Bolivia: a great loss

Mission partners Andrew and Lisa Peart write, “We ask prayers for the family of Bishop Walter Toro who passed away recently, as well as the for the diocese, pastors and local leadership as we grieve this great loss. He was very dear to us personally; we appreciated his prayerful, patient leadership and heart’s desire for mission. Pray for unity and grace in leadership across the diocese. Andrew has been working closely with Bishop Walter on building a sustainable diocese – may this work that has been started continue for the Lord’s glory!”

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Bolivia: entering a new phase of life

Please pray for Andrew and Lisa Peart’s daughter Anayah as she and her class prepare to graduate high school at the end of May. Pray for them to finish well and for them to grow closer to God as they look to the next phase of their lives.

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Bolivia: not giving up

Mission partners Andrew and Lisa Peart partner with their local church to engage their local community in pioneering mission through generous, creative hospitality.

We give thanks with Andrew and Lisa for their friend Adviento, who gave his life to Jesus before he passed away in May.

In 2024, Adviento joined a Bible study hosted by Andrew and Lisa’s friends Jenny and Richard. Adviento and Richard had been friends for 35 years and Richard had been encouraging Adviento to follow Jesus for years. We give thanks that Richard didn’t give up on Adviento and that God doesn’t ever give up on anyone either.

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Bolivia and Peru: new presidents

Praise God for peaceful elections in Bolivia last weekend. The President-elect Rodrigo Paz faces challenges, particularly economic difficulties. Please pray for him and for his government to be guided by God and for their actions to benefit the country. In Peru, the outgoing president, Dina Boluarte was impeached due to the government’s failure to deal with rising levels of gang violence and a string of scandals. Interim president, José Jerí has imposed a state of emergency in the capital Lima in response to the violence and anti-government protests. Please pray for peace, stability and good government in Peru.

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Bolivia: presidential elections

Please pray for the people of Bolivia as they head to the polls this Sunday 19 October for the very first presidential runoff election in the country’s history. Please pray for a peaceful election, a just outcome and for leaders to govern with integrity and wisdom. 

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Bolivia: English classes

Mission partners Andrew and Lisa Peart ask for prayer for teachers and students to feel welcomed as they build a Christ-centred community of learners through LOGOS English classes. As new classes start this month, please pray for teaching assistants recruited from the public university in Santa Cruz to benefit from their involvement with the classes and strengthen or form new links with the church.

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Bolivia: rising tensions

Pray for Bolivia, where tensions are rising ahead of elections on 17 August. There have already been protests and demonstrations and the country is also facing high inflation and low foreign currency reserves, making some supplies scarcer. Please pray for the right presidential candidate to be elected and for good government, for peace in the run-up to and after elections. Pray for mission partners Andrew and Lisa Peart, working with their local church to engage the community in pioneering mission through generous, creative hospitality, and CMS partners in the country.

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Writing from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where she and her family have been CMS mission partners for the last eight years, Lisa Peart reflects on making room for each other and for Jesus.

As we lead up to Christmas, I’ve been reflecting on the story of a particular part of Jesus’ birth as written in Luke 2:6–7:

While they were there the time came for the baby to be born and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

This year, good friends of ours in England have made room for our daughter, Liliana, to live with them while she takes a gap year and applies to universities in the UK, allowing us to return to Bolivia knowing she’s safe and in caring hands.

She has a lovely room, which is much more than physical shelter – they’ve made room, welcoming her into their family of four, providing a safe space for her to settle into a country that she’s not lived in for the last eight years.

They’ve made room at their kitchen table for family fellowship, nourishment and a home to return to on uni breaks. We are so grateful. 

In 2019/20 we made room for Daniela to live in our home for one year after she reached the age of adulthood and was no longer allowed to live in the orphanage she grew up in. This was both wonderful and challenging for us as a family.

Five years on, she’s finished high school, has a job and a place of her own, yet knows that there is always room for her in our home, at our table and in our lives. We look forward to spending Christmas together again this year.

The Bible study in the toilets

Jenny and Richard, our microfinance partners who we walk alongside, investing in their lives and their public toilet business, make room for people in their neighbourhood to sit at their table and study God’s Word weekly, offering them a safe place to be heard and share life together. 

They also make room for 70 people living on the edges of society to receive both physical and spiritual nourishment once a month in this same space. It’s not just on these days that they make room, it is pretty much a daily thing!

Pray for those who come to know that Jesus makes room for them in his house, too. 

This summer while in the UK, we were nourished by a host of gracious strangers, wonderful friends and treasured family who all made room in their churches, lives and homes for us to eat, sleep, and share stories well into the night – we are no longer strangers, but friends.

A highlight was a Taste of Bolivia evening in our sending church in Hartley Wintney.

Making room is the heart of biblical hospitality. It requires sacrifice, rooting out our self-centredness, draws us into the light of authentic community. We as a family continue to learn from those we walk alongside, being both guest and host in our context.

I’m fascinated that there was no room at the inn for the birth of our King Jesus, yet he is the one who makes room for us and others at his table and asks us to do the same.

I recommend Christine Pohl’s book Making Room – it unpacks this theme beautifully! 

Pray together

Lisa says: “We’d love you to pray that our long-anticipated community garden project is less project and more making room and space to practise hospitality.

“We have faced rising costs and other challenges in getting this going. Continue to pray that we would trust the Lord is working these challenges for his good purpose! We look forward to sharing an update on the project soon.”

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“People would preach the gospel to me and I didn’t want to hear it. So I know how you feel. You don’t want to listen to me either.”

