
Literally, I thought he was a little bit crazy and still do. Tito Lima is our Director for Business as Mission and keeps talking to me about this revolving fund plan of his. We have only one little problem …we don’t have any funds to “revolve”! Tito keeps me laughing each time he says, “Daniel, what are you worried about? We’re not asking for that much, just $20,000 here and $30,000 there. We’re not looking for huge investments, just seed money.” Ha ha ha ha ha. Laughter is good medicine. We need $90,000 to cover the first two years of this “revolving fund” idea of his.

Last month he signed us up for the 6th Anual Agronomy and Veterinary fair and began designing a logo, fliers, business cards, and banners about business as mission and our “revolving fund”. We were surrounded by booths of people with real businesses like greenhouses, farming techniques, veterinary clinics, novelty items made out of wood or plant or animal materials, and then our business as mission booth and fancy “revolving fund” applications.

I trust Tito and have followed him into other crazy but great decisions, like buying our apartment here in Bolivia or renting our office space. So I took our missionary team and we handed out fliers and walked around and made connections with other businesses and enjoyed myself. The food was great (agronomy fair remember), I met all kinds and colors of people, and had numerous conversations about God’s blessing purposes through for-profit activities for families and communities and whole economies. I came away encouraged, still confused, but jazzed never the less.

And Tito came back with a stack of applications for our non-existent “revolving fund”, and then left for Shanghai for a three week business trip. Tito lives what he preaches by running a business where he lives out God’s blessing purposes and volunteering with an organizations like ours (because as an owner he has free time to do that). He so wants more businesses to be started that glorify God by building spiritual capital in Bolivia in order to complete the task of reaching his people with the message of Jesus.

And just now, I got off the phone with our first donor here in Bolivia. He called us, I didn’t call him. And his organization wants to put in seed money of, yep, just a small investment of ten or fifteen thousand dollars depending on the terms he works out with Tito. Nothing major, run of the mill stuff for business people, meanwhile I’m here in my office jumping up and down and thanking God for his provision. So let’s remove the ” ” marks, our Revolving Fund is the real thing now!
This month I’ve been re-reading the story of Moses. And it struck me that just a few weeks out on their incredible escape from Egypt, they completely ran out of food and water. Moses was a great leader and he must have forseen this way back while they were in Egypt. And for sure he counted the cost and knew they were short on supplies when they were waiting to cross the Red Sea. But he led the people into the desert anyway. Why?
Moses didn’t have a fully funded plan with the things he could see. But he was convinced that the God he couldn’t see, the God’s whose name was Jireh (Provider), was leading them. And so when God sent manna, and meat, and water from a rock, and a road through the sea, and a pillar of cloud and fire, well God was just being Jireh.
I want to live like Tito and Moses, trusting in a God who funds non-existent revolving funds and takes care of our housing needs in Bolivia and gives us support month by month because He’s Jireh. He’s in charge of the resources, not us. Maybe God likes people like Tito who trust that HUGE stuff to us is just a normal day’s work to our Jireh God.
So blessings from Bolivia this beautiful Friday in April. -Dan for the Colllins’ family and WorldVenture team