LATCOM Outreach April 2005 >>>>>

Hitting the Target
Tim Ramsey, Executive Director

We are a small mission with a huge ministry. With only three full-time and two parttime staff here in the US office, we struggle to keep up with ministry demands. Our sixroom, century-old brick building here in Pennsylvania stands in stark contrast to our modest yet beautiful two-story office complex in Bolivia. This complex houses the central offices for our School of National Leadership and the Monte Blanco Camp project, as well as our radio and recording studios and video ministry to the public schools. Another building a few miles away provides needed storage and an air-conditioned technical and electronic repair center for engineers Ray Rising and Julio Andia who provide consultancy, repair, and diagnostic services to many of the Christian radio stations around Bolivia. Our Monte Blanco Camp and Conference Center at Tambo, Bolivia, is a place where many would love to spend a vacation.

The contrast between our USA and Bolivian offices is deliberate. We have chosen to invest your gifts and our energies on the mission field, and I think God has honored this choice. We are on target:

This past year EPLABOL’s National School of Leadership in Bolivia gave training to: officers and cadets in all the armed forces—army, navy, and air force officers and cadets of the national police and emergency call center the federation of private business leaders professional educators at the Ministry of Education, the Technical University of the Beni, and the National School of Higher Learning. In all, our staff of twenty-three in 2004 brought the Gospel of Jesus Christ to over 2,000 secular leaders in the major cities of Cochabamba, La Paz, Santa Cruz, and Trinidad. Christians like you have made financial sacrifices that allow us to purchase the former New Tribes Mission School at Tambo and convert it into a first-rate Camp and Conference Center.

Donations have made it possible to begin our first week of camp with over 275 youth. Gifts and prayers made it possible for many young people to come to know the Lord at Monte Blanco in January. At the conclusion of this first week one of the leaders of the largest denominations in Bolivia stated, “You have raised the standard for Christian camping in Bolivia. The food, the facilities, and the program are the best I have ever seen.”

And this is only the beginning. By the end of February over 1,000 young people will have gone to Monte Blanco. Programs and weekend retreats are being planned for pastors and their wives, for military and police officers, for couples, for business leaders, for political and civic leaders, and for educators.

Furthermore, thanks to LATCOM donors, doors were opened in over 245 public schools to show Christian videos. Your gifts enabled national missionaries Onésimo and Elodia Rojas and Pablo and Felicia Chuvé to launch new outreach ministries into the unreached villages of the Chiquitano people in the Lomerío region of Bolivia. LATCOM in the USA may not be much—a small staff, over-worked and undersupported, working out of an old grocery store. Nevertheless, God has graciously advanced His Kingdom in ways we never dreamed possible.

We are grateful and humbled to be used as His instruments....Praise His holy name! Remember Paul’s words, “Not many of you were wise... not many influential...not many of noble birth...God chose the foolish things to shame (confound) the wise...the weak to shame the strong.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-27 NIV) “...We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7 NIV)

Many of you have heard me compare our work to archery. Our target is to transform Bolivia and the continent of South America through training national leaders, equipping them for the work, and then motivating them to reach their own countries with the Gospel. I envision our Bolivian workers as the tip of the arrow and our USA staff as the shaft and the feathers. We have the privilege of actually hitting the target. But as you well know, an arrow needs a bow—and this is you, our supporters, who sacrificially give and pray. Even so, a bow and arrow without a master archer will never accomplish anything beyond looking good. It is only as we are all picked up in the hands of the Master Archer, Jesus Christ, that it all becomes possible. Thank you for your willingness to partner with us in Christ.ï

["Hitting the Target," by Timothy Ramsey, Outreach, April 2005]
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