Preaching to the Chickens:
This past month our sister church in Cobija Bolivia celebrated it’s 6
th anniversary. I was invited to travel up with our assistant Isaac to participate in their anniversary conference for three days. We arrived on Friday and the conference started that same night. There were special activities each night with the young people singing and doing evangelistic skits. On Saturday night Isaac preached on “It’s still not the time” about how often we make excuses saying “now is not the time but later I will surrender and serve the Lord”. We had great services each night with several salvation decisions and many others for service to the Lord. On Sunday morning a group of 40 or more loaded into a bus and we traveled for almost two hours on dirt roads to get to a small town in the jungle called Buyuyo. Some time ago two of the men from the church in Cobija moved to this area for work and when they couldn’t find a church to go to they started Bible studies with some of the teenagers and people from the town. The Bible study began to grow and more people kept getting saved until they are now having full service in the house of a family that attends. It was amazing to see close to 80 people packed into this simple structure that was their house. It was made from wood planks and had a thatch roof and you could even see the chickens running under the house through the cracks. We praise the Lord for the work that the Laura family is doing in the northern part of Bolivia and ask that you pray for them and the two works that they have. The church in Cobija is in the second phase of their building project and in need of funds to put the floor/roof on the two rooms they have built. The floor will be made of rebar and concrete and will const roughly $2500 to finish. If you would like to help with this project please let us know.
kwhite@mwbm.org.
On the Lookout for Pastors:
At the end of our trip to Cobija we flew back to the capital city of La Paz where we met up with two other guys from the church, Pablo and Bismark. From there we headed towards the border with Peru and traveled until late that night to the city of Arequipa, arriving at around 11:00 pm. We were able to be part of the Pastor’s Conference at the Macedonia Baptist Bible College where we did our language studies before coming to Bolivia. We had classes during the day and service in the afternoon and night. It was truly a great time to see many pastors with the same heart to reach the world with the gospel. It was also a great experience for the guys that traveled with us and I think truly put in their hearts a desire to do more for the Lord and his work. Our desire is always to prepare men and women for the ministry that God has called them to. One of the greatest needs that we can see here in South America and especially in Bolivia is to train up national leadership. That is what Christ did for three and a half years and the rest we know as church history. Our desire is to do the same. Train up leaders that will impact this world with the gospel.
Building for the Lord:
We know that many of you have been praying for our building project here in Bolivia and many have given sacrificially towards this need. This coming month we will be starting several campaigns here at the church to try and reach our goal to buy land. Each family in the church will receive a small wooden house as a piggy bank and at the end of each month they will bring the money to the church for the project. Our goal is to raise several thousand dollars towards the land. This is a large task understanding that the average wage here is around $100 a month. Please pray for our church and people.
Prayer Requests:
1. Pray that we can find land near where we are and for a reasonable price.
2. Pray as we prepare our Bible Institute to train our leaders for the ministry.
3. Pray for the funds needed for the second phase of building in Cobija.
4. Pray that the Lord will call men and women into the ministry.
