Sunday, January 25, 2009

Election Day - again

Ron and Jeanie Burgin
Campus Crusade for Christ, South America
http://burgin-bolivia.blogspot.com/

January 25, 2009

Dear Friend,
Greetings from Santa Cruz, Bolivia! Today we spent the whole day at home because it is Election Day here in Bolivia. The voters are deciding whether to approve a new constitution that will have lasting impact on the country. The early results show it being approved by a 60% to 40% margin, which was pretty much what was expected. As I write I can hear some fireworks in our neighborhood celebrating the new constitution. That's a photo of our president at a polling station.

Pastors and Christian school leaders are anxious as to the impact of the new constitution on their institutions. We all need to remember that God is still on His throne and at work in the hearts of Bolivians.

We were home all day because no driving is allowed. Election Day is a good day to rest and catch up. Around midday we lost electricity, which isn’t too unusual, so we waited a while for the power to come back. I usually assume it is a neighborhood outage and the electric coop must be aware of the problem. When we were still out of power after 45 minutes, I called the cooperative and they said the problem must be at our meter. We went out to check and the breaker was flipped off. I think we got carried away in our electrical consumption. We had one A/C unit going, the electric dryer, soup cooking on the electric range and the water pump running to wash the cars, plus miscellaneous computer, monitor, tv, etc. I guess we learned the limits of our electrical system. (Anyone remember the 1960’s sitcom, “Green Acres”? )

People are still very open to the Gospel. Friday while I was still in Colombia working with staff there, students in our university ministry went to the big state university here to share the Gospel with students waiting to register. Overall, 80 students heard the Gospel using the Four Spiritual Law booklet and 40 prayed to receive Jesus as Savior.

Last night at our weekly meeting, one of our students, Darling, told about his experience sharing Christ. He has taken some good-natured ribbing in the past because whenever we go on mission trips, he seems to end up sharing the gospel with whole groups of young ladies. Can’t figure that out J. Anyway, Friday he ended up talking with 15 guys and 8 of them prayed to receive Christ! He was excited. There were several new guys from the U at our meeting, including Maxim and Juan Gabriel. Please pray for these kids as God draws them to Himself.

This week we have a group of Campus Crusade leaders from around South America here in Santa Cruz to think together about how we can work effectively with pastors and denominations in planting new churches in every corner of the continent. Please pray that God would use our time together to build His Kingdom.

Thanks for your unceasing prayer and financial support of our ministry! We appreciate you now more than ever!

Your missionaries in Bolivia,
Ron, Jeanie and Andrew Burgin

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Mataburros and other repairs

It is always a challenge to return to Bolivia after being away. It seems that things magically fall apart in our absence. Tires go flat, light bulbs burn out, dogs get tick infestations, etc. So... I always want to get back to the ministry, but the circumstances require me to do general "tech support" around the house.

On Monday Jeanie and Andrew came home complaining about a thumping sound in the little car. Turns out the mataburros (burro killer-sort of an additional superbumper) on the front of the car came loose and needed to be welded back in place on one side. We have a neighbor, Freddy, who is now doing body work in his yard, so I decided to ask him to take a look. (This is the same Freddy whose cow died in the field across from our house some time back. He has broadened his professional interests since then.)

Anyway, getting to and from his yard is an experience. You have to walk through the barnyard of vacant lots to get there: mean dogs, pigs, lambs, goats and lots of Freddy's relatives. They mostly speak Quechua, though Freddy and his father-in-law do Ok in Spanish as well. It has been fun to get to know them. Freddy has an arc welder and sent me on the way with a repaired mataburros in a couple of hours.

I am going to go back and offer them the Quechua version of the JESUS Film on DVD. Maybe we can watch it together. Pray that God will touch their hearts.