• 23 April 2015

Mission team ministers with the church in Bolivia

Revd Colin Darling, curate in St Finnian’s, Cregagh, has recently returned from a trip to Bolivia with Divine Healing Ministries.

Brother David Jardine led the 4–strong team which also included Eric Lewis, a businessman and member of St Hilda’s Parish, Seymour Hill, and Andrew Irvine from Co. Antrim. Andrew is currently Belfast City Business Manager and is about to begin his training to become a Methodist minister.  

The group flew into La Paz airport, high in the beautiful Andes and they are pictured here (L–R Andrew, Eric, Brother David and Colin) with their host family outside their home in La Paz, which also doubles as the church for their cell group. The altitude (over 4000 metres) was physically challenging but the group acclimatised to the thin air and had hardly any medical issues during the trip, even when they ventured higher!  

Pastor Hendrik and wife
Pastor Hendrik and wife
The team’s contact in Bolivia was a Dutch misisonary, Pastor Hendrik, who has now spent almost 30 years in South America. He and his wife Teija are highly respected among the numerous small independent churches which are typical in Bolivia. They understand how the society and culture work and being multi–lingual helps them to build up relationships. They have acquired a wealth of experience in growing churches, bringing people to faith and spreading the gospel in South America, particularly in Colombia and Bolivia. Here they are with their 1967 VW Beetle, christened ‘Ringo’ by the team!

Bolivia is in the landlocked heart of South America situated between Brazil, Peru, Chile and Argentina. More than half the population still practices traditional Inca and Aymara religion, which is often mingled with Catholicism.

Bolivia perhaps is the country in South America least influenced by Protestant Christianity, although recent statistics would suggest that up to 17% of the country’s population now claims to be charismatic evangelical.

With few Protestant institutional churches, and with a distinct absence of church buildings as we know them in Ireland, generally it is the independent churches with Pentecostal characteristics which pick up the mantle of evangelizing and spreading the gospel. It was with these independent evangelical church groups that the mission team was most involved.

Prayer for healing
Prayer for healing
These churches often start off as small cell groups consisting of new Christians meeting together wherever and whenever they can. People’s houses, business premises, offices, warehouses, retail units – any suitable space – all serve as places to meet and worship. Their resourcefulness in following Jesus, come what may, is noteworthy. The team from Belfast encountered church groups in a huge variety of premises and in gatherings ranging from a dozen or so up to a few hundred.

Given the independent nature of the churches, combined also often with an absence of trained and experienced leadership within fledgling church cells, the Divine Healing mission team gave much–needed and gladly–received encouragement and support to local pastors and church communities. We witnessed a hunger for teaching, for biblical understanding and knowledge, for prayer and a real willingness to speak about and hear about God.

Through a never–ending supply of engagements, which included worship services, teaching seminars, preaching, radio and television broadcasts, prayer ministry, evangelising activity and discussion groups, the team, with the help of the Holy Spirit, was able to share the healing ministry of Jesus. Above, Colin and Teija pray with a lady during a period of prayer ministry at the end of a meeting in La Paz.

And though our aim in going was to help and support the church in Bolivia, we quickly discovered that we had as much to learn as to share and had many so wonderful experiences.  

We are very grateful to all those who made this trip possible –  those who supported financially, prayerfully, practically and those who stood in back home while the team was away and kept different work and family situations ticking over. The team will be forever in debt to the hosts in La Paz and Potosi, for whom nothing was ever too much trouble. In fact the hospitality and warmth of reception from everyone we met was an undoubted highlight.

Pictured below

A warm welcome at a church and the stark realities of the city of Potosi in the Andes. It was an important silver mining city for the Spanish empire since 1545. The track in the photo leads to the mines, where conditions are shocking and fatalities have numbered an estimated 8 million miners over the centuries.

Warm welcome
Warm welcome
 
Mining town
Mining town