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What do you expect to be doing when you’re 70?
Or maybe I should ask, now that you’re 70?
Can you picture yourself – and your spouse – climbing into a canoe so you can go preach and teach God’s Word in another village? Can you picture being the couple responsible for evangelism and teaching in 77 villages that have no church?
That’s what Nati, 70, and his wife, Cristina, do. They are Trinitarios in Bolivia. Their church – the only church among the Trinitario people – has sent them out to evangelize other Trinitarios.
It’s probably not what they expected to be doing at this stage in their lives, or what they had in mind when they placed their faith in Christ in 1962. And they probably have reasons to say, “Enough is enough.”
Most of the Trinitarios prefer to cling to other beliefs.
Not to age-old traditional beliefs – truth be told, virtually no tribes actually have age-old traditional beliefs. Like most tribes, the Trinitarios have mixed what they’ve heard from other tribes and from other religious groups into a soup-pot of beliefs that have one thing in common: They tell the Trinitarios what they should do to get what they want.
On top of that, the younger Trinitario believers have not stepped up to help Nati and Cristina. Not even when Nati was near death with pneumonia earlier this month.
So what keeps Nati going? The love of God. God loved Nati enough to send His Son to die for him, and to send NTM missionaries Joe and Elna Snyder to share that message with him. And that’s enough to make Nati want to be part of passing the message on.
I trust that His love is enough reason for you to be involved in our ministry, as we help others pass the message of salvation on to tribal people around the world. Perhaps it’s also reason enough to get more involved.
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