God's work
“Now show me your glory.” – Exodus 33:18. These were the words of Moses asking God to show him his glory and he did see it. He had an amazing experience of what it is to have a deep relationship with God.
My wife Jessica and I had the privilege to visit a group of people who wanted to know more about God and his word at a city in the southern part of Bolivia called Tarija. This group had a family member who was a disciple in the La Paz church. Together with their friends, they were tired of religious behavior in their former charismatic church. They saw arrogance in their leadership even though some of them were part of their leadership team. They realized the way they were doing things was not pleasing God and had something wrong, it just didn’t make sense.
They decided together to start studying the Bible about all these false doctrines they had. As disciples shared with them the basic principles of true Christian life, they were encouraged to leave everything and come for a week to study the Bible in La Paz for a week to understand what the Bible says and to count the cost of being a disciple of Jesus. We were all surprised to see their faith, repentance and desire to know more about this new lifestyle. Five of the 10 of them made it and were with us for a whole week understanding the life of a disciple. They were part of Bible talks on campus, served the poor and also studied the cross, repentance and baptism. After the week they went back to Tarija to share what they had learned but most importantly to show true repentance.
The Spirit moves
We traveled to Tarija with four other disciples from La Paz, Rodrigo Soliz, Jimena Condori, Rodrigo Carrasco and Carla Mogrovejo. Our purpose was to follow up on the original group and get to know the rest. When we arrived to Tarija we were received with much gratitude and started to get to know the whole group of around 15 that where interested to know more about God and his word.
God taught us that we need to trust every day and take everything one day at time (Mathew 6:33). We were tempted with fears and doubts (2 Corinthians 1:9) but ultimately we had to go on prayer and our study Acts, so that God could take control of our hearts and we could be moved by faith in his word and not our emotions. God was leading it all, he was making disciples and we were being his assistants.
On our fourth day we saw Barbara Puma and Carlos Garcia being baptized into Christ. Many others wanted to study the Bible, coming to confess their sins and wanting to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins and be added to the church.
Moving forward
The church in Tarija now meets together as a house church and has four disciples: Manuel Flores, Jimena Condori, Carlos Garcia and Barbara Pum. They are responsible for the group and the rest of the ones studying the Bible are supporting and assisting the church and getting prepared to live as disciples. We are encouraging disciples all over Bolivia and all over the world to visit the group and encourage them on their faith.
God has amazing plans for all of us as disciples of Christ and we believe this is the beginning of amazing things God wants to do all over the world in our generation. Please keep the Tarija group on your prayers. God has a plan to evangelize the whole world and we are sure you are included in it, so let’s all go and make disciples of all nations as God continues to amaze us with his Spirit. With much love and gratitude to you all!
