Tag Archives: Cochabamba

Teenage Ambassador – Bolivia mission update

MARCO is a born leader. The oldest of three children, 16-year-old Marco lives in an extremely poor community outside the metropolis of Cochabamba, Bolivia. He cares for his younger sisters, cooks for them and takes them to school. His mother and stepfather leave for work very early in the morning and they come back late at night. So Marco takes care of the house. He’s been having some difficulty in school due his caring for his siblings. Marco left school for four years and started working to earn a living due to the extreme poverty in his household.

Marco came to the Alliance Church’s Josias Project, sponsored by GLOW, three years ago. A sullen, quiet, observant, shy teen. He started to make friends and was notorious from the start his sense of solidarity towards the little ones and his willing to help around. He was elected leader a year and because he did it so well with many initiatives and ideas, he began to earn the respect of the older kids. He now is the leader of all of them, big and small. He has earned their respect. He is quiet and firm.

His capacity to serve and empathy has made him shine over the rest. He was elected Ambassador last year. He is very creative, dynamic and proactive. He has proven his commitment to the Lord. He attends a Church close to his home.

Praise to the Lord, he continues his studies at night school along with his mother, who has been encouraged to also finish her high school. He is doing very well and still has the desire to work for the kids at the Project and in his neighborhood, because he can see the need to have someone guide those children at risk. He sees himself reflected in them when he was a child.

LET US PRAY FOR GOD TO CONTINUE USING THIS TEEN TO BE AN INSTRUMENT TO SHOW HIS LOVE.

Isaiah 58:10 …and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.

Finding goodness – Sharing goodness

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We are made for goodness just as we are made to breathe. – John Eldridge

The Cedar Rapids Gazette ran a recent article encouraging local folk to share what makes them proud of their city.

My sister shared wrote what happened on Valentine’s Day when our mother had car trouble on First Avenue in Cedar Rapids:
“Within minutes, not one, but two, kind citizens pulled over to help her, moved her car safely out of traffic, and stayed there with her until I could get to mom,” Elizabeth wrote. “They were such a comfort to her rattled nerves. This is a big SMALL town where strangers reach out to help, even during their busy morning commute. And even though it made them late to work. “I’ll take Cedar Rapids any day over a big city,” she wrote.

When we traveled to Bolivia, South America for a month, we lived in the mountain valley town of Cochabamba. With a metropolitan population of 1 million people, it was much noisier than our small town of 15,000. But we both were impressed that it was like coming home for the first time. I thought it funny when people at the local church referred to their sprawling metropolis as a small town. But when we both became so sick someone we hardly knew brought us homemade chicken soup. And when we moved on to Santa Cruz de la Sierra (2-3 million) for additional recuperation, a person we had met just once, also brought us homemade chicken soup and helped us get to an English-speaking doctor.

If you experience such compassion, you will not likely forget it. And if your heart is open, hopefully it encourages you to share that same goodness with others. Goodness is all around us. We only have to stop complaining to see it, exercise our grateful heart to grow, and share that same goodness with others.

There’s nothing quite like celebrating goodness. Let’s reach beyond ‘random’ acts of kindness. Let your actions be purposeful and deliberate. Let your compassion help someone up when they fall, forgive a mistake, and bring a light of truth and encouragement to a dark world.

In good times and tough ones, go light our world with goodness.
May it be said of you…”surely goodness and kindness will follow me all the days of my life.” Psalm 23:6

Go Light Your World- Ministry

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In addition to the Daily blog, we (Bryan and Marcia Thayer) created Go Light Our World to encourage people to partner with us in our ministry (we are volunteers). We also encourage others to intentionally seek out ways to share God’s light with the world around YOU!

Like you, our work focuses where we live. That’s our first mission field. Our mission also extends to Bolivia, South America where we were headed and where we plan to return when my leukemia allows me to travel again. In the meantime we work weekly to encourage ministry efforts in Cochabamba, Bolivia, working with the disenfranchised, and poorest of the poor. The efforts of local workers help meet spiritual and physical needs. Examples include literacy, nutrition, hygiene, preventative health care, worship, prayer, and self-sufficiency programs. In Vetren, Bulgaria, we work with local ministry leaders to help bring ostracized Gypsy children out of the cycle of poverty. Programs include self-sufficiency training, literacy, and worship and prayer.

GLOW also works to encourage and support Athletes In Action, a ministry of Campus Crusade (CRU) and other select ministries that are working to shine the light of Christ across the world.

We will describe some of these projects in more detail in tomorrow’s post.

In the meantime, think about your potential to being light to the world around you.