Las Amalias, and at the beginning of last school year Rodolfo and Paulina received their acceptance letters via airmail, chucked out the window of the mission plane.
“These people really need help,” Cornelio told me. “Steve (the mission pilot working with us here) and I were meeting with the chief, and I was watching the chief’s son chew on this bone with raw meet on it, one of those bones that’s bent like your elbow like you see in the caveman cartoons… and he dropped it, I guess he was tired of it or something, and this dog came and started to eat it and the kid decides he wants it again and takes it up from the dog and starts to chew on it again. Then the mom comes out and she realizes that baby has dirtied himself and so she scraps the excrement with sticks that she proceeds to throw on the ground right where everyone walks.”
But the people want to learn and they want to change.
“What’s the biggest plane you guys have?” they asked Cornelio. “We want to make an airstrip long enough for your biggest plane!” (Aerostar 600 A).
“Okay!” Cornelio says.
“That’s a lot of work!” he tells me later. “These people have no trucks, no tractors. They’ll be clearing everything by hand. Maybe with a chainsaw at best.”
But it seems the villages are willing to do whatever it takes to get the healthcare and instruction they so desperately need, be it physical or spiritual. They say they receive a pastoral visit only about once a year, and occasionally a gringo Baptist minister also visits, but he always spends the night in his boat.
“You are the first one to ever stay with us in our houses” The villagers told Cornelio. “Please come back! We want to know more about the Bible and about God. We’ll build you a house and we’ll build a church.”
So how did it all get started? School directors Ruan and Tara Swanapoel recently wrote the following background story.
“God has led us to start our first daughter ministry deep in the jungle - opening the work to Seja Indians. It is a beautiful story that has developed over the last two years and is still unfolding.”
“About two years ago a group of us flew to a jungle village called Ingavi. The purpose of our trip was to scout out a good location for a future mission project while at the same time offer medical and dental care to the villagers. The plan was to spend one day in Ingavi and the next day in another village. By early afternoon I realized that half of us would have to stay the night in Ingavi since the line of people awaiting attention was not shrinking. So Susie, our girls’ dean, Joel, one of our students, and I decided that we would stay the night in order to provide more care while the others went home for the night.
The line for medical attention finally ended by early evening and we were invited to dinner, another story in and of itself. We were just finishing our meal when our host came running over to us saying that someone just arrived from a nearby village called Las Amalias, and they needed urgent care. We hurried over to the village hall that served as the makeshift medical clinic and were met at the door by a whole extended family of Sejas. They looked remarkably different from other Bolivians and the fact that they were dressed didn’t change the fact that they looked barely civilized. But there was no time for cultural studies now. One of the men held an unconscious toddler hanging from his arms. The toddler had a high fever and was very weak from vomiting and diarrhea. With no way to know what the cause of the illness could be we started to treat the fever and to pray. We only had liquid children’s Tylenol as a fever reducer, the toddler was unable to keep it down. We wiped him with alcohol wipes, with cool rags, we tried more Tylenol, we prayed more, but nothing would work. Even though he was still breathing he was not responsive. Finally Susie thought of a cold water enema. It worked! The fever dropped and he started responding. Our goal was to keep him alive for the night and fly him and his dad to the hospital the next morning. We had to do three more enemas during the night to control the fever. He made it! Praise the Lord! The next morning we took him to the hospital where they diagnosed him with a severe digestive tract infection and started him on antibiotics. In about a week he was ready to go home. I know that it was God who kept us in that village that night, because He had a plan.
Before leaving Ingavi, I left some applications to our school with plans to return later to interview prospective students. When I arrived a few months later there were 2 young people from Las Amalias whom had come to Ingavi in order to be interviewed. Come to find out later that one of them is the chief’s son and the other the teacher’s daughter. They both were accepted and are still studying with us.
Since then we have maintained contact with the people of Las Amalias. Some of our staff and students went on a mission trip to the village during our summer vacation. Seeing the needs of the people made us long to do more to help them and introduce them to Jesus.
Well the time has come. After talking to representatives of the village and Susie and Cornelio, we decided that they would move to Las Amalias to spearhead the work there. Cornelio, Joel, and Clint left last Wednesday (May 19th) with plans to build a house and start organizing the work. Susie and their daughter, Abigail, plan to join Cornelio and Joel in a couple of weeks.
