we are back!

We made it back from Brazil safe and sound.  Our house is still standing and very welcoming to come home to.

The Latin Link conference was wonderful. We were able to connect with a large group of WorldVenture missionaries around South and Central America. A church from Salem sent a short term team that ran a kids program and so while Dan and I were in meetings our kids were well taken care of.

Our time was restful and encouraging.

Now we are getting back into the swing of life. As I write this I am helping the kids with their homework.  It is on of those days where there is a question every 30 seconds and about every 5 minutes I am saying, “Focus, do your homework!”

There is so much more to write and I will save the story telling for later this week. I have a lot to catch you all up on.

Until next time!

Latin Link & Santa Cruz

I (Dan) just got back from a 3 day trip to Santa Cruz where one church’s Bless clubs have grown from 6 kids to over 60 in the last 18 months. It’s a really cool place and I’ll write more later because… our bags are already re-packed for Brazil. We’re traveling as a family, the kids had to do exams for school and a bunch of extra homework to get the 12 days off, and we’ve been madly getting everything put together, but we’re ready now!

We’ve been part of the planning committee for this conference for 50+ WorldVenture misisonaries from South, Central, and even North America. Our theme is “Inside Out Integrity”, First Baptist Salem is sending a worship team, Bible teaching by Mark Hanke, and running a kids’ program. Daryl and I will be doing a workshop on the use of social media in communication/publicity.

But we’re most excited about networking with other missionaries face to face instead of through internet. Afterwards we’re staying a couple extra days before we head back to Bolivia. Brazil here we come!

Pray for our trip, 3 flights there, 3 flights back

Pray for the Latin Link Conference

Pray for Bless Santa Cruz

Pray for our workshop on Social Media

even to the best of us…

Some of you were teams that Jhonny Orozco hosted with me voluntarily, and some of you came after he became staff with WorldVenture Bolivia, and some of you have just read about my right hand man Jhonny. We’ve worked together for 7 years now, and in our orientations with new teams we always do a section where talking about how quickly and easily a robbery happens here. Well…

Jhonny got hit last weekend. While returning from a preaching invitation to Potosi he got on his bus, put his bag in the overhead, got back off to help his mother-in-law climb up the steps, and in just those 60 seconds someone took his bag. No one admitted to seeing anything and no bag was found. Jhonny’s computer, an external hard drive, personal documentation, and his clothes were gone just like that.

Now the computer was old, one hinge for the screen was already broken, it needed to be replaced. But the information he lost, well it’s gone and he didn’t have a backup of everything. Yes yes he knows and next time, next time…

We’ve had an account set up for the last couple years Bolivia-LEAD Venture (6494-904) that is admin fee free, meaning every cent you donate comes straight to our volunteers program here.

Has God given you any extra this year that you could donate toward another computer and external drive? Or do you have a semi-used laptop you could donate through WorldVenture?

Thankful for any help,

Dan for the WorldVenture team in Bolivia

Donate Now to Bolivia-Lead Venture

Crazy Tito, Jireh God

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

K’oa in Bolivia

One of the biggest festivals in Cochabamba is called Urkupina. It’s a tribute to the apparition of the female divinity given the name Urkupina (local name), or the Virgin Mother (of Jesus), or Pachimama (similar to a concept of a mother earth). When I visited the festival a few years ago, one of the beliefs that caught my attention was the burning of small items on little altars called the K’oa. Here is a low res picture from my old cell phone.

I could have bought miniature pieces of money, or a tiny house, or a car, or pieces that represented children or family, or my favorite, some miniature airline tickets for future travel. And then these items would be put on one of the little altars nearby and would bring blessing for those things in the coming year. Now this might sound outside your normal experience, it’s definitely outside mine. So if you’re from my background it is similar to the idea of prayer, offering up requests to a divinity figure and hoping for a favorable answer. At the time I registered this experience as an interesting piece of cultural knowledge about Bolivia.

Fast forward to last month. We live in a nice little apartment building with 5 other families, working professionals in the middle and upper class of Bolivian. Lent is a national two day holiday called Carnaval, so we gathered with our neighbors and were eating and playing a local dice game, laughing and having a good time, when one of them brought out a little burning charcoal K’oa in a metal dustpan. And as we kept playing he was careful to  move the K’oa to different places around the building. Afterwards he lighted a pack of firecrackers at each of the four corners of our building’s outside walls to scare of any bad omens.

We’ve lived with these families for three years with countless BBQs and other get togethers, but this was the first time they opened up to us about their beliefs in the spiritual world. One of our neighbors who knows we are believers in Jesus described the K’oa to us as a kind of mass to the mother earth spirit. Another neighbor described it as a way to appease the spirits around us and bring blessing to all of our lives, and used his successful business life as an example. He encouraged us to try it once each month on our floor of the building. Another asked us not to look down on them for their beliefs, they were things they held dear and believed to be true. We listened and learned.

