Going the distance – pastor takes FCBH to remote villages

The Rev Guillermo Escobar Laura (left) played his Faith Comes By Hearing tapes in the taxi of Francisco Cahuaya each week on the way to church. Today, Mr Cahuaya is a Christian who reaches others by playing tapes as he drives his fares around El Alto, Bolivia. Photo: UBS/Larry Jerden (BOL01DJ-97.JPG)

EL ALTO, Bolivia — Every Sunday the Rev Guillermo Escobar Laura, 47, leaves home at 4.30am to take a taxi to a remote mountain path two hours’ drive away. From there he walks through the dawn for another hour to the village of Ancoraimes Lojrocachi, where he recently became pastor of the small church.

Sharing God’s Word with the people of this isolated village is the highlight of the week for this dedicated bi-vocational pastor, who, from Monday to Friday, also works in the Social Security Office. And the most effective tool in his ministry, he claims, is the Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH) program, which he has seen work miracles in people’s lives in other churches he has served. For him, the long, tiring journey to bring this program to the church in Ancoraimes Lojrocachi is well worth it.

Addiction

He recalls an elderly man in the small church in Utavi, a village perched on the shores of Lake Titicaca (see related story), who had spent most of his life in the throes of alcoholism and drug addiction.

“His wife came to church and eventually he came too but he did not stop drinking or taking drugs - that is, until he started coming to FCBH listening sessions,” Mr Escobar remembers. “The story of the daughter of Jairus in the fifth chapter of Mark’s Gospel and the story about the leper really impacted him when he heard them on tape.”

The man was so moved, in fact, that he stood up in church and publicly vowed to stop drinking.

“Although he was between 65 and 70 years old his life was turned around completely - he stopped drinking and continued to attend church and the listening sessions,” said Mr Escobar. “He still goes to church now.”

Revitalised

The tapes also revitalised the faith of mature Utavi Christians, many of whom were so excited about what they were learning through the listening sessions that they went to churches in neighbouring villages to share their new knowledge.

Mr Escobar has also seen the impact that audio Scriptures can have on people outside a church context. During his ministry in Utavi, he says, he had to travel on public transport each week to reach the village.

“I would ask the drivers to play the Scripture tapes instead of the worldly music they usually played,” he explains. “They would become interested in what they were hearing and I could then talk to them about the Lord.”

Profound effect

“It seems that God prepared it that I was nearly always riding in Francisco Cahuaya’s van, week after week. He worked with his wife, who collected the fares. They agreed to play the Scripture cassettes during the journey and they became interested in them. Each week we would listen to them on the way to the village - I would always play the one that we were going to study in church that week. God touched their lives and eventually their entire family came to church.”

In fact, the tapes had such a profound effect on Mr Cahuaya, who now lives in El Alto, that he is studying in a Theological Education by Extension course, even as he continues to play Christian tapes in his taxi.

“I used to play music in my taxi,” he says, “but the first time I played the New Testament, I felt very good. I was particularly moved when I heard John 3:16, and when Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’ in John 14:6.”

Accepted Jesus

“Then the pastor who used to play the tapes in my taxi invited me to church. The next Sunday I accepted Jesus into my heart.”

He says that before he became a Christian he felt alone in the world. “But now I feel I have a father who has power,” he smiles. “I play Christian songs and messages for my customers. Some people don’t like it but when that happens I try to help them. Now I would like more cassettes to play in my car.”

Obtaining FCBH cassettes can be a problem for people like Mr Cahuaya and local pastors like Mr Escobar because they are unable to afford them. The Bolivian Bible Society has lent Mr Escobar a set of tapes for use in his church, and he helps the Society sell and distribute Bibles and other Scripture materials.

“The Bible Society has been most helpful to pastors like me,” he says. “Any time they need me to help, I go!”

The only negative comment that Mr Escobar has about the FCBH program is that the tapes are all in Spanish, which means that when working among people who only speak other local languages, such as the people in Utavi who speak Aymará, he has to translate the tapes.

But the program is well-loved by those who participate in it, and although many of them are poor, they are eager to show their appreciation to the Bible Society and Hosanna, the USA-based organisation responsible for FCBH. Mr Escobar’s Utavi congregation, for instance, collected money to support Bible Society work.