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Follow the command.
Leave the results to HIM!
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The mornings were early, the nights felt late. Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, cheerfulness shone from every face. The whole B3 team had gathered together in Independencia (a hub town for 155 villages in the Andes mountains) to kick off the year, fixing up the lifestyle center building and additional housing that they needed to accommodate a bigger team this year. It warmed my heart to watch everyone fix, create, build, and support each other as they start off the year. The dedication of these 13 young people to the mission and their positive, self-sacrificing spirit was very evident.
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As I’m thinking back over the past couple months, what it took to get to this point, I get a little emotional. You see, we don’t own any of the buildings or property where the lifestyle center is functioning. It’s not even an option to buy them at this point, if we had the money in hand. We watched the devil work really hard to oppose this center. With a larger Bible worker/lifestyle team this year of eight, we needed more housing. We appealed to the board that manages the place to build two small two-room cabins at our expense and labor. Our team leader and several others made multiple trips out to the village and many phone calls to different people on their board, resulting in little forward progress. We finally received verbal approval to build and quickly purchased all the building materials needed for the cabins. A day later that approval was taken back and additional rent for the previously free use of the building was to be charged. Would we have to go somewhere else? The place seemed so ideal.
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The team met to pray, multiple times, together and via group phone call. It was beautiful, humbling, uplifting, bringing us all back to the point of surrender. God consequently opened the doors for the use of two adobe buildings close-by in answer to our prayer for housing needs. With this, the team decided to move forward and make the needed fix-its to the existing buildings and water system. Our family visited for a couple days last week and I was very encouraged.
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Beetle hunt at a pit stop on the trip into Independencia.
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Old water tank, new water tank, new lines to the buildings, and a cleaner solution for where the spring water bubbles out of the ground.
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During our visit, we watched as Satan attempted to trouble the work. We had brought Marcia (dentist) in to support the team for their upcoming health fair. She and Rocio (doctor) began seeing people before the weekend of the fair and that brought lots of people up to the lifestyle center. The neighbor, a cattle farmer, came over very gruffly at one point and accused Elizabet, the team leader, of causing him problems because all the people visiting the center were stomping down the grass that he was paying a lot of money to let his cows graze on. Elizabet apologized and asked the people to be extra careful. The quick thinker that she is, she soon spoke with DJ and asked if we could find the money ($300/yr) to rent the grass ourselves. DJ said that was fine and said we’d set aside some donations to cover that cost. She subsequently (and divinely) received quick permission from one of the board members to do so. But the best part of the story comes when Elizabet went back to talk to neighbor man. She said that the B3 team would be renting the grass on the property as well as the buildings, but that he could bring his cows onto the grass to graze any time he’d like to. The man’s face softened and he began to ask more about what the team was doing at the center and even agreed to study the Bible with the team!
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God needs people to take the gospel to the world. Dedicated, self-sacrificing, hard-working people. We are grateful for each of the B3 team of missionaries and what they’ve given up in this life to work for eternal purposes. However, our team is small and our reach feels short. I believe that God wants MORE PEOPLE to work in His vineyard, to reap His harvest of souls, not just in Bolivia, but in every country around the world. “There should be one hundred believers actively engaged in personal missionary work where now there is but one. Time is rapidly passing. There is much work to be done before satanic opposition shall close up the way” (EGW, Medical Ministry, p.248).
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Friend, God needs YOU! There isn’t a single mission post out there that is covering all the work there is to do. Laborers are the scarcest resources in most places! We believe that we are living in a window of opportunity in 2023 when it is easier to be a part of this end-time missionary work. It’s not the time to build bigger barns and fill them, to find the more comfortable or easier way in this life. Why are we, after all, living on this earth? Is it simply to live on this earth or is it to prepare for our eternal home and pray/work for others to be there too?
Hudson Taylor, founder of China Inland Missions, made this statement over a hundred years ago. It rings true to this day…
“Fruit-bearing involves cross-bearing. There are not two Christs – an easygoing one for easygoing Christians, and a suffering, toiling one for exceptional believers. There is only one Christ. Are you willing to abide in Him, and thus to bear much fruit?”
- J. Hudson Taylor
Praying for you and me to abide in HIM and thus bear much fruit,
Jodi & family
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B3 Team
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