Hello everyone! As usual, all my prepared updates are late… You would think that they are arriving by ship, not email! So here are a few current hot items of interest before the warmed-overs. :)
This Sabbath we will be attending a district wide camp meeting. Ten of our students will make a public declaration to commit their lives completely to the Lord in baptism! The next day we leave for a month-long mission trip into the interior to conduct medical clinics and evangelism. I also just found out today that JAC, the Bolivian version of GYC was founded this month and will hold their first conference next year in Santa Cruz! That is a direct answer to prayer! Since I attended GYC in Baltimore last January I have been praying for just such a development here in Bolivia! (There is more to this story too!) We also have a couple of incredible opportunities for further expanding the work here in Bolivia, including a large parcel of donated land for another school like the one here. More details will follow… but probably not until I get back from the jungle in August. Thanks for all your prayers and support. May God bless you all and keep working us over…and over: until we shine like the stars, and mirror his image like polished pictures of silver.

Jordan. June 1, 2011
“…and [if] in the land of peace, [wherein] thou trustedst, [they wearied thee], then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?” Jeremiah 12:5 b.

I find myself dismayed today at the passing of yet another month! Oh how I long for the day when I will no more be confined by time and can bask in the eternal! Yet the constraints of time frame even that wish, and my hope is still in a day.
We’re already hip deep into the year, and with each day that flows or surges by I feel that the river-bottom underfoot falls farther away. What faith will it take to slog through these days? Will we wet ourselves to the chest, or must we hold our breath until death takes it? How many more steps? Or dare we hope that the river will part before our steady tread (quadrupled soon with hands) and drop us to dry land? I cannot know what will happen to me in this great slosh: the Jordan is beginning to swell. But I know what land lies beyond the river, and the King who reigns there, and so whatever the cost of the crossing, it will be cheap enough!
Yet I am too quickly frustrated by mere ripples, too quickly wearied by the silt, or worried about the depth or width of the river. I feel so unprepared for what lies ahead.
We must be buried with our Lord in Jordan. For some of us, it may take seven burials like it did for the haughty Naaman. And yet I think he had more faith than many of us. God requires a complete death to self, to the world.
This morning as I read from Early Writings the message is so clear, and so apt: “Time is almost finished. Do you reflect the lovely image of Jesus as you should? Then I was pointed to the earth and saw that there would have to be a getting ready among those who have of late embraced the third angel's message. [Yet how many of us even know and understand what the message of the third angel is? I know I have a lot more to learn!] Said the angel, ‘Get ready, get ready, get ready. Ye will have to die a greater death to the world than ye have ever yet died.’ I saw that there was a great work to do for them and but little time in which to do it.” {EW 64.1}
Those same words are repeated a few pages later: “Get ready, get ready, get ready. Ye must have a greater preparation than ye now have, for the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate and to destroy the sinners thereof out of it. Sacrifice all to God. Lay all upon His altar—self, property, and all, a living sacrifice. It will take all to enter glory” (66.2, emphasis mine). Wow. What does that really mean? I feel I know so little of giving, of real self-sacrifice and unselfish service. And yet, “those who reject the privilege of fellowship with Christ in service, reject the only training that imparts a fitness for participation with Him in His glory. They reject the training that in this life gives strength and nobility of character” (Education, 264.3). Lord, give me a heart to serve!

Some like it blunt. Feb 27, 2011.

This last Sunday we were working to clear the church building site in Yata when a man walked over from across the street to see what we were doing. He told us he was from Guayaramerin and had stopped by to visit family. (“My sister is the fat lady who lives across the road” was the way he put it). Such candidness is typical with many Bolivians, and they seem to appreciate it when you respond in kind.
“Are you building a house?” he asked
“No, we’re building a church,” Ruan replied.
“What kind of church?”
“An Adventist church.”
“Oh, today is like your Monday isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“And Saturday for you is like Sunday.”
“That’s right”
“Why do you keep Saturday instead of Sunday?”
“Because the Bible says that Saturday is God’s Sabbath day.”
“It does doesn’t it”
“Yep. And it doesn’t say anything about Sunday.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t. Why then do all churches keep Sunday?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yep.”
“Because the emperor Constantine proclaimed himself a Christian and made a decree to venerate the pagan holiday of Sunday, claiming it was to honor Christ’s resurrection. And most all of the churches have obeyed him to this day. So you have to decide, do you want to obey God, or Constantine!”
“You’re right!” he said. They chatted a bit more and he left, and we haven’t seen him since. We’re really looking forward to the day when the church will be finished and more people will stop by and ask about the truth!