Hello everyone. We’re back safely from our nearly month-long mission trip on the river Horton in the department of Pando, Bolivia. Twenty-eight students and staff chose to spend the mid-year vacation traveling in 2.5 by 12 meter wooden schooner with a 13-horse diesel engine. We stopped at a total of ten different communities where we visited the sick, distributed literature, did community service, kids programs, and gave Bible studies. I have several pages of my notebook filled with reminders that I will expand into fuller reports as I have the time.
Please pray for the school. We are a week into the second semester, and we are facing a number of deep challenges. The Lord is working in mighty ways, but we need special prayer that the Lord will raise up a standard against the enemy. We are also praying more fervently here, and have freed up an hour in the evening schedule to dedicate to prayer. This week Ruan is speaking in the evenings on the 3rd angel’s message, and I am presenting “Lessons on Milk” in the mornings from Hebrews 5:11-14 and 6:1-3. That passage has really spoken to my heart this last month, and goes along beautifully with Ephesians 4 and 1 Peter 2. If we do not desire the sincere milk of the word, it is plain that we have not been born again, for all babies naturally desire milk. They live for it. They seek it with tears. And in partaking of it they grow. And it’s amazing how quickly they grow! If we’re not growing spiritually we haven’t been born again and we’re not really internalizing the milk. Interestingly enough, the very first thing on Paul’s list of ingredients in God’s milk in Hebrews 6 is repentance from dead works. Repentance is a gift from God. We need to ask for it, and when it comes, we need to swallow it down in complete humility. The Lord has asked me to do that a few times this month already. It’s hard to conquer pride, but when you finally surrender and confess and forsake what the Lord is calling you to leave behind, it is so liberating! I feel a special urgency to seek the Lord more fully and to truly understand and practice the first commandment of Mark 12:29-31. My prayer is that each one of you will join me in this.
I’ve also just started to teach social studies this semester and we are studying AT Jones’ book Empires of the Bible (you can download it for free online). History is coming alive for me like never before!
The following is a story from last May. I hope it is a blessing and a challenge to look for the leading of the Lord’s hand in the middle of the inconvenient and annoying circumstances of life.
Banking for the Kingdom of Heaven 5-4-2011
As the school chaplain and director of religious activities, I’m also the treasurer for our company of believers from Yata. At the end of each month I take the book of accounts along with the tithes and offerings to turn in to the pastor in Guayaramerin. Well, I was running a bit late with April’s accounts because I was traveling last week in order to process more of the seemingly eternal documentation required for my two-year residency. When I finally got back and went to leave the tithes and offerings with the pastor so he could turn them into the Eastern Bolivian Conference, he just gave me the account number and told me that from now on I would make all the deposits!
When I arrived at the bank it was only mid-morning, but the line of customers was worse than at the DMV back home. I took my line ticket, and it was F-162! The electronic screen above the teller read “now serving T-29.”
What? I thought. How does that work?
Just then I noticed a ticket that someone had dropped on the floor. I picked it up and it read T-46! Yes! But alas, I soon noticed that those who went up to the counter when a T-ticket was called were all senior citizens and pregnant mothers. So I left beloved T-46 on top of the ticket machine and exited the bank with my original ticket. I’d run a few errands and check in later on the progress of the line.
When I came back in the afternoon, the F line was just approaching the 70’s, and the waiting crowd now occupied the covered sidewalk outside of the bank as well. Come on! What’s the deal! I don’t want to wait here all afternoon!
I decided I’d wait awhile and see how fast the line was moving. I sat down just outside the front window, positioning myself so I could check the line inside without having to get up. I was about to get out some papers and do some grading when I noticed a lady sitting nearby and the Holy Spirit reminded me about the pamphlets I had in my backpack.
You should give her one!
Okay... But what, just like that? Out of the blue?
You can make conversation!
Right. Easier said than done!
I was trying to think of something to say when she got up to look through the window.
“Long line isn’t it?” I said.
“Yeah!”
“What number are you?”
“F-146.”
“Hey, at least you’re ahead of me. Do you like to read? Here’s something to help pass the time” I handed her a GLOW tract.
“Hey, that’s a good idea! The time always goes by faster when you have something to occupy you.”
I wasn’t sure if it was indeed keen interest or the small print, but she seemed to be very studiously pouring over the pamphlet. Not noticing any squint in her eye, I chanced that it was the former. After a few minutes she finished reading, and felt I should give her another one. While I debated, I looked through the window at the screen and she followed my gaze. Now serving F-73.
“Not much progress is there? You needed something longer than that little pamphlet to last you for this line, huh?”
She laughed. “I need a book like this!” she indicated the thickness of a multi-volume set of encyclopedias.
“Well, I don’t have anything that size, but you’re more than welcome to read any of these other pamphlets.” I spread out half a dozen more tracts on various topics.
“Oh! Thank-you!” She selected one, read it straight through, and took another. After finishing the third she took a break from reading. We checked the line again, and I realized that I really had no hope of making it before closing time. I was going to leave, and voiced the same, but I felt like I should keep talking to this lady.
“Do you come here often?” I asked what immediately seemed to me a dumb question. Banco Union is the federally controlled bank where nearly everyone has to do at least some of their banking.
“No, I’m just here from Cochabamba to visit my sister.”
“Oh wow, that’s nice. How long will you stay for?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.” We continued chatting and she asked me where I am from and what I do here in Bolivia and I asked her about Cochabamba. She told me about her kids and how she’d gone through some hard times. Once she was really sick and almost died, but she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her kids without a mom and asked the Lord to spare her life. He did, and ever since she felt like it was God who holds her up and keeps her going, but there were a lot of things she didn’t understand about God.
“Like what?” I asked her.
“Like, if I were to die tomorrow, what would happen to me?”
It was about then that I really wished I had my Bible with me. But God is good for His promise, and the Holy Spirit just kept bringing texts to mind. For every question she had, there was a text. (Genesis 2:7, Ecclesiastes 12:7 and 9:5-6, Job 7:9-10 and 14:10-12, Psalms 115:17, Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 10:28, John 11, 1 Thess 4, etc.) Sometimes I didn’t remember the exact reference, and I realized, I need to learn this stuff better!
We talked for over an hour, and I will never forget the smile on her face as she heard the truth that death is a sleep until the trumpet sounds in the resurrection at the second coming of Christ, and that God doesn’t send people to hell or purgatory when they die. And I thought, man, I thought I was coming here to make a deposit for God’s work and I got mad and frustrated because of the long line and apparent waste of time, when all along God had a much more important deposit for me to make! God is just good like that!
