You Pray for Us!  How Wonderful!

Now and then, someone writes to tell us that they pray for us daily.  Such a realization always encourages and delights us.   It also humbles us, making us see clearly the nature of this high calling we are engaged in with you.  Any good that we are doing is only because God, in his mercies and love, brings us together to pray, "Thy kingdom come," and to offer ourselves to the service of God's dream.  Let us keep on praying for one another, and be ever more bold to walk into those "good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life."

 

“I asked for wonder” – Abraham Joshua Heschel

Like you and your churches, we have many good endeavors to carry out or to envision, which are God's invitation to participate in his mission.  We see these ministries as opportunities of wonder, at God's goodness in giving us people to love, and for the hope that we feel from seeing how the gospel moves them to change their world. 

 

Eight Ways to Pray for Chile

This month we want to ask you to direct your prayers for us around eight aspects of God's mission here in Chile.   Pray for excellence, steadiness, creativity, courage, wisdom, energy, health and self-care, whatever the Lord brings to your heart.   

 

We will be bringing you stories about some of the wonderful people in these projects and the movements of grace in their lives in the coming months:

 

1. The Berea Institute:  We gather with the Mapuche churches twice a month, in two locations, to focus on ways of doing Bible study, improving reading comprehension and leadership practices that are appropriate for their cultural context.     
2. Wool project:  We now have a core group of women spinners whose work has met the high quality standards of the U. S. yarn distributor that is sponsoring this project.  Pray for more women able to meet the productivity levels, and for the group of women to take ownership of this enterprise that can substantially improve their income.
3. Girls' Clubs:  Four more new clubs started this month.  The women leaders of the clubs, mentors whom Barb is mentoring, have found their own leadership gifts strengthened and called out by this ministry.  They volunteer to go and provide orientation for the new clubs.
4. Earthquake relief wrap-up:  Soon we will have used the last of the OGHS funds ($150,000) ministering to the needs of some communities in temporary housing.  Pray for the new missions/preaching points in Iloca, Curepto, and Coronel that our churches have started because of this relief work.  Click here to read a summary of the relief that your One Great Hour of Sharing funds made possible:  http://www.internationalministries.org/read/33390
5. New president of our partner convention:  The National Baptist Convention of Chile has a new president, Daniel Vivanco.   He has a strong vision for equipping churches for missions and service, and he even serves as a gifted teacher in the Berea Institute.

Some Big Dreams that Need Lots of Prayer!

6. Rainwater Collection project:  We received a three-year OGHS grant to develop a viable, replicable demonstration of how rainwater collection can supply irrigation/potable water needs on Mapuche farms where annual summer droughts leave them without water.  We have volunteer engineers from Colorado consulting with us.

7. A New Dream:  a sustainable/productive Mapuche demonstration farm:  This is still in the "dream incubator" stage.  We want to help one Mapuche farm household discover ways to develop a sustainably productive small farm, beyond subsistence.

8. Beekeeping:  Dwight is going to study and experiment with top-bar hives next season, (Spring in Chile is in September) which is a method that may be more sustainable for the rural Mapuche beekeeper, since it uses less equipment and more organic methods of disease control, while still generating income.

 

 

A New 4 x 4 Truck

As Paul says in Ephesians, God is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can think or imagine.  That is how we feel about the way the American Baptist Women of Indiana addressed and solved a pressing need for our ministries in Chile.  How were we going to be able to, (a) keep on using our ten year-old vehicle in rural Chile without it wearing out, or (b) raise the money necessary to replace it with something more functional and durable?

 

Please click on this link to read the story of the gift of a new truck and the Chile visit of the Indiana group.  http://www.internationalministries.org/read/34398

 

The deepest word in our hearts and lives we want to share with you is thank you.  Thank you, ABW of IN, and thank you, churches and individuals that responded to their Macedonian call.  This gift of a strong, sturdy vehicle will make many good things possible in Chile.

“they will be called oaks of righteousness,…”  Isaiah 61:3-4 According to Jesus' vision, those who hear the gospel "will be called oaks of righteousness," rebuilding/ restoring what has been ruined.  God is laying hold of our lives for this purpose.   May God bless and equip you with every good thing for doing his will.   Grace, peace, and abrazos, Dwight & Barb Bolick   Temuco, CHILE

 

dbbolick95@yahoo.com   You are invited to join the Missionary Partnership Network of individuals and churches who partner with the Bolicks.   To receive a pledge card, receive their e-mail journals, or learn more, please contact the Coordinator,, Betty Helpa at betty.helpa@gmail.com