Have you ever had a divine appointment? Early in September I had a dentist appointment. I was going to the dentist with a guy named Pepe who was helping us for a couple months. We

decided to take some books to pass out to people while we were on the way to the dentist and on the way back from the dentist.

We took 200 books with us. The books we were handing out are condensed versions of The Great Controversy entitled ¡La Tempestad Perfecta Llega!

The dentist appointment was uneventful, and we headed on busses through the city to where we would catch a van that takes us out to the neighborhood that is next to where we live. As we were passing through the market to where we were to get on the van, we handed out books to who ever wanted one. One of the last books that we had we handed to a woman.

This woman was very happy for the book. She invited us to a prayer group that afternoon. She asked if we had more of the books, and told us that the people at the prayer group would be very happy to have these books. We told her that we had no more books and that we would have to go back out of the city to where we lived to get more books. We told her that it would take too long to go out of the city and get more books and then come back into the city and find where they were meeting.

She told us that they met every Monday and Thursday afternoon. And she invited us to come. The truth was that I did not want to go back into the city. Santa Cruz is very noisy and polluted. I also had thoughts that they will be like so many other people who we had given books to who only wish to argue and are not seeking the will of God. So I put it off for a week and told her that I would come the next Monday.

The Next week I told another missionary Lincoln about the invitation and he went with me. When we found the place we met the woman who had invited us. She showed us in and introduced us to another woman. We all sat down and they asked if I would pray. After I prayed the woman who we had been introduced to said that she thought that we had come for a reason.

Lincoln started by turning to Matthew 24:24 where Jesus says that in the last days will arise false Christs and prophets that will work signs and wonders and will deceive the very elect. Then we turned to Ezekiel 33:6,7 and Lincoln read, “ But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand. So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me.”

Then Lincoln told them that we have a message of warning from the Bible and if we do not share that warning, then God will call us to answer for all those who were lost without a warning when we could have warned them.

The woman who we had been introduced to then started sharing her testimony, and we listened for the next three hours. In 1990 her husband left her with a small daughter and a handicapped baby daughter. She had no food, and no money. She then told us how she had heard of a charismatic preacher in the US who could heal people and how she wished that she could go to visit him and have him heal her handicapped daughter.

She shared how everything for the trip was miraculously provided, the money, passports, visas, etc. Before she left for the US her father told her that if she came back with her daughter walking then everyone would go to church where she went to church. Then she left for the US.

She arrived in the US and was taken to a huge church. Everything was in English and she did not understand any of the songs or what was being said. She saw long lines of people who were sick of handicapped going up onto the stage to be healed. She also saw the pastor putting out his hand and people would fall down, and she said that she did not want that to happen to her.

Shortly before she and her daughters were to go up onto the stage her young daughter told her that she had to go to the bathroom, she had diarrhea. So she hurried out to the lobby and asked where the bathroom was, but nobody spoke Spanish. So she finally found a bathroom down a hallway.

However, by the time they made it back to the stage the service was over. She was sad; she had lost the chance to have the pastor heal her daughter. Her return flight to Bolivia was leaving before the next service. She decided that she had been blessed so much by God ant that she was going to go back to Bolivia and share this there.

When she returned to Bolivia people said that she was a witch or a crazy lady. But she did not give up her hope. She began praying for Bolivia and other countries. She began reading the Bible, fasting, and praying. She shared with us that it had been opened to her understanding that we are in the middle of a spiritual war. She then brought out hand copied Bibles. Over the years she had copied the Bible three or four times. I looked through one Bible. They copy the Bible and then at the end of each chapter summarize what the chapter says.

From what she had read in the Bible they had come up with codes for spiritual warfare. A small group of family and friends have formed a small team for spiritual warfare over the years. They read the Bible, fast, and pray. She became the leader of this group

When we were talking with them we realized that they know the Bible better than we do. Lincoln told them that if time was a big clock, and 12 was the end of time, then the prophecy in the Bible can tell us where on the clock we are. And he asked if they would like us to study prophecy with them. They all said yes!

When we left I felt like the prophet Jonah. God had a divine appointment for me but I did not want to go. And I had justified not wanting to go by thinking that these people would not be open to the Bible. I was humbled and ashamed. All I could do was ask God for forgiveness. The truth is that God has called all of his followers to sound the three angels’ messages of warning. If we don’t do it, then we are like Jonah. But we were praising God for meeting these people.

I went back that Thursday by myself and we read Daniel 1 and 2. We read the dream of Nebuchadnezzar and how the Bible interprets the dream in Daniel 2. When they had learned that the Bible says that the statue is a time line of history to the end of time and learned where we currently are on the time line their mouths dropped open. The leader of the group then said that they had been praying for years to understand these things in the Bible, and that we need to tell other people.

I then went back the next Monday by myself and I read 1Co 10:11, “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” I read this so they could see that everything that happened to Israel is an example for us in the end times, as the verse says.

I then had them read Isaiah´s prophecy about the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar 100 years before it happened. We read in Jeremiah why God handed them over to

Nebuchadnezzar. We read in Jeremiah 28 about the false prophet Hananiah prophesying safety before Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar after Jerusalem had already been concurred by Nebuchadnezzar before. Basically Jeremiah pointed the people back to the prophets before him and told the people to believe the prophets that had prophesied things that they could see being fulfilled before their eyes.

I then reminded them what it said in Daniel 2:45, “God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.” And 2Pe 1:19, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:” The Bible is the certain word of prophesy, and it’s interpretation is sure. Why does the Bible say it is certain and sure? We can see it has been fulfilled in the past and we can see it taking place before our eyes.

I went back with Pepe and another missionary named Jeremy then next Thursday. We then studied up to Daniel 7 through the four beasts. We told them that the next time we met we would study who the little horn was. And the lady who had traveled to the US turned to the group and asked them how they are to fight a spiritual war if they don’t know who the enemy is.

I know you are saying that this story sounds too good to be true. But this is when the enemy decided the strike. The mother of the leader of the group was put in intensive care because of heart problems. Hospitals in Bolivia do not supply all the things needed, you have to go to the pharmacy and get it all and take it to the hospital. So she was busy and could not meet.

Then after her mother was discharged from the hospital one of her brothers was killed and her other brother had to flee to the country because someone was looking for him to kill him. Her brothers had been involved in Satan worship and then had been converted and became evangelical pastors. It was a very sad time for them and they were not able to meet. The great controversy is waging over these people, but they recognize the Bible as the authority of truth.

After a month and a half we were able to go back and meet with them. I gave the leader a Bible Readings for the Home, The Desire of Ages, and The Great Controversy. She was so happy for them that she stopped right then and prayed thanking God for them. We plan to continue meeting on Thursday afternoons to study prophesy. She wants to have the group read a chapter out of The Desire of Ages and The Great Controversy and then discuss the chapters.

Steve E W- Bolivia