More Travels and a Church

Queridos hermanos,

Tomorrow morning I fly to Salta, Argentina to get the final 30 days on my visa. I´ve been illegal for the last week or so, and will be illegal for just short of 2 weeks when I hopefully get my new visa. I´m flying by myself to a country I´ve never been to, which is a bit unnerving. Pray for confidence, and God´s protection as I spend Monday thru Thursday away from Cochabamba.

The last few days have been stressful, and I´ve struggled to trust that God would provide a good way for me to get my last visa. Yesterday, I was overwhelmed by His goodness. When I went to check on cheap flights out of the country, the agent told me the cheapest flight was to Salta, Argentina. Just last week, during a special week of celebration in our church, we had a visiting pastor, Pastor Rolando, stay at the church all week, who was from Salta, Argentina. One of the first things he said to me when I first met him was that I had a place to stay with him if I was ever in Salta!! How good is our God?!!

I have yet to get ahold of him, so I´d also appreciate your prayers that I would be able to contact him before I leave early tomorrow morning.

A special service last week at my church
(Carlos on piano (L), Wilber in the middle, and Pastor Rolando on the right)

Aside from visas, I continue to be overwhelmingly blessed by God´s intentional care for me. As I mentioned in my recent e-mail, my home church here has filled me to overflowing with incredible community. Here´s a little peek into what my church is like:

-Quechua older men and women
-a thriving young people´s group my age
-cute little kids running all over the place

People in the congregation at my church

Those who got baptized when I went with my church a month ago
(Rosalia is the girl on the left in the back)

I went to a devotional Thursday night at my church, and when I arrived early, Vicenta (a dear friend, mother of my friend Rosalia, and housekeeper at the Frutillar orphanage) came in and asked me to sing songs in Quechua with her out of her Quechua hymnal. Vicenta also makes sure that someone always takes me all the way home after church, since I have to walk through a dark forrest to get to my house.

Rosalia (pictured above) lives at the Frutillar orphanage, as the daughter of Vicenta, the housekeeper. I began a friendship with her two years ago, but she´s now 13, and we´re able to have much more of a relationship now that she´s a part of the jovenes (young people) group at church. It was powerful to listen to her share about her faith to the whole congregation before she was baptized. Her faith is vibrant, especially for a 13-year-old, and we often get to pray together, sing worship together, and spend time together. Keep praying for my mentorship of Rosalia, especially as she enters into rebellious years, and without a father.

Thank you, my dear friends, for your continued love and support. I feel daily blessed by the community that I never really left behind when I came here.

con todo amor,
Kati

Missions trip on a missions trip...

Flat tires, bad brakes, and a shifter that won’t stay in gear… Winding 4X4 roads with steep cliffs, breathtaking views of canyons, desolate and arid land, and herds of llamas, donkeys and sheep wandering across the road… Arriving in villages at midnight, getting up at 6am, no showers, beautiful indigenous people… Quechua, English, Spanish, Aymara… All I’m capable of sharing with you is just snippets of what I experienced during my time in Potosi, but I hope you’re able to get a glimpse of how powerful the trip was. As a quick re-cap, I went on a 9 day mission’s trip to Potosi with 3 other interns and 5 Bolivians. Potosi is a southern department in Bolivia, known for its mountains, remote villages, mines, and Quechua-speaking people. We went to 7 villages, sharing the gospel, giving the kiddos a little hygienic education, and distributing Samaritan’s Purse shoeboxes.


As you can see from this picture, these precious wawas were thrilled to get a gift from so far away. As one dad shared, some of the kids had never been given presents before. Before we gave them their boxes, we talked about how the shoeboxes were an example of God’s love for them, and how the best gift He ever gave was the gift of His Son. In each village, I was able to offer a Quechua greeting or a question to the weathered old men and women, and was rewarded with a toothless smile. In a Quechua church in Urmiri, the third village, I was asked on the spot to share my testimony. When I got on stage, the translator joked in Quechua that I was fluent, and he didn’t need to translate. I said, “Mana parlanichu” (I don’t speak Quechua!) but was able to use a little Quechua at the beginning. It was a powerful experience to share my story in Spanish and to hear it translated into Quechua. I talked about my connection to God through nature, and then shared Psalm 23. What a beautiful thing to share a passage from scripture about God as our Shepherd to an audience full of shepherds! One of my main roles on the team was to share John 3:16 with the 10-14 year-olds in the village when we broke up into groups. For most of the villages, Jen, another intern was in there for moral support, but she doesn’t speak much Spanish.

In Macha Macha, the last village, 30-40 Quechua kids all crowded into a dim room and looked at me expectantly. I didn’t have any of the teaching tools I was used to in the other villages, and I was all by myself. As I read, “Porque tanto amo Dios al mundo…” I learned that most of these kids had never heard the gospel before, and that many of them didn’t even have a clear picture of who God is or what Jesus did.

There’s no way to put into words how beautiful it was to stare into the eager brown eyes of these beautiful Quechua children and to share with them from the bottom of my heart what it means to have a rich relationship with Christ. We went through each part of the verse, and I explained what each part meant, and what it could mean to them. They soaked it all in, and when we were done and left the classroom, the kids flocked around me, all smiles. I have no idea if they understood all I said, but I can only continued to pray that God will draw each of them to Him, and that some day each of those kids will be able to experience the overwhelming richness of a relationship with Him.

Our journey felt like one of Paul’s trips in many ways, with major car troubles, persecution and division, but so much truth and beauty shared about God and His love for us. Check out 2 Corinthians for a taste of some of what we experienced.

Pray for the seeds planted, and for the body of Christ in each village. May God be as real and present for each of you as He was for us on this trip.

Dios llawan,
Kata