Wed Noon Update

In about an hour we will be heading to El Alto to visit a project.

Turns out that I won't be visiting 14 ministries in the next three days. It will be about half this week and the other half next week.

But I just had to share an interesting experience from this morning.

I was riding in a taxi to the office and we were coming up a hill and the traffic was backed up really bad. My taxi driver couldn't wait and he decided to do a U-turn and head back down the hill. Another driver did the same thing right behind us. And as he was trying to turn my taxi driver decided to go straight and they hit each other. It wasn't a bad hit but the front corners hit.

It was just interesting because I sat in the car for about 10 minutes while they argued with each other (yelling and waving hands and all). Finally the one guy gave the taxi driver some cash for the light that was broken on his car and we went on our way.

I flagged down another taxi and went to the office.

Just another day in the life of a missionary in La Paz, Bolivia.

Knock Knock

That is my homework for tonight.

I need to read this document. The reason I need to read this document is that tomorrow afternoon and all day Thursday and Friday I will be visiting the 14 different projects that are part of our PSMC program.

I will be taking photos and filming the projects. But also I will be helping our team evaluate the projects and identify the greatest needs of the projects. I am really excited about this. I need to read this document so that I can be ready to help the team evaluate the projects on the following standards…

Physical
Shelter
Health
Self-Identity
Building Relationships
Family
Spiritual
Love
Transformation
Developmental
Guidance and Loving Discipline
Lifestyles, skills and recreation
Empowerment
Participation
Influence

Whew…..this could be more involved than I originally thought. But this is cool. I thank God that I have the opportunity to help these projects better serve the kids that they work with.

Who knows? Maybe one of these projects will be the group of kids that God wants me to spend that consistent time with.

Lift up some prayers for me these next three days. Gracias.

You know?

Sometimes when I struggle here and have bad days in La Paz I think "Dude, remember that you are trying to do all this stuff in another language."

"Oh yeah, Duh."

Believe me it helps.

Home Sweet Home

Well, I am officially back home. La Paz home that is. And it feels good to be home in my own bed. I had a great week in Cochabamba. I met lots of people, learned a lot about the Red Viva network and got to visit some friends. I spent time with some SAMS missionaries there and I even enjoyed a few great Gringo home cooked meals. I had Lasagna one night and man it was good.

But my favorite part was the pic below. Cold sweet peach flavored ice tea. I have not had cold tea in two months. Can you believe it? No cold sweet tea in two months. Well it wasn’t exactly the jumbo glass from Sonny’s but it was awesome none the less. And the peach flavor just made me think about Georgia that much more.



I also had the chance to spend some time with the team from Niños con Valor. God is really blessing their ministry. Their girls’ home is really running strong now and they are starting to focus more on their street girl outreach and their HIV/AIDS daycare for kids. I delivered a laptop to them and some medical supplies. Having lunch with their girls was a big factor in me realizing that I need to find a group of kids of my own.

I had a great time. But the visit also confirmed in me that I love La Paz. I am so happy to be here and although I have good days and bad days I have no doubt that I am exactly where God wants me to be.

An empty house welcomed me when I got back last night. Just God and I again. And I am really looking forward to spending time with Him and getting to know Him a little better this week. Tomorrow is going to be my Sabbath day. In fact, I am hoping to make Monday my Sabbath day every week. I will let you know how it goes. No work. No emails. Just resting, reading, listening to tunes and growing closer to God.

Wish me luck.

Call of Duty

Check out my sweet shirt and badge.

I am all official now and stuff. PSMC is a program in La Paz that I am helping. They are currently working with fourteen different ministries that all work with at-risk kids. Their ultimate goal is to help churches and ministries better serve the kids that they work with. The program takes each organization through six different modules of training to help them improve their service to kids in various areas. It is a cool program. My goal with this program is really two-fold. One goal I have is to help PSMC communicate their program to churches and ministries working with at-risk kids in La Paz. Right now this involves the development of a website for the program. I am working on planning and implementing a website for this program and I am trying to get it launched by the end of this month. The second goal I have is to think of ways to promote the program so that more churches and ministries will want to participate.

If you know me well, you know that I am a “list” person. But I must tell you that being a “list” person here in Bolivia is an extremely difficult task. Sometimes I want to push projects forward faster than the culture will allow.

Well I still make lists anyway. And I wanted to give you a little taste of what is on my list right now…

PSMC Program in La Paz
• Help launch website by end of March
• Brainstorm ways to increase participation in program (We are currently working with fourteen groups, we want a total of twenty-five by the end of March)

Cristo Redentor Anglican Church in Calacoto
• Submit grant application to US foundation to fund a new dental chair and materials to support Dental Outreach ministry to community
• Help launch a Discipleship program in church
• Help launch my pastor’s radio ministry program from back home on a radio station here in Bolivia
• Brainstorm activities and ways to improve the Saturday morning outreach program to the kids in the community

Cristo Salvador Anglican Church in Sopocachi
• Submit a special funding request to SAMS to help renovate the sound equipment in the church
• Brainstorm ways to help promote the new Daycare program at the church
• Help update the church’s website

Other
• Create a marketing plan for the El Día event – a twenty-four hour prayer, worship and fasting event later this year. This is an event for the entire Body of Christ in four Bolivian cities and in Santiago, Chile. I am directing the marketing for this event and I am also working on a plan to raise funds for the event outside of Bolivia.

