Catching up

Since returning from Spain, our time has been spent trying to catch up on life we missed while being away. For me, that took the form of doing homework everyday for my ESI class. For those of you who haven't heard about this class, it's called Equipping Servants Internship and is a rigorous 2 1/2 year study of the book of Romans and various other textbooks covering useful theological issues (we are reading through How to Interpret the Bible by RC Sproul right now- inm Spanish!). We only meet once a week, but the information that is covered and the homework assigned easily fills up the week preceeding the next class. My class is the first one offered for women, being something aimed at pastors and church leaders, the original idea was for men only. The cool thing is that it has had such an impact in the lives of Bolivian leaders that their wives are getting excited about studying the Word too. So, I have joined the first women's ESI group and am finding it an incredible challenge to study these concepts in Spanish, but such a rewarding and fascinating study of God's message to us. Tonight I have to lead class and I'm pretty much terrified. Let you know how it goes...

We also had the chance to see our new friends in Mallasilla that attend a Bible study nearby. They were wondering where we had gotten lost (the literal translation of how they ask where you've been after a long time) and welcomed us back with warm hugs and big smiles. Their news, which they had been sitting on, eager to share, was that they had spoken with the neighborhood group that owns a building in the center of town about our church plant team, and we were offered to use the buliding for free! The thing that makes this extremely exciting is that these people are most likely comitted to worshiping the earth goddess and have no impulse whatsoever to spread Christianity here. Our evangelistic friends from the Bible study also reminded us how ready and willing they are to help if we want to start meeting here on Sundays to do a kids club, at least until we have a pastor and are ready to open the church. More and more people in the neighborhood smile and say "hi" as we walk around, giving us the impression that God has been preparing the way and is bringing things to a point where we can really start diving into ministry here. It's so exciting!

Another new development in the last week is related to the on-going process of looking for land to buy with the future intent of building a house. We found a piece of property that we like very much and had the chance to meet with the owner last week to discuss a price. His offer is quite a bit higher than we were hoping, but we have reason to believe it is a very reasonable price and one that we are definitely praying about. We're dreaming about what kind of house we would build there, spending time in our upstairs prayer room that will look out over the rugged Andes, and imagining our little kids playing in the yard and with the neighborhood boys and girls that are always out on the streets.

So, that's the update. It seems that there is plenty to do in the next few months- so many changes still happening within our church plant group, the prospect of teams coming in the summer, looking for an office so that we can finally have highspeed internet and communicate better with all of you... God has richly blessed our lives, our marriage, and our ministry. We are content serving Him here in La Paz.