The current plan is for Susie to provide medical attention while Cornelio helps to improve agricultural practices and the sanitary conditions, all the while building relationships and doing personal evangelism. We will miss Susie, Cornelio, and Abby. They are an integral part of our team, but we are really excited about the opportunity to start reaching into the vast jungles of northern Bolivia. We want to ask you to join us in prayer that God will continue to guide us as we labor for Him. We also want to make an appeal for everyone to consider if maybe the Lord is calling you to serve Him in Bolivia. The need is so great, and the workers so few. Maybe the Lord has a place for you here.”
“Hundreds are waiting for the warning to escape for their lives. The world needs to see in Christians an evidence of the power of Christianity. Not merely in a few places, but throughout the world, messengers of mercy are needed. From every country is heard the cry: ‘Come over, . . . and help us.’ Rich and poor, high and low, are calling for light. Men and women are hungering for the truth as it is in Jesus. When they hear the gospel preached with power from on high, they will know that the banquet is spread for them, and they will respond to the call: ‘Come; for all things are now ready.’ Luke 14:17.” {8T 15.5, 16}
Prayer List
1. The churches in Guayaramerin and the launching of the radio program.
2. The Las Amalias project.
3. For movement on the church building project in Yata. We just finished a five-night series on Steps to Christ last week and there are several studying for baptism. We're going to need a building soon!
4. A lot of people have been sick here at the school lately and there have been several confirmed cases of malaria.
5. That God will open the doors for literature evangelism here. I've been looking into getting the books. There will be more on this later.
As always, thanks for all your prayers and support. May we all continue to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Kody Kostenko
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes” (Rom 1:16).
After church we go door-to-door giving surveys to probe the neighbors’ interests in health and exercise classes and stop-smoking seminars. A trendy looking young man answers one of the first doors we knock on.
“Don’t worry, its nothing religious…” I hear an echo of my tendency to palter in my friend’s hasty clarification. “We’re just doing a quick survey on health and fitness.”
Why do we so often tend to proselytize with an apology? We operate with a defeatist attitude, under the assumption that people don’t want to hear the gospel, sometimes before we even ask them! But why wouldn’t they want it? Could it be because we ourselves seem hardly sure if we really want it, because we are so often lackluster and equivocating, lax and halfhearted? If we have really experienced the power of the gospel it would seem we would be willing and excited to share it, and able to present it in practical, tangible power. Indeed, such is our duty and our mission: “From door to door [God’s] servants are to proclaim the message of salvation. To every nation, kindred, tongue, and people the tidings of pardon through Christ are to be carried. Not with tame, lifeless utterance is the message to be given, but with clear, decided, stirring utterances” (8 Testimonies for the Church, 15.5). This is no call for half-hearted repetition of regurgitated truths that have been masticated for us by others and that we pass on out of a sense of guilty obligation! This is the heartthrob of a personal, daily experience of the creative power of God transforming our lives and out flowing to the benefit of all those around us!
As Ellen White points out in the book Education page 233, too often we underestimate the power of authentic enthusiasm to command interest and attention. The arch bishop of Canterbury once asked a famous actor how he managed to so powerfully impact his audience while speaking of things imaginary while gospel ministers seem to affect their audiences so little by speaking of things real. “’With due submission to your grace,’ replied the actor, ‘permit me to say that the reason is plain: It lies in the power of enthusiasm. We on the stage speak of things imaginary as if they were real, and you in the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imaginary.’”
Do we really believe the word of God? Do we really care about the world around us? Or are we simply posers, and thereby quiet opposers of righteousness? “But we are Christ’s!” we say, and we are! We are His backstabbers and assassins. May God forgive us and grant us repentance and His power to live a deeper, authentic experience.
Faith: Alive, Growing, and Green. February 20, 2010.
The university campus grounds are immaculate. I’ve never seen so many creative tree sculptures in real life (only in advertisements). One is cut in the shape of an open hand; another has the word faith engraved into its foliage. Perhaps my faith, too, emerges from a cooperation of personal growth with God’s careful pruning.
Trials and Errors. April 14, 2010
“Kowing this, that the trial of your faith works patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing” (James 1:4).
I’m assuming its normal for a boarding high school teacher to receive a sheaf of schedules at the onset of a school year, but not everyone gets a personalized schedule with their name on it in Monotype Corsiva font! If that isn’t anomalous enough, Sunday is a school day, while every Wednesday is dedicated to community service. The students are divided into various work groups named after the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance… (Gal 5:22) The fruit of the spirit is not monocot nor dicot, but nona-cot). I lead el grupo amor. ;) Each group participates in community service projects every other Wednesday. (On their “off” week, students stay at the school where they have the option to work or attend a study hall in the morning, with a mandatory study hall in the afternoon. If they need to go to town, they also have the option to submit a solicitud, which the administrative committee grants or denies at their discretion.) Service day provides the students with real-life, sermon-in-shoes opportunities to share the love of Christ with others. This does more to break down prejudices and open hearts to the truth than could all the best-prepared presentations and exhortations of the millennium.
