August 28, 2009

Dave's Mission Trip to Bolivia

We hope you had a great summer. We thoroughly enjoyed our time on the road. We drove to New Mexico and were able to see ministry partners we had not seen in several years. From there we spent some vacation time in Utah and Colorado. We then attended Campus Crusade’s National Staff Conference in Fort Collins, Colorado before driving back to Orlando. The kids started school on August 12th. Justin is in the 8th grade, Jeremy is in 6th, Julie in 4th, and Jamie is in Kindergarten.

Last week Dave traveled to Santa Cruz, Bolivia with Tom Harriger, Student Venture’s Global Venture Director, to help train a number of Campus Crusade staff and volunteers on how to begin high school ministry. They had originally expected to have seven people from five different countries in attendance, but instead they had almost twenty people from eight different countries.  Columbia and Brazil were not able to send representatives to the training, but they already have established Student Venture ministries. Tom and Dave used the START booklet that Dave and the Coaching Center team developed a couple years ago as the basis for their training. While there, the staff had the opportunity to interact with a number of Bolivian young people about their interests, needs and desires.  They found that these young people, like their peers all over the world, have very little hope.  They had the opportunity to share with a number of youth and fourteen of them indicated decisions for Christ.

At the end of the training, everyone attended a Bolivian leadership conference at which over a thousand high school students had the opportunity to hear the gospel.

Here is what Carlos from Bolivia had to say about how he is already applying the training.

 “Thank you so much for all of your efforts to help us in order to develop our ministries for Christ. We are preparing an 'after-national conference-show' -in our home- to meet all the students that we took to the 'Leadership National Conference'. Also we are inviting to their parents to attend our meeting; so they can see and know who we are and what we work in order to help the students to grow up and develop as Christ like leaders. Pray that God touch the hearts of parents and students to get hunger and thirsty of God's word, and get involved in our Project”.

Jorge from Ecuador sent these comments.

“For me as for everyone who was at the time of training, it was spectacular what God brought to our lives these days. Thanks for your help in providing these resources. We are having a meeting with the National Director. We will tell you how it goes”.

Thanks so much for your investment in the lives of young people. Please pray for these staff and students as they begin ministries all over South America. We would also appreciate your prayers as we begin a new ministry year.

Dave and Lynn Meritt

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