Obviously, I can’t do all this at once. I have to prioritize. In fact, I can’t do this at all. It has to be the Spirit living and working through me.

And as you can see there is no lack of work or opportunities. But one of the fears that I had when preparing to come to Bolivia was that I would get completely lost in strategic marketing projects and not have enough one on one time with kids. Now that I am here I feel that fear starting to become a reality and something is missing inside. I want to do the strategic marketing stuff because I feel God has blessed me with those skills for a reason.

But I am starting to pray for God to lead me to one particular ministry where I can volunteer time each week to be involved in the lives of the kids there. Right now I just feel like a consultant. I bounce from place to place, I raise money, I deliver things and it’s great. But I am missing consistent relationship building time with the same kids every week. I want to know the kids’ names when I visit. I want them to know my name. I want to know their stories. And I want God to intentionally use me to share His love with them.

Will you join me in praying that God will continue to use me for strategic marketing projects here but that He will also give me one particular group of kids that know my name and know that I show up every week just for them?

More Goodbyes

I experienced more goodbyes this past week. The five people from home who were visiting me left and I am going to post soon and share their experience here in La Paz. But for several weeks now there has been a Bolivian family of five living in Casa Little also. And tomorrow they will be leaving Bolivia for the first time and heading to Chile.

Martín, Carla, Josué, Abby and Davíd are a family from one of the Anglican churches here in La Paz and for the past few weeks they have been my family. Literally. They are moving to Santiago, Chile because Martín will be studying in a seminary there.

They have had issues getting their visas to Chile but God, in His timing of course, has finally made the way for them to leave and tomorrow they go. We had to say our goodbyes yesterday because I am in Cochabamba this week and I am going to really miss them. It was nice to have other voices in the house besides my own for the last few weeks.

Please pray for God’s blessing on their life and ministry as they head to Chile basically as missionaries. I thought I had it hard getting here to Bolivia but listening to their stories, I can’t imagine what it has been like to do something similar to what I am doing but with three kids. It was logistically easy for me, a single dude, to pick up and move, but for a family of three that has never left their home country…wow…I can’t even imagine.

It is really sinking in again that the life that God has called me to will be a life of constant goodbyes and hellos. I will never ever again in my life have all of my friends in the same place.

Saying goodbye to the Flores family is another one of those goodbyes. I pray for safe travels and for God’s will to be done as they take this next step and answer His call on their lives.

Here are a few photos I took to remember them by…

Scene of the Crime

In just a few hours I will be boarding a bus to Cochabamba. It will be an overnight seven hour bus ride. Should cost about $4. Cochabamba is a little place that I like to call the scene of the crime. I was riding through the streets of Coch almost two years ago when God called me to Bolivia as a long-term missionary.

And even this past June when I was visiting Bolivia to discern exactly where God wanted me to be, I still thought Coch was going to be it. I had a great peace about it and I even had a great foundation that I was going to work with – a foundation that is doing some amazing work in Coch. Check them out if you are interested – Niños con Valor.

But God had other plans. He called me to La Paz and He had a much bigger role in the story for me than I had for myself. I am happy to be in La Paz and I have no doubt that it is where God wants me to be. But Coch still holds a special place in my heart and I am excited to be visiting.

I will be in Coch pretty much all this week. I will probably be flying back on Saturday. I have a mixture of meetings and training all related to the Red Viva Network that I am working with. My goal is to learn more about the organization and meet some people who coordinate activities for the network in other cities in Bolivia. I am going to be managing the communications for the Red Viva office in La Paz so I hope to build some key relationships this week.

Pray that God uses me this week. In addition to the meetings and training, I hope to visit some of my missionary friends in Coch and I will also be meeting with Niños con Valor just to see how everything is going and to deliver some medical supplies to them for a clinic that they are working with.

It should be a fun week. So if you need to reach me just send me an email. I won’t be home to answer the Vonage phone this week.

Also, I just want to share two quick verses with you that knocked me over this past week.

The first verse I stumbled across while I was at the House of Prayer on Thursday night. It is Psalm 61:2 – “From the ends of the earth I call to you. I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

I like to substitute “La Paz, Bolivia” for “ends of the earth.” But man this verse hit me square in the face. I feel just like this verse sometimes. I am calling to God as my heart grows faint. I am serving God full-time but I feel my heart growing faint because I am struggling to spend one on one time with Him consistently. And I so want Him to lead me to that rock, that level of protection, that is higher than I am right now. Father, my hand just can't reach it...

The other one hit me in church today. John 9:39. Jesus’ words after He heals a man who had been blind from birth. “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

…those who see will become blind. Wow. I mean it’s easy to grasp that Jesus wanted to heal people who were blind but what’s up with the part about people who see becoming blind? I have always missed that part. I just realized for the first time today that Jesus wants me to be blind sometimes. He doesn’t want me to see where I am going all the time because He wants to guide me, He wants me to take His hand and trust Him. That's good because I can't see very well right now.

Lead on Savior. Lead on.