March Forth! Marssige Edasi!

Greetings!

Some of you would not know that my job brought me to Bolivia for a week. There is a Mission Team from the USA Eastern Territroy in Bolivia for eight weeks, and I have come down for a week to see how they are doing.

I have been so busy and enjoying Bolivia so much that I haven't got around to finding an internet cafe to check my email. I have been here 4 days already.

I can't do justice to this experince in this short time, but I will share a few highlights.

First, the six young adults on the Mission Team are amazing. Solimar Lugo is providing excelent leadership to the team. They are talented and bright, but, more importantly, they are highly committed Christians who love the Lord. Watching them give of themselves day after day, while sharing the love of God though music, testimony and personal concern is a challenge to my own faith and life. The presentations they have made while I have been here were nothing short of terrific. They have worked long days, without a whisper of complaint. I have visited 2 corps in Santa Cruz and will visit the third one on Wednesday. I preached at one of the Santa Cruz corps on Sunday night.

Second, I have fallen in love with the Bolivian people. They have such a kind, simple approach to life that it makes you long for a simpler life yourself. The officers and soldiers here work very hard, despite very few material resources. I am spending most of my days in Santa Cruz, but will spend today and tomorrow in Cochabamba, Bolivia touring various Salvation Army facilities.

The Army sites I saw today were a marked contrast. A corps in the outlying hills is surrounded by dirt and rocks, as are hundreds of small houses on the same hills. The single man corps officer lives at the corps site. There is no electricity to that area yet, nor any water. A truck goes by each day, and the residents buy "tanks" (small plastic barrels) of non-drinkable water. Need I say more?

In the downtown, the Army runs an immaculate Day Care Center that would make any corps in the United States proud. The commitment of the officers and other staff is remarkable. A Boys' Home in the outlying area was again a lesson in humility. The two single women officers who run the home are so pleasant, and they live right in the walled-in home in a separate quarters. Indeed, almost all houses, corps, churches and businesses in this part of Bolivia have eight- or ten-foot walls around them. The property, despite the need for addtional repair funding, was brilliantly clean. The boys' faces were bright and cheerful, and they were more than pleased to have their pictures taken, each group in their own dorms, and see their pictures in the playback on the digital camera.

This is winter in Santa Cruz, but the weather is what those of us in the Northeastern USA would call perfect weather -- maybe 65 in the evening and 75 or eighty during the day. You haven't lived until you have taken a casual evening stroll through the large Plaza (trees, benches, fountains) in the center of Santa Cruz.

Within a few days, pictures of the Mission Team and of many of the things I have described about Bolivia will be on the Mission Teams Web Site. Naturally, I should mention that there is also a great team of seven members, under the leadership of Miriam and Herb Rader, in India.

To get to the Mission Teams Web Site, try something like this:

Go to the web site of The Salvation Army USA Eastern Territory

Click on the link for Mission & Culture (our Department)

Click on the link for Mission Teams

The Army is in good hands...

Blessings!

Bill Groff, Major

Mission & Culture Secretary