We are privileged that our neighbors are opening up to us. They know that I am a pastor and that we believe in Jesus, and last year asked us to pray for a new baby that was born to one family. And we are reminded that all around the world people are very similar. They want to find blessing a spiritual connection for their lives and families.

I would call this desire a search for salvation. And Psalm 3:8 has been on my mind, “Salvation belongs to the LORD, your blessings be on your people! Selah (think about these things)”

Daryl and I were reminded and challenged about the great privilege we have of living out the truth of salvation and grace in Jesus each day, not because we are missionaries, but because we are neighbors.

Transitions

Sometimes Daryl and I feel like we’re standing in an airport. Things are constantly arriving or departing and in the midst of constant change we’re living out our call to be a part of God’s Kingdom work. When I started this year and wrote out my goals, one of them was to “manage transitions”. Yep, it’s shaping up to be quite a year.

Tom and Abbey Wanzek just arrived in October and are finishing their first six months of orientation and language learning. We are glad to have fellow Oregonians on our team even if Tom insists on wearing orange and black shoes to the office. Yes they are OSU grads, but we have good team conflict management skills so somehow we’ll manage

Last month was the official transition for Project Bless, launching out from our umbrella and financial covering to local churches leadership. I could write great things about this transition, but the reality is it was really difficult on many levels, and is still is very complicated. But we’re committed to letting local leaders take ownership of this ministry.

This week we closed down and started the sale of our sausage business endeavor. It was a noble effort, and we learned a lot, but now the time has come to stop grinding, mixing, and packing pig parts into tiny little packages in the name of business as mission. We have two buyers interested who will be giving us their offers next week.

Next week Harmony Estes returns to California after completing her two years here with us as a mid termer. She taught english classes at a preschool and was our short term volunteer coordinator. In three months Hans and Lindsay Nyberg return to Michigan after three years here with us as teachers at Carachipampa, our field accountant, sausage makers, and investing in the college ministry at their church. And Quinn and Dana Holzer are in Montana 25% supported as they aim to arrive by the end of the year and help with Business as Mission.

We’ve been discouraged to see so many missionaries come and go from Bolivia in our 7 years here, but we’re realizing that God is using each of them in different places around the world. So we get to impact people here who have impact around the globe.

Daryl is building the export options for Darli Moda and her first shipment of 15 purses is en-route to a Colorado distributor. Yesterday she flew to La Paz on an invitation from a local ministry that is looking for a purse designer. She returned last night bubbling over with information. It was great to hear all her stories. It was also late. I think I need more coffee this morning

I’ve got a flier on my desk for, let me get this right, the “6th Fair of the Agricultural Department of the school of FCAPVyV”  which then is a really long acronym that I won’t try to translate. I’ll be helping Tito Lima, our Business as Mission Director, as we look for possible clients for the revolving fund program he is building here in Bolivia. I continue to be amazed at the ways people and resources come together in God’s timing.

And in May we have our first ever Latin Link conference for all WorldVenture missionaries in Central and South America. I just got a call yesterday that our passports are ready with the Brazilian visas we need, so now we’re set to go!

Arrivals, departures, changes, transitions, that’s our life this year in a nutshell.

Local church sponsorship

Just before the new year we sent out our urgent need in Bolivia with Project Bless. And many of you responded so that Bless could continue this year, thank you!

In November we made the decision that in order to make Bless sustainable in the long term all of our Bless clubs needed to look for sponsorship by local churches. This is the way Bless has grown in the city of Santa Cruz and in the south of Cochabamba. In fact, the only clubs that weren’t being sponsored were the ones that we were supporting financially. So we had to stop paying, start praying, and see what would happen. I can tell you that that is a lot easier said than done.

Now 4 months later and after a lot of prayer and planning and worrying (yes, I have a lot of growing to do in the area of trust) Bless has been officially accepted and sponsored by a group of 3 local Bolivian churches. And I believe they are going to lead this ministry into a new phase of growth. Ariel is now a pastor in one of these churches and continuing his role as the Director of Bless under the leadership of this church. And today he signed his final papers as an employee, picked up his last check, and together we prayed for God’s blessing as he begins a new step in life and ministry.

What does this mean for Bless? We get to be part of a national movement of Bolivian churches in doing sports ministry in Bolivia. We will continue to raise money for Bless (click here to donate to BLESS on-line), but we no longer pay salaries or coaches as these people will all be volunteers or paid by one of the sponsoring churches. And the money we raise will go into training, special events, and supplies for the sports teams.

This next month a church in the south of Cochabamba is putting on their second Bless Kids’ tournament, and Naomi and Ben have been selected to be on our church’s Bless Kids’ team, cool!