Here we go!!

We are leaving for Bolivia today!! Our bags are stuffed full, but not over 50 lbs :) We are very excited! We will arrive in Santa Cruz tomorrow and work on our visas for a couple of days and then take a small mission plane flight 3 hours to the school. For those of you who do not know our story or much about where we are going I have posted a small sermon I gave on our mission journey. God bless and thanks for the prayers!

Our mission story begins a little over a year ago. Before we were even married; we knew that we wanted to be missionaries. We applied through Adventist Frontier Missions, Gospel Ministries International, and Adventist Volunteer Services and searched hundreds of calls. We never seemed to find one that fit our needs and that would allow us to go even though we had not been married a year yet. It was nearing the end of my school year and after praying and searching for mission opportunities. We did not seem to get an answer or a call so it came time to re-sign my contract at the school. We made the decision to stay in Athens and I signed the contract for another year. The very next day we got a long distance call from Gospel Ministries International in Bolivia wanting to know when we could come be missionaries there. The call was from a mission school that was in the Amazon near the border of Brazil. The school is a Seventh - day Adventist boarding academy that is free for the students. It provides education opportunities for children that might otherwise be on the streets. The students come having never held a Bible and most knowing nothing about God. It is a great opportunity to teach these children about God’s love for them. The school is focused on community service with one day a week devoted to outreach in the community. The goal is to graduate students who will go out and be missionaries in their own communities. The mission sounded awesome but we were committed to stay in Athens for another school year. We didn’t really understand the timing of the call, but trusted that God is never late rather always on time. So we stayed in Athens, while keeping in contact with Bolivia.

During this past school year it has been amazing to see how God has used me in my classroom. I had so many opportunities to share my faith with my students that I knew exactly why the call from Bolivia had come the day after I signed my contract. We also had the privilege of helping put on a revival and evangelistic series at our church in Athens. We have learned so much this year and grown in our walks with God that we knew He had wanted us to stay in Athens another year.

Throughout our year in Athens, we stayed in contact with our new friends from Bolivia. We even got to meet them at the Generation of Youth for Christ meetings in Kentucky. At the time of GYC we were praying about three different locations for missions, one being Bolivia. We ended up being able to talk to a person from each location and realized that Bolivia was the only call that fit our skill sets perfectly. I am a 6^th grade math and science teacher and I am going to be able to teach math and science to high school students that are on the level of my 6^th grade students. I am fluent in Spanish, so I will be able to jump right in and teach. Jason graduated with a degree in finance, which is hard to find a mission call that involves finance. In Bolivia, Jason will be teaching English, which he is fluent in as you can tell and help with the accounting. The need in Bolivia is so great, practically every week we get an email from Ruan and Tara telling us they are counting down the days until we get there. The timing worked out perfectly for when my school ended, our apartment lease ran out and the students in Bolivia had a break from school for us to arrive right as second semester began. There is even an empty house for us to stay in in Santa Cruz while we get our visas. God has worked so many things out for us to go to Bolivia.

Let me tell you a little bit about Guayaramerin, Bolivia where we will be going. We will fly into Santa Cruz and then take a small mission plane 3 hours into the jungle to reach the school. At the school we will live on campus in a brick house with a thatched roof. The windows are open and we will sleep under mosquito nets. We will eat meals with the school, unless we want to cook our own. They make their food in a huge brick oven. We will have running water in our house, but we have to wash our clothes in the river. We must take clothes for all temperatures, because it can vary from day to day. One day it is in the 90’s with high humidity and then the next a cold front will come through and everyone is in sweaters and jeans. We will be there for part of the rainy season so we will need rain jackets. We also need lots of bug spray. The closest town is 18 miles and we get there by hitching a ride with an open truck bed passing by. The town is where we will buy groceries and use the internet. We have one day off a week to take care of any business.

The school in Bolivia is a mission project began by David Gates. It is through Gospel Ministries International. Gospel Ministries International, or GMI, is a Seventh-Day Adventist, faith-based, volunteer-driven organization which seizes opportunities to carry God's love, through sacrifice, to the world. Education, prison ministry, health care and care for the abandoned and needy are some of its priorities, while utilizing technology such as aviation and mass media to leverage the impact and influence of its mission. GMI has been a completely faith-based organization from the start. David Gates and the GMI board and administrators manage GMI with a financial philosophy built on prayer and faith. No fund raising projects are undertaken, and no funds are explicitly solicited. Through this philosophy of simply making people aware of needs, and reaching out to God in prayer, GMI has grown in leaps and bounds. We are going to Bolivia completely as volunteers and are completely responsible for all our financial needs while we are there.

Through our searching and praying about missions we have discovered that God has a need in Bolivia that we can fill, God has a message for Bolivia that we can preach; so where God has prepared the way, we will follow.