The speaker is a Bolivian man called Richard. He’s addressing a crowd of young people from the El Arena neighbourhood, who have turned up for a free lunch he and his wife Jenny have cooked and served.

There was a time when Richard couldn’t even think about food: “Alcohol was my food.” His addiction to drugs and alcohol consumed him. He spent 15 years living on the streets, stealing from people so he could get high or drunk.

“There was this mission centre place where I would go sometimes, I just wanted to watch TV,” Richard recalls as he continues to speak to the locals. “People would try to share Jesus with me but I’d be like, nah.

“And then one day I listened, and it made sense.”

Some of the people gathered are paying more attention than others. But many of them have known Richard and Jenny, who also struggled for many years with addiction and homelessness, for a long time. They have seen them go from surviving on the streets to successful businesspeople.

What made the change? It’s a journey that’s involved turning to Jesus, becoming part of a church…and loos.

An intriguing idea

Jenny came to faith in Jesus after she started going to a baking course offered by an outreach centre in Santa Cruz. While learning to bake she heard about the Bread of Life, Jesus, and decided to follow him.

Both Richard and Jenny started going to a church called Fountain of Life. Richard began shining shoes in the local park area and Jenny opened a small shop. But as he got older, working on his knees became more difficult for Richard – so he went to his pastor with an idea.

The pastor got in touch with Andrew and Lisa Peart, CMS mission partners who are in Bolivia doing mission through microfinance.

What’s microfinance? This is a way people who might not qualify for a loan from a bank due to background or circumstance can borrow small sums of money, sometimes to start a business. Without going to a high-interest demanding loan shark.

Andrew agreed to meet with Richard. After hearing a bit of Richard and Jenny’s story, Andrew asked, “So what’s your idea?”

“I want to get a public bathroom.”                            

“Beg pardon?”

In Bolivia, bathrooms located throughout the city in markets, bus terminals and other bustling areas are all privately owned. People pay around 20p to use them. The Pearts and Richard and Jenny worked out the price of acquiring a toilet, the ongoing running costs and possible profit margins. Andrew explained: “You have to calculate the cost of cleaning supplies, the water bills… Richard and Jenny even calculated how much loo roll to dispense to each person. They worked out a lot of the fine details and then we started looking for a spot.”

It took a while but Richard eventually found a great location right across from where he had shined shoes for 20 years. Andrew and Lisa secured money for a year’s rental and there was a small ribbon cutting ceremony before the launch of the new business.

And then COVID-19 hit.

With the country mostly shut down, Richard and Jenny figured out other smart ways to earn income, such as selling small propane tanks and gas canisters or freezing water and selling ice. And they waited.

As the country opened up again, the bathroom business took off. Profits from the first loo were re-invested in obtaining more bathrooms in prime locations.

“God has provided for all of our needs,” said Jenny. “It has been a blessing to have stable money and truly we are thankful to God for this work that God has given us, for these bathrooms, for the sales that we have.”

Beyond the bathrooms

Prior to this endeavour, Richard and Jenny’s family were scattered about. But as business boomed, their sons, daughters, aunts and cousins were able to find work in this new family enterprise. It’s brought them all closer together.

In addition, Lisa said: “Richard and Jenny know lots of people who are desperate for work, and now they are able to provide jobs for others. There’s a local mother whose daughter is addicted to glue sniffing; by giving her a job, they can get her off the street and away from social influences that are enabling her addiction.

“Because Richard and Jenny come from the streets, they know lots of the young people and the substances they are abusing and they really want to reach out to people and help.”

Not just about money

With the proceeds from their business Richard and Jenny, with help from family members, have started hosting these monthly lunches in a local courtyard, like the one Richard is speaking at now. “Some people come just for the food and leave,” said Lisa. “And others will stay, sitting around, chatting. Some of them want prayer, most just want to be heard.”

Andrew and Lisa go along to the community lunches to help where they can, but it’s clear it’s Richard and Jenny’s endeavour. In a way this is symbolic of how the microfinance relationship works.

“It’s a partnership,” Andrew said. “We are working alongside them, partly enabling them, but they are bringing the ideas and doing the work and reaching out to others.

“In addition to business meetings, we also pray and read the Bible together and talk about our lives and faith. We aren’t just investing in businesses, we feel invested in people’s lives and in a way microfinance mission has brought us to edges we never would have been able to connect with otherwise.

“Through Richard and Jenny we’ve got to know people in a community that might have been closed off to us if we’d just gone around knocking on doors or something. And we’ve been able to see organic transformation brought about by local, amazing people.”

Jenny is clearly a kind of mother figure to many of the young people who come to the lunch, though it’s Richard who shares his story publicly. “I know these kids are down a dark hole. I know it. I have lived it. I’ve been in their shoes.”

Hopefully many others will follow in his footsteps.

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On 1 May 2022 CMS local partner Walter Toro was consecrated as the first Bolivian Anglican bishop, as the Diocese of Bolivia came under national leadership for the first time.

Bishop Nick Drayson, Primate of the Church of South America and a CMS mission partner, led the service in Tarija and consecrated Walter as the new diocesan bishop, while church members from the diocese prayed for him. The joyful service was followed by a celebration including a meal and dancing.

Walter was previously vicar general and has led online training across the diocese during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as pastoring a congregation in Tarija. His appointment is part of a move towards local leadership across South America. Paul Tester, CMS manager in Latin America, went to the consecration and commented:

“I’m delighted to see the continued transition to local leadership of the Church across South America and it was a joy to be part of the celebration of the baton being passed to Bishop Walter.”

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More stories of Jesus bringing hope

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