{"id":1988,"date":"2013-03-20T02:16:54","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T02:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/?p=1988"},"modified":"2013-03-20T02:16:54","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T02:16:54","slug":"march-prayer-letter-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/?p=1988","title":{"rendered":"March Prayer Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

La Ch\u2019alla:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I walked into the grocery store I saw that the place was filled with smoke. My first thought was, \u201cthere must be a fire\u201d but then I saw that the people were walking around, of course bothered by the suffocating smoke but they weren\u2019t fleeing for their lives as I thought they might be. Then as I got a whiff of the smoke I knew exactly what it was. The Ch\u2019alla. It was Carnaval here in Bolivia, which coincides with the same event in many areas like the well known Carnaval in Brazil and even Mardi Gras en New Orleans. The festivities end here with what is called \u201cmartes de Ch\u2019alla\u201d or the Ch\u2019alla offered on Tuesday. The Ch\u2019alla is a tradition here, as well as many countries where an offering is made to the Pachamama or the mother earth. On this day the people decorate their houses, cars, businesses, or anything else with balloons, streamers and confetti. Then some form of Alcohol (the drinking kind) is poured in every corner of the house or on the car that they are wanting blessed. Also a special table is prepared of incense, coca leaves, small figurines, fruits, grains and even fetuses of animals and are burnt as an offering to the \u201cMother Earth\u201d and to cause the evil spirits to flee. This is of course what I encountered when I went to the grocery store. The purpose of all this is to thank the mother earth for the blessing of the year and obviously to ask for her blessing in the coming year. While for many, this is a time of fun, parties and playing with water, they don\u2019t realize that the \u201cgod of this world\u201d has blinded them to the truth and they don\u2019t even realize it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Helping Kids:<\/span><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One of the most important ministries that we have in the church is our children\u2019s ministry. Many of the children that come, are from very poor families and often come with cloths that don\u2019t even fit them and they are covered in dirt. Along with trying to teach these children the Word of God we also want to be a blessing to them and their families and help with their needs. Recently we have been able to focus on one of these areas of need for many of these children. With classes starting up this week we asked the people of the church to bring school supplies to give to the children. I was amazed to see the response and all that was brought. We prepared 38 packages for the children that are part of our kid\u2019s club with a number of things from pencils to notebooks. Also to reach out to our community we were able to prepare 75 smaller packages to hand out. The people were really surprised when they heard what we were doing and many asked about bringing their children to our kid\u2019s club on Wednesday night. Please pray for these children because we know that they are the future of the church.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

New Teeth:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we have many children that come to our children\u2019s ministry on Wednesday that come from very poor homes and living conditions. Along with helping with their school material we have also been taking some of them to have their teeth cleaned and repaired. There is a part of the school of medicine here where they take patients and treat them at no cost. One of the dental students came to the church to check the children\u2019s teeth ana make appointments to work on their teeth. There were several that had major problems and had even come to church crying because of the pain. So far close to ten of them have been treated, some of them having to go three or four times and all this at no or very little cost. This has been a great blessing to many of them and their families because they don\u2019t have the money to take them to a regular dentist.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Prayer Requests:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Pray for the people of Bolivia who\u2019s eyes have been blinded by the \u201cgod of this world\u201d.<\/p>\n

2. Pray for the children that come to our church that have both a great spiritual and financial need.<\/p>\n

3. Pray for Isaac, Pablo and Juan that are taking classes in our Seminary.<\/p>\n

4. Pray for the many areas of our city of one million that don\u2019t have solid Bible preaching churches.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La Ch\u2019alla: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I walked into the grocery store I saw that the place was filled with smoke. My first thought was, \u201cthere must be a fire\u201d but then I saw that the people were walking around, of course bothered by the suffocating smoke but they weren\u2019t fleeing for their lives as I thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1JaXV-w4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1988"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1993,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions\/1993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}