Author: Randy Bates

Partly sunny and mid-eighties. In late January? I’ll take it!

I know I said, “The ‘people’ is what I love the most about Colombia”, and I still stand by that. But this climate in Armenia, Quindio is nothing to sneeze at! No pun intended, (ok, maybe just a little). There is so much to love about Colombia that I feel I need to take a moment and share. Continue reading “Simply Colombia”

In concluding this trilogy of stories from the Amazon, I would also like to include an awesome testimony. An unbelievable testimony of a special young lady. A testimony that I wanted to share in an upcoming post, but as I was getting my thoughts together for THIS post it dawned on me that now is the time to share it. Well, not right now, but in about 5 minutes.

…”My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.   -2 Corinthians 12:9 NKJV
Not your standard go-to-quote for missions. But this was not my standard mission trip. I felt I struggled with this one early on. I felt weak, like I wasn’t going to be useful. I’m not really sure why. Maybe it was because of the climate (Like Texas in July with no air conditioning). Continue reading “Colombia, Peru, Brazil cont.”

Boy, it’s good to be back in a cooler climate. The past two weeks have been a challenge and a blessing for many different reasons. There is so much to tell you that I think it is best if I attack this in a few “shorter,” rapid posts than trying to download this all at once. Continue reading “Colombia, Peru, Brazil”

As I mentioned in a previous post, “A Lot to Cover”, I have been given an opportunity to  travel to south Colombia/Peru to do mission work in October. Well, there has been a slight change of plans. Due to scheduling

We work as a team one week a year and then we’re gone. We pray, we tell our story, we tell God’s story. Some people even accept our invitation to know Jesus personally, but…Are we really making a difference, are any lives really being changed. I recently had a unique opportunity to Continue reading “Does this stuff really work?”

Much has happened since we last spoke

Very busy, not much down time, two expeditions, new friends, seeing God move, alota fútbol, working on my Spanish, answered prayers, new opportunities. Hmmm, that kind of sums up the couple of weeks since Continue reading “A LOT TO COVER”

“Ok!    What are the five things you love most about Colombia?” was the question posed to me after I told him I couldn’t narrow it down to just ONE thing. “Now that’s easy”, I said, “I can do three actually, the people, the beautiful landscape and Continue reading “Looking back Feeling satisfied”

I thought I would be writing at least my third post by now. I thought I would be settled in