When we visit Don Ángel, he is laying in his hammock, his shoulder-length white hair falls unkempt around sunken cheeks and a nasty cough wracks his body. He has a rice chaco to harvest, but he doesn’t have the strength to do it. The stocks are dry and the weight of the ripe grain bends them to the ground where they will rot with the next rain. (I wonder if harvests like the one in John 4:35-38 work the same way?)
I love the harvest! Breathing the morning air is invigorating. Maybe its because the oxygen molecules are closer together. The day soon heats up, however, and I begin to drip sweat and soon become a nectar feeder for all insects with a stinger with the next half-mile. I’m a walking bee’s nest with a constant buzzing in my ear, and the occasional deeper drone of the larger wasps with the big stingers. They’re the more aggressive ones because they don’t die when they sting, unlike the honeybee kamikazes that at least compensate by paying the ultimate price for the pain they inflicted. I’ve learned to notice the difference in the tickle of the wasps and the different walk of the little sweat bees with their irritating miniature straws. To distract myself, I wonder how many hours of work are in one bowl of rice. I try to work the problem out loud, including the clearing of the land, the planting, the harvesting, and the threshing, but I get stuck when I have to estimate the number of bowls in a hectare (2.47 acres).
While I try to learn patience under the hot sun, the only clouds in the sky are made of buzzing insects, Joel, our senior senior (he’s 21 years old and the only student this year who was here during my first stay here in 2005-2006) is learning his own lessons on patience and self control. Here is a translation of his story more or less as he told it in church during testimony time April 17, 2010.
“Teacher Ruan and I were coming back from Guayara. He was feeling kind sick with a headache, and I was in a bad mood in general when we arrived at the tranca (checkpoint) I think the police officer needed some money. Maybe he had a debt to pay off at the billiards club, or maybe he was short on the month’s rent, or maybe he was just in a foul mood. Anyway, Teacher Ruan was a natural target because he’s a gringo and so everyone thinks he must be made of money. The officer asked for Ruan’s Bolivian driver’s license.
‘I have an international license’ he said. I was in the truck waiting and I saw them out there giving Teacher Ruan a hard time and I suddenly had one of those moments where my blood gets hot, and for those of you that know me, when I get angry it can happen really fast, I just snap… so I got out and went and stood behind teacher Ruan, like a bodyguard (and he struck the pose, legs apart, arms crossed, chest out, with a stern scowl on his face.) ‘And who’s this guy?’ the police asked ‘Oh, just a compañero’ The police kept on about how teacher Ruan needed a Bolivian license and Ruan kept telling him patiently that the international license has always sufficed in the past, but the police wouldn’t listen to him. Finally I just snapped. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about! You need to go read your own constitution.’ After that I went and got in the truck again. A minute later they called me in.
‘What do you mean, disrespecting a police officer like that? Who do you think you are?’ I think it made him even angrier that I’m Brazilian and I told him he didn’t know his own laws. He hit me hard in the shoulder to try to provoke me to fight him, but I wasn’t going to open my mouth again. They called in another police and he took me to put me in the town jail until 9:00 that night. I think they were hoping Teacher Ruan would pay to release me, but he just let me go. When I got to the jail they took my pants and searched me. They always just keep whatever money you have on you for them.
‘I’m going to give you five’ threatened the first officer, tapping his baton
‘I’ll give you ten’ said the next one, and they threw me into a cell with eight or ten other prisoners. The first thing I noticed in the entrance of the cell was a sign that said if you don’t pay us 20 pesos, each of us will give you 20 patadas (kicks). But before anyone asked me for money, one of the prisoners called me over and told me to fan him with a towel. Soon another one came over and told me to fan him too. Finally, the cell leader, a tall, light-skinned guy with tattoos all over his body called me over.
‘Where are you from? ‘You’re a Christian aren’t you?
‘Well, yes. Why?’ ‘It’s obvious. You’re not belligerent or full of attitude like most guys that get thrown in here. What are you in for?’
‘Disrespecting a police officer’ When he heard that, one of the other prisoners said, ‘So you’re a Christian huh? Haven’t you ever read James 1:26? If any man among you seems to be religious, and doesn’t control his tongue… this man’s religion is vain?’ Here I was in jail and God used another prisoner to rebuke me for my lack of self-control. It was a lesson I will never forget.”
