The gift of faith
God will provide
by Leónidas (Ona) Saucedo
Translated by Robert Yoder and Lynda Hollinger-Janzen

Ivan Blanco reads the Bible at a youth retreat outside Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Photo: Ryan Miller/Mennonite Mission Network

Our faith is a daily faith.

In Bolivia and Latin America, we live life day-by-day. In some places, people live in survival mode. Our faith is a daily faith. It is a faith not based on social, economic or political power. Ours is a faith that places hope in God with the hope that tomorrow will be better. But in the meantime, today, I'm going to believe that God will provide. That phrase for us is very real. It's not what I possess, not by my strength. It's about God providing.

When, as the global church, we worry about the things that give us comfort, we lose our reference to the past. Our comfort today — at a family level, the church level, and in our faith — causes us to risk our future.

We should offer society an alternative.
As Anabaptist believers and Mennonites, we should not be conformed to the social structures, the government, or to the ethical and moral principles that the world offers us. Rather, we should offer an alternative. Though I want us to feel OK in the church, when we conform and relax, when the church becomes our comfort zone, we lose our sensitivity to the needs of our brothers and sisters. This insensitivity returns us to individualism.

Pray for us.
How can we, the Bolivian Mennonite Church, together with all our brothers and sisters around the world, meet the challenges to present the whole gospel? We must pray for each other.

Pray for us as our new government erodes our religious freedom by imposing obligatory military service for our youth and by cutting off our supply of Bibles.

Another serious concern is emigration that has grown to disastrous proportions, creating crises in families and in our society. Our newspaper reported that in September 2006, 15,000 Bolivians left the country.

A daily walk in faith and hope.
We share a lot in common with churches around the world; we must unite in prayer. Churches in North America have a lot to offer us, and we have a lot to offer them. May they experience something of our daily walk in faith and hope.

We have a community that wants to journey together with brothers and sisters around the world, and we have the hope that, with God's help, tomorrow will be better. We don't have to invent anything new. We already have what we need to work toward becoming the people of God.

Leónidas Saucedo has been the president of Iglesia Evangélica Menonita Boliviana for the past 10 years. Read his other contribution to this issue, "What would Christ do?"

Highlights

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Return to Beyond Ourselves—Summer 2007