Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

FIRES IN BOLIVIA
"Hundreds, possibly thousands of fires (locations marked in red) were burning in South America when the MODIS on NASA’s Aqua satellite passed overhead on September 25, 2007, and captured this image.
The most intense fire activity was in Bolivia, where fires are concentrated in the Santa Cruz Department, in the southeastern part of the country."

That's the news from NASA. The news from our house is that the smoke is intense. Coming home from the office today the sun was completely blocked out and it was dark earlier than normal.
It's not too smoky in the house, but outside is bad. Bolivia has no real fire fighting capablity, and the president is preoccupied entertaining Iranian dictators. The only solution will probably come with the rainy season in a month or two.

Magdalena: Released from Shame

Last week I was in Cartagena, Colombia for the religious broadcasters convention for Latin America. I was there to premiere the new film we are working on called Magdalena: Released from Shame. The film presents the gospel story from the point of view of Mary Magdalene. The producers really wanted to reach women who are oppressed around the world. It really struck a chord with women here in South America.

We had a couple of goals, one was to distribute 1300 free DVD's of the film to participants, but more than that to encourage them to use the DVD to reach women for Christ and to start new small groups of women. In addition we showed the film on the big screen to an audience of several hundred.

I was anxious to get the reaction of the women who saw the film. Here is a brief video of some of their responses. Their excitement was plain to see:



I'll keep you posted as we distribute the film more widely throughout South America.

Ron

Bernadette Todd in Bolivia

Dear Friends,

Last weekend found us in separate countries, thousands of miles apart involved in very exciting ministry projects. While I (Ron) was in Cartagena, Colombia (I'll be writing about that separately), Jeanie was hosting some friends of ours from Miami, Bernadette and Jeff Todd.

Bernadette was here in the summer of 2006 and came again to share her story with students and families. She suffers from muscular dystrophy to such an extent that she has very little movement in her body. But, as she is fond of saying, she has her voice! And she uses her voice to tell people about God's goodness and his love.

Here is a video that our Campus Crusade team put together of her time in Bolivia last weekend:


Please pray for the folks that made commitments to Christ as they heard Bernadette's story. Pray as well for Bernadette and Jeff as they continue to minister together.

Ron

Spider, Stove and Birthday

Hi from Bolivia,

This month Andrew celebrated his 15th birthday with Mom and Dad and then later with some friends. He got a new guitar that he's already playing pretty well. It's hard to believe that Andrew is growing up so fast. We are really proud of him.

Behind him in the picture you can see the gas stove we bought when we moved to Bolivia in 2003. It works OK, but one of the things Jeanie missed from her range in Miami was the delay timed cooking feature. She used to put Sunday dinner in the oven to turn on while we were at church so that it would be ready when we came home. She has missed that a lot lately because we have a lot of young people at church that we like to invite home with us.


You can buy that kind of electric stove here, imported from the U.S., but they are very expensive, about double what they cost in the U.S. Well, God in his goodness brought some missionaries to town from Cochabamba who had just the stove that Jeanie had in mind. We bought it and brought it home this week. Not a big thing, but it will make life and entertaining more enjoyable for Jeanie. We donated our old stove to the Campus Crusade ministry center. Anyway, on the left is a photo of the new stove.



Last, here's a photo of some wildlife that Andrew found on the shower curtain this morning:

Settling back in

After an intense time of graduation, wedding, mission teams (6), and a lot of travel (Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Orlando), I think life is going to settle back down to normal for a few weeks.

The big change in our lives involves school. Andrew is back at the Santa Cruz Christian Learning Center beginning his freshman year at the high school. He is really enjoying it so far. The other big change is that Jeanie is now working as a teacher at the school. She has two classes, freshman English and first year Spanish. Because the high school is very small, she only has VERY small classes: one in the special English class and four students for Spanish. She says reviewing the basics in Spanish really helps her. I can tell you her accent is great!

This morning is the big kick off brunch for the women’s bible study that Jeanie helps to lead. They are expecting about 50 ladies this year. Thanks for praying!