Archive for March, 2007

29
Mar

March 2007 Report

   Posted by: Rabbi   in Prayer Letters

Here’s the news from Bolivia:
Lorien’s arrival
Thank you for your prayers, and the numerous churches who met our need in crisis, our daughter Lorien is safe and sound in Cochabamba. She’s caught her breath and is working with our kids for their schooling, and starting her studies of the proposed new Bolivian government.
Build a Bed funds completed
Thanks to you, our dear friends, the Build-a-Bed project is completed! Only one bed remains to be built, and then there will be no Johnsons sleeping on the floor! Even the dog has her own cushion to sleep on!
Freezer from WMS at Central
As we shared in a previous letter, the blockades of January made it clear that we were not prepared for a siege! Whether it be political blockades, or roads washed out by rain, Cochabamba can go days or even weeks without fresh meat or veggies being brought to the city. We needed a freezer! No sooner had we made that need known, than the Women’s Missionary Society of Central Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas and the folks at Canon Community Baptist Church in Canon City, Colorado sent us the funds to get the equipment. Thanks to Cyn’s bargaining skills, we got a large chest freezer AND a microwave oven. We’ll have photos on the website soon. Thank you, ladies!
Typhoid
They say you aren’t a veteran missionary until you’ve had an exotic disease or a parasite large enough to name. In early February, I was diagnosed with Typhoid Fever. The treatment was no big deal, two weeks of antibiotics, but I was unprepared for the recovery. The Dr. prescribed three weeks of bed rest; you know THAT wasn’t happening, so I haggled him down to 1 week of bed rest and another of reduced activity. However, the second week found me falling over from fatigue. As the Dr. predicted, it was a full three weeks before I was up to speed. This is not something we recommend for your 3rd World experience!!
Ministry
Our language studies continue. We attend classes as long as we have the funds to pay for those classes. God may be opening up an opportunity to move into the city, which will greatly increase our chances to hear/speak Spanish in everyday life! But we still need so much more training. We’ve only been able to pay for 4 hours of instruction per week, and this is just not sufficient. Please pray that more churches will follow through with their commitments to fund our language acquisition and that more will come on board for this purpose.
While we have been focusing on learning Spanish and inserting ourselves into the Bolivian/Cochabamban culture and mindset, we have had the freedom to be involved with an English speaking local church in Coch. They have activities for our teens, which is great. This ministers to the family and I have the freedom to examine the needs for ministry among the indigenous peoples in Cochabamba and in Bolivia.

Thank you for your faithful support!
Steven and Cynthia Johnson, Thomas, Nicholas, Staton and David!

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28
Mar

Bloqueo … and yet my children will eat!

   Posted by: Cyn   in Stories

… thanks to the generosity of the Women’s Missionary Society of one of our beloved churches and the heroic efforts of the Youth/College group of Canon City, CO. Our supporting churches are such a blessing to us. It goes so far beyond the needed monthly support. The love they have for us and the prayers for our success for God on the field… these blessings are a comfort and an encouragement to us and enable and empower us to do what God has called us to do in Bolivia.

But back to the blessing from the ladies and those dear young people!

After the past bloqueos (blockades) and paros (work strikes), we have been praying for a chest freezer to store up food against such times. Then the rainy season came and we discovered even MORE reasons why we need frozen storage. In the height of the rains, the crude roads (aka “highways”!) between the major cities get washed out and impassable for many days. That means that meat cannot reach Cochabamba from Santa Cruz and many fruits and veggies can’t get here from Beni and the Chapare (and other locales).

So it was an exciting day when the leader of this ladies’ group wrote me an email to find out which need was most important for our ministry. I outlined the various needs and reasons behind them in a return email. Well, those ladies met that night and voted to get our freezer!

But WAIT… the blessing gets even better! The details of the freezer were based on the research we did when we first posted the need. In the time between the point when we KNEW that we had to have a freezer, through the times of the blockades and the rainy season, by the time we went back to the store with the best deal from before, the unit that we had chosen and priced was gone!

O NO… but there were still two freezers left in town and this store had them both! They were within $20 of each other, so we went with the white (over the red freezer that looked like it needed a Coca-Cola logo!). This freezer was smaller than the one we had wanted, but was deep enough to store enough meat and meals for the family, AND it had a separate section with a retaining wall for freezer bags of blanched veggies and conserved fruit.

So, with the offerings of the WMS and the young people in CO, we had enough left over for a microwave TOO! Microwaves are getting more popular in Bolivia and our favorite grocery store was promoting microwave popcorn. So now Steven has a “treat” from time to time. We don’t have microwave popcorn very often because EACH bag of popcorn costs about $2 USD (@15 Bolivianos). But the children have been so blessed by it. It’s worth the splurge now and then, just to give the kids a little taste of “home”… yes, the microwave popcorn is American! In fact, we are able to get our favorite ActII flavor here.

Due to the washed-out roads, it has taken a bit longer to start filling up the freezer. But with the few days of “sin lluvia” (rainless days), we’ve been able to get a bit more than we need per week. With the help of a transformer and the meat slicer that another of our beloved churches got for us, we’ve been able to buy “bulk” and slice at home in leisure. It also means that I am able to cook more successfully for Steven, which has been a huge prayer request for some time!

Yesterday, the news announced a blockade for transit workers and taxi drivers, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday of this week. — we STILL can’t get over having “scheduled spontaneous protests”! lol… –

So, armed with this news and experienced in what it meant, we went to our favorite butcher shop and stocked up as much as we could. Already many people had been to the shop and the meats were picked over. But they know me at this butcher shop and I have achieved “mamita” status with the owners and the butchers [YES! Thanks to the Lord!!!], so my favorite butcher went to the back and brought out a couple of quarters. He trimmed, sawed and sliced out the cut of meat I had asked for, and then bagged them up for me.
But… because of the FREEZER, I was able to buy enough meat and veggies to last my family though this blockade. Even if it goes longer, as can always happen, we are PREPARED for the blockade… for the washed out roads… for the political demonstrations… for whatever Bolivia can toss at us!

Right now, I have frozen veggies and fruits and sliced/bagged frozen meat, enough to last us for about a week. My goal, upon advice from other missionaries, is to have a month-long pantry/freezer. With the resources God has given us, I now see this objective as a reasonable, and REACHABLE, goal! We have shelves in the large closet for a pantry for dry goods. And we have a good-sized freezer for freezables.

So… my thanks to the wonderful women of the Women’s Missionary Society and the young people of the College & Career Class! You have filled a serious need for this wife and mom. And my family can already see the difference!

-Cyn
Cochabamba, Bolivia

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