Bolivians we met
 |
| The mechanic we met. |
Mechanic
This man was one of the first people we talked with. He goes to a different church in the
area than the one that we are with. I asked him how God was
working in his life, and he said that he had seen his entire family
(probably about 8 - 10 people) gradually come to know Christ. He
is memorable because there was somehow a bond between us that we
recognized a fellow believer who is committed to loving and serving
God. I was really excited after meeting and praying for him,
because it is always exciting to meet someone passionate about being a
follower of Christ. I was also excited because I got to see
first-hand that God has great quality people everywhere in the world,
and even though we were coming to bring the Jesus to this village, God
was already there.
Rafael and his wife
 |
Although Rafael almost
never smiled,
he and his wife were actually pretty jovial. |
We met Rafael and
his wife the next house after the mechanic. We went through the
tract with them, and they seemed to believe everything, but were not
Christians, so we asked if they wanted to accept Christ. We
prayed with them, but they seemed particularly emotionless,
particularly Rafael, so I had some doubts about whether they meant the
prayer. The next day, though, when we went for followup
discipleship, Rafael told us that early in his life he had seen a man
beat up a missionary’s wife, but when the police came to arrest the
man, the missionary said, “no, he’s drunk.” Rafael saw this as an
example of turning the other cheek, and realized that if he were to
follow to God, he would have to do likewise. So for years he
had kept God at a distance.
Raul and I grew to love this couple. Their knees are bad, so they cannot walk the two blocks to get to
the church (it would probably take them half an hour). We also
could not do the e3 discipleship, both because Rafael is kind of a
talker and the print in the Bibles that we had were to small for them
to read. So we came every day, bringing, as it turned out,
different church members each day, and encouraged them to read the
Bible, discussing God, helping them choose reading glasses that some
other teammates had brought. On the last day, I taught them how
to pray using the Lord’s prayer. This way they were aware of
two things of the four that e3 list (reading the Bible, prayer,
fellowship, evangelism) that I think are absolutely critical to
spiritual growth (reading the Bible and prayer). I pray that God
will bring the church to them, even if they cannot come to it.
Kids
In one of the afternoons, we saw to brothers sitting on the side of the
street, so I shared the gospel with them using the evangecube. The older brother
had an air of “ah, I’ve heard this before” but the younger one was
paying close attention. I had just gotten to the point of
asking if they wanted to accept Christ, when some other kids came by. I went through the evangecube again with them, and this time the younger
brother was very certain he wanted to accept Christ, and some of the
others nodded as well. But the thing is, you never know who
is really interested, because I found out from Raul later that
the older brother had actually told newcomers to join—he was more
interested than I had given him credit for.
Old Evangelist
This man used to travel along the river near Trinidad preaching the Gospel
when he was younger. He was sad that now he was old and his
knees did not work well any more, so he could not work for God. I
hope I tried to tell him that there is always a task we can do, but I think
it did not occur to me until too late. I’m sure that if it is
important, God will find some way to tell him.
< Teammates | Difficulties >