The last two weeks have been very exciting and encouraging for us. The last week of March we traveled to Santiago Chile to be part of the Latin Bridge Conference. There were missionaries from all over South America and especially from Chile. This conference is hosted be missionary Jason Holt and the team of missionaries working there in Santiago. It is a time where we learn more about church planting and leader training and discuss how we can better reach Latin America with the gospel. The guest speaker at the conference was pastor Austin Gardner who was a missionary for almost 20 years in Peru and is now pastor of the Vision Baptist Church in Alpharetta Georgia. We had a wonderful time of learning and planning for the future along with some great fellowship with missionary friends. While many are pulling out of Latin America I truly believe that we are in the most vital time for missions in South America. It is truly ripe for the harvest and we need many labourers to help bring it in.
After the conference, pastor Austin Gardner and his wife traveled back to Bolivia to be with us for a few days. Since we recently celebrated Father’s Day I wanted to have some special time with the men of our church focusing on being the spiritual leaders that they should be. During the day we had classes with the guys in the seminary and then each night we had a special service in a different area. On Tuesday night we had a cookout at my house and a meeting for the men of the church. We had well over 20 men there and a great time of eating, teaching with a question and answer time at the end. Even though it was a little late the men didn’t even want to leave. Then on Wednesday night we had our normal midweek service and the teaching was focused on being a spiritual leader. On Thursday we were in Quillacollo where we are starting a new work and we learned what a church should be like. I would like to thank personally pastor Gardner and his wife for taking time to be with us and for being a great encouragement. In all it has been a couple of crazy weeks but the Lord has blessed us beyond measure.
