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