Exciting Times
The last month or so we have had several exciting activities that were very encouraging for us. First 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 our 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 had 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 was a couple of crazy weeks but the Lord blessed us beyond measure.
Life is Short:
This past month the 27th marked three years since my dad died of Pancreatic Cancer. It doesn’t seem real even now after this long. Sometimes I see his picture and think that I need to give him a call because I haven’t talked to him in a long time, then I remember, I can’t. I think going through loosing my dad to cancer really taught me a lot of important lessons. I could probably spend a long time writing about each of those, but I think that the one lesson that sticks out even to this day is that our life is truly short. The Bible, in James 4:13, tells us that our life is as a vapor, meaning that it is short and here for only a short period of time. Some might ask how I learned this lesson when my dad lived 77 years of life. That would almost make us think that life is long not short. After preaching this verse many times, I think that I have learned that it isn’t as much a reference to the amount of years you live, but more a reference to what you do with the years that you do have. Unfortunately, many live their lives for things that really don’t count for much. Others might live their lives focused on things that are good like family, work, friends, and fun, but when this life is over all those things will be also. What really counts is if we live our lives for eternal things, what we do for the Lord. When we do that we are laying up our treasure in heaven where it will last for all eternity. So the moral of this story is, if life is short we should do everything possible to make it count.
Prayer Requests:
1. Pray for us as we look at a perspective pieces of land for our church, “exciting news coming soon”.
2. Pray for the new work we are starting in Quillacollo as we look at starting service on Sundays.
3. Pray for Mothers day that we will be celebrating this month.
4. Pray for the many areas of our city that need a Bible preaching church.