Where can Bible Institutes Go?

I live in two worlds:

• Latin American
• North American.

I travel back and forth frequently, and am often amazed to the point of incredulity with some of the questions my North American friends ask me.

• “Do you have indoor plumbing?”
• “I didn’t know there were skyscrapers there . . “
• “Do you eat chicken?”

For those that perhaps have never traveled internationally, or don’t even know what a missionary does, the common perception is that we live in a thatch hut in the jungle with nearby indigenous peoples who don’t wear clothes.

I have to show people photos of my city to show them that I live in a city like Miami, and yes I have indoor plumbing.

I have taught in churches that do not have such plumbing.  One doesn’t need to go to far outside the city to encounter indigenous tribes and the general need for indoor plumbing.  My trip to the Darien province assured me of this.

Here is the church bathroom:

But sometimes, I’m caught with asking questions that stretch my worldview and my experience.

Can they read?

We wanted to take a Bible Institute course to a remote corner of this country, accessible only by plane.

No cell phone coverage.

In fact, no electricity.

In planning the development of the Bible Institute, we had to ask the question of literacy, and knowledge of written and spoken Spanish.

For those who work frontier missions, this may be a standard operating question.

But this one was a new one for me. Yet it is one that needed to be ask.

At the moment, we’ve put this development on hold.  We are still in the interest gathering stage.  We don’t know if it will materialize, but we’ll keep it in the hopper as the Lord permits.