(Ruan picked Joel up from the jail later that evening).
Turning. April 16, 2010
“Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, until He come rain righteousness upon you” Hosea 10:12.
Today I occupied myself like an original aborigine and turned soil in the banana chaco. Tilling the soil: It’s a simple but strenuous activity that gets you back to the roots of human labor, among other, more literal roots like the stumps of downed shrubs and clumps of sub-sod mesh. Yet what a difference a timely turning makes! Turn the soil and the plants grow faster, higher and more fruitful. Turn the tortillas and they turn out perfect, neither burned nor raw. Turn to God and leave behind bad habits and he will make you grow and turn you out perfect, neither burned nor half-baked, neither barren nor stunted.
The Heavens Declare. May 14, 2010.
“He tells the number of the stars, he calls them all by their names…Praise him, sun and moon: praise him all you stars of light.” (Psalms 147:4, 148:3). The stars are so bright out here they seem to melt themselves and blend together in blotches that run into the Milky Way. When you look up through the tree branches, it looks like God has decorated the jungle for Christmas. So many lights, the centers of a myriad solar systems, and yet most of us wouldn’t notice if a third of them disappeared in the darkness. We’re barricaded under panoplies of tile, shingle, and tin, and we’ve replaced God’s lights with street lamps, strobes, and business signs.
I saw four shooting stars. Estrellas fugaces as they’re called in Spanish. Sounds like stars full of gas. Celestial flatulence? It makes me laugh. But wow, was the Psalmist ever right about the heavens and their declarations. God’s glory is blazing in every constellation. My neck is sore from looking up. Shoulder blades make poor pillows. But the vastness of space amazes me… and that God’s voice placed each star! I’ve heard they occur in patterns along the planes of what look like sound waves.
There’s so much I don’t know. I want to learn it all. Thoughts come to me like stars shouting, like reflections shooting past so fast I’m left without a recollection. One thing I’m sure of, if I could write one stroke for God’s goodness for every star in the universe, it would be but a residue of His benevolence and His sentiments for us.
Playing (Possum) With Fire. May 6, 2010.
“Flee youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22)
“We had a casualty in the fire” Josh announced when he arrived at the teacher’s meeting today. During the afternoon work period the boys had burned in the banana chaco and a possum decided that his alternate defense mechanism would work better than running. By the time he realized his mistake it was too late. Josh found its charred carcass among the ashes. Instinct is not always a bad thing, but when it comes to salvation from the fire, to trust to instinct is to burn.
(Bizarre fact: the Spanish name for possum is chupacara, or to transliterate, “sucker face.”)
“Come over and help us!” May 16, 2010.
Susie and Cornelio Moro and their eleven-year-old daughter Abigail are leaving us within the next few weeks to go live in Las Amalias, a small indigenous village of about fifty people, a boat ride of several days upriver into the interior.
This last December, Cornelio visited the village with Max, Noel, and a couple other students, the former of which wrote about the experience in his journal for my class. We have two students, Rodolfo and Paulina, who hail from the village. There is no airstrip in Las Amalias, and at the beginning of last school year Rodolfo and Paulina received their acceptance letters via airmail, chucked out the window of the mission plane.
“These people really need help,” Cornelio told me. “Steve (the mission pilot working with us here) and I were meeting with the chief, and I was watching the chief’s son chew on this bone with raw meet on it, one of those bones that’s bent like your elbow like you see in the caveman cartoons… and he dropped it, I guess he was tired of it or something, and this dog came and started to eat it and the kid decides he wants it again and takes it up from the dog and starts to chew on it again. Then the mom comes out and she realizes that baby has dirtied himself and so she scraps the excrement with sticks that she proceeds to throw on the ground right where everyone walks.”
But the people want to learn and they want to change.
“What’s the biggest plane you guys have?” they asked Cornelio. “We want to make an airstrip long enough for your biggest plane!” (Aerostar 600 A).
“Okay!” Cornelio says.
“That’s a lot of work!” he tells me later. “These people have no trucks, no tractors. They’ll be clearing everything by hand. Maybe with a chainsaw at best.”
But it seems the villages are willing to do whatever it takes to get the healthcare and instruction they so desperately need, be it physical or spiritual. They say they receive a pastoral visit only about once a year, and occasionally a gringo Baptist minister also visits, but he always spends the night in his boat.
“You are the first one to ever stay with us in our houses” The villagers told Cornelio. “Please come back! We want to know more about the Bible and about God. We’ll build you a house and we’ll build a church.”
