Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Bolivia!

Dear Family and Friends,
I hope you all had a good week. Sorry for the delayed email, the internet doesn´t always work (nor the water or electricity, but our needs are well cared for).
Last week we worked at the hospital most mornings with various doctors. One morning Matt shared his testimony and I translated and we both drew out the gospel and interacted with the patients in the waiting room. God was good to open many opportunities after morning rounds this week to share our testimony and the gospel with the patients here. Many of them know Christ and are living for Him, but there are also many who do not Him and who are trusting in their good works to get them into heaven instead of trusting in the fact that Christ did everything through his death and resurrection so we could spend eternity with Him.
On Thursday, we went with a local physician into the mountains to provide medical treatment to the children at a school in Mal Pasos, which means ´´bad paths´´ which is ironic because we off roaded for over an hour up the mountain along the dirt trail to the village which is at an altitude 15,000 ft! We were definitely out of breath after hiking to the school where we provided medical treatment for the children and people in the village. Most of the people live in very small stone homes (literally a village made out of stones, like Bedrock on the Flinstones), speak Cetchua, and have a stream as their only source of water. Matt and I really enjoy doing medical missions in this enviornment so we were very excited. First we educated the Children about the importance of sanitation, washing their hands, using boiled water, and then we shared the gospel with them. After, we split up into teams, saw a lot of patients with diarrhea, and Matt was able to use his manipulation skills on a woman´s sacrum. It was a bit disorganized but we enjoyed serving the children in the mountains, which were beautiful. The school was very grateful and invited us back.
We have also been going to various orphanages in town. There are an overwhelming number of orphans. At one place we held babies and played with the children to show the love Christ has for His children.This orphanage was started by a very young Christian woman from the U.S who has served there for over 4 years. I really enjoyed carrying around one little baby who was wearing a cute Pooh blanket.
Another orphanage that we went to had 70 boys only. The orphanage is run by Bolivian Christians who are mainly supported by American donations. The boys all attend school, help with the chores, and are well organized. I was impressed as to how well behaved the boys were. Matt really enjoyed playing soccer with them with the Andes in the background! THis is a great organization as they bring up these abused and neglected children by helping them through their traumatic past and teaching them about their heavenly Father who will never desert or mistreat them. Thus, most are believers and desire to serve God in missions someday! Please pray that God would continue to provide for these orphans and that they would understand that they have a heavenly Father who loves them very much! Matt 19´13,14.
¨Kid Washing¨
This was started by a local Christian Bolivian man who felt God leading hime to provide baths for the children who live on the streets. We washed over 40 kids. God has totallly provided all the funds and volunteers both American and Bolivian, for him to set up a tent with small baths for the children. Every Saturday he brings a huge generator to warn the water and set up a tent with 3 small baths. The children are bathed with soap and water individually in the tubs by the women, given clean clothes, have their hair styled, and given bread and mild. It is an awesome display of the body of Christ serving the poor. I helped to bath the children while singing Jesus songs to them in Spanish and Matt was vital in sharing the gospel with the mothers and using his strength to carry and pour out the water.

CIC church,
We were able to worship this past sunday with many of the local missionaries and a great growing church that is a mix of both Bolivians and missionaries. The church is an oasis for local and short term missionaries. They have a vision to equip other local pastors by having confereces at the church ' to basically provide some formal bible training and fellowship as most of the pastors here have no formal bible-seminary training and little or no accountability or fellowship. As this is also a passion of our pastor in harlingen, we feel we have made many contacts for our home church to return and continue such ministries. It is unfortunate that many of the local chrisitians have do not reach out a lot to their fellow bolivians. This is due to their culture, which doesn´t reach out much, but who are more focused on making a living, providing food, and helping their own family. However, CIC has begun taking locals out to minister into the jungle areas and they are loving it, catching the vision to serve. They are doing a great job supporting the goal most ministries have, which is to get the local christians to reach out locally.

I think God is bringing us back to the basics, God is teaching us to be patient in the midst of a different culture. To rest and to listen to His voice, something I feel we take little time for in America. To love the Lord our God and to love others Matt 22 37 40 and John 13 34 35, those being the greatest commandment according to Jesus, as they sum up the rest. Not an easy task, but somewhat simplifies life. We often forget that loving the Lord means sitting quietly and patiently at his feet, another not so easy task for our driven culture!
Feel free to share what is going on in your lives, we love to hear from you! We will be returning home in a few days - sunday afternoon. Thank you for all of your emails and prayers, we really appreaciate the body of Christ - what an awsome family!

Matt and Kristen

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