Santa Cruz, Bolivia

After flying all night from Miami to Santa Cruz, we took a brief rest and then headed into the outer parts of the city. We went to two areas where e3 teams planted recently. This first church, below, is called House of Prayer Church in El Dorado. An e3 team worked with a mother church to plant this work in July of 2005.















Rosa and Anna pictured here were integral to the planting of this church. Rosa's husband owned this plot of land, and their home is adjacent to it. He donated this tract for the church. The boards you see on the sides are recent addition. Winter, while mild, is nevertheless on its way here below the equator and the boards serve as a wind block.

If you look closely at the top picture, you can see a yellow piece of poster-size paper hanging on the wall. This listed 19 names of active members over the age of 12 years old.

From here we drove to another neighborhood where an e3 team planted a church two months ago. The benches and chairs under the tree is where this baby church of around 40 members meet three times a week. After meeting for awhile, the members met to pray for an entire day. After praying, they went out into the neighborhood to evangelize. As they were speaking with folks in the area, they realized they had a problem: They had no name. The pastor had everyone write down what he or she thought the name of the church should be. They placed the papers in a hat and drew out their new name. Now, they're the New Hope church. This church is on fire, they recently came to their pastor, Franklin, and asked to begin meeting a fourth night per week to learn more about the Bible! As always, you wonder and pray for the plants after you leave. What an encouraging day we had.





























The pastor, Franklin his wife, Anna, and daugthers, Anita and Yspana.
















Here is Anna showing us the bread she's letting rise to sell later today.






The family moved here in January and until they erect a permanent structure, this is their home. The oven that will bake the bread is in the middle of the wall.