So how did it all get started? School directors Ruan and Tara Swanapoel recently wrote the following background story.
“God has led us to start our first daughter ministry deep in the jungle - opening the work to Seja Indians. It is a beautiful story that has developed over the last two years and is still unfolding.”
“About two years ago a group of us flew to a jungle village called Ingavi. The purpose of our trip was to scout out a good location for a future mission project while at the same time offer medical and dental care to the villagers. The plan was to spend one day in Ingavi and the next day in another village. By early afternoon I realized that half of us would have to stay the night in Ingavi since the line of people awaiting attention was not shrinking. So Susie, our girls’ dean, Joel, one of our students, and I decided that we would stay the night in order to provide more care while the others went home for the night.
The line for medical attention finally ended by early evening and we were invited to dinner, another story in and of itself. We were just finishing our meal when our host came running over to us saying that someone just arrived from a nearby village called Las Amalias, and they needed urgent care. We hurried over to the village hall that served as the makeshift medical clinic and were met at the door by a whole extended family of Sejas. They looked remarkably different from other Bolivians and the fact that they were dressed didn’t change the fact that they looked barely civilized. But there was no time for cultural studies now. One of the men held an unconscious toddler hanging from his arms. The toddler had a high fever and was very weak from vomiting and diarrhea. With no way to know what the cause of the illness could be we started to treat the fever and to pray. We only had liquid children’s Tylenol as a fever reducer, the toddler was unable to keep it down. We wiped him with alcohol wipes, with cool rags, we tried more Tylenol, we prayed more, but nothing would work. Even though he was still breathing he was not responsive. Finally Susie thought of a cold water enema. It worked! The fever dropped and he started responding. Our goal was to keep him alive for the night and fly him and his dad to the hospital the next morning. We had to do three more enemas during the night to control the fever. He made it! Praise the Lord! The next morning we took him to the hospital where they diagnosed him with a severe digestive tract infection and started him on antibiotics. In about a week he was ready to go home. I know that it was God who kept us in that village that night, because He had a plan.
Before leaving Ingavi, I left some applications to our school with plans to return later to interview prospective students. When I arrived a few months later there were 2 young people from Las Amalias whom had come to Ingavi in order to be interviewed. Come to find out later that one of them is the chief’s son and the other the teacher’s daughter. They both were accepted and are still studying with us.
Since then we have maintained contact with the people of Las Amalias. Some of our staff and students went on a mission trip to the village during our summer vacation. Seeing the needs of the people made us long to do more to help them and introduce them to Jesus.
Well the time has come. After talking to representatives of the village and Susie and Cornelio, we decided that they would move to Las Amalias to spearhead the work there. Cornelio, Joel, and Clint left last Wednesday (May 19th) with plans to build a house and start organizing the work. Susie and their daughter, Abigail, plan to join Cornelio and Joel in a couple of weeks.
The current plan is for Susie to provide medical attention while Cornelio helps to improve agricultural practices and the sanitary conditions, all the while building relationships and doing personal evangelism. We will miss Susie, Cornelio, and Abby. They are an integral part of our team, but we are really excited about the opportunity to start reaching into the vast jungles of northern Bolivia. We want to ask you to join us in prayer that God will continue to guide us as we labor for Him. We also want to make an appeal for everyone to consider if maybe the Lord is calling you to serve Him in Bolivia. The need is so great, and the workers so few. Maybe the Lord has a place for you here.”
“Hundreds are waiting for the warning to escape for their lives. The world needs to see in Christians an evidence of the power of Christianity. Not merely in a few places, but throughout the world, messengers of mercy are needed. From every country is heard the cry: ‘Come over, . . . and help us.’ Rich and poor, high and low, are calling for light. Men and women are hungering for the truth as it is in Jesus. When they hear the gospel preached with power from on high, they will know that the banquet is spread for them, and they will respond to the call: ‘Come; for all things are now ready.’ Luke 14:17.” {8T 15.5, 16}
Prayer List
1. The churches in Guayaramerin and the launching of the radio program.
2. The Las Amalias project.
3. For movement on the church building project in Yata. We just finished a five-night series on Steps to Christ last week and there are several studying for baptism. We're going to need a building soon!
4. A lot of people have been sick here at the school lately and there have been several confirmed cases of malaria.
5. That God will open the doors for literature evangelism here. I've been looking into getting the books. There will be more on this later.
As always, thanks for all your prayers and support. May we all continue to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Kody Kostenko
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