Ministry UpdatesRead the Latest News & Updates from El Jordán

From Within and Without

For two nights in a row, Marco has been called out to the boys’ workshops because of suspicious guys hanging around the shops...  The other night when the door of the storage room had been broken into with a crowbar, nothing had been stolen, nor was anyone found inside when Marco came back with a couple police men...  In the last two weeks, Marco and the foreman have been noticing things going missing inside – a bag of cement, a metal rod here and there...  Things like this are from an inside thief... There are a couple suspects... but no proof...   SO... we’re dealing with “long hands” (thieves...) from within and without... 

One of the suspects is the guy that was filling in as caretaker/night watch when the regular guy went home to the country for the weekend...  (he also offered to paint after hours... hmmm...)  The regular guy had some business to take care of – and won’t be back until this Monday...

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Examples of God's Grace and Mercy: Part 4

Hi there everyone... this was written by Marco (with a few little extra comments slipped in by me...)

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Examples of God’s Grace and Mercy – Part 4:  God’s Grace and Mercy – much better than a “lot of luck”

You can’t imagine how frustrating and discouraging it is to be in charge of buying and delivering all of the materials for a construction project – and to be on foot.   (Marco’s truck is in its second week in the shop... my truck can’t carry everything... and spent a day a day in the shop too...)  It is terrible!  A thought came to my mind...  “If Gods asks you to do His work, He doesn’t send you empty handed.  He provides you with the necessary tools to do it.”  The enemy takes advantage of frustrating moments and another thought taunted me.   “Did God really send me to do this?”

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Examples of God's Grace and Mercy

God’s Grace and Mercy Part 1:  The Missing Keys

For my keys to be “missing” isn’t extraordinary... but this was different... 10:30 on the last night of the international fair, my purse was stolen...  I remembered a little girl, maybe 9 years old, standing in the corner behind me who I thought was with a family I was selling to...  Maybe if I hadn’t been running on 10 days of little sleep I would’ve caught on a bit sooner...  I had a few little things I had bought in my purse... a wrinkled tangerine... no money or documents... the only real loss was my huge set of keys... from El Jordan, the house and my truck...

Every year, our girls who work cleaning (and collecting beer cans) during the fair, find purses thrown in the garbage, under plants etc... emptied of their valuables...  I talked to cleaners, roaming police, recyclers and Jenny, one of our students who was still working... asking them to be on the lookout for my purse/keys... There was nothing more I could do so I composed myself, tried not to ask “why?”... and went back to work...

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Our Fight

We are on the final stretch in finishing up the construction of the El Jordán men’s workshops.  (This is the only Christian centre in Bolivia with its infrastructure and methodology: knowledge of God, technical training and sports.)

  

In conjunction with the great advances in the construction/ministry, personally we’ve been going through different difficulties...  I’ll give you just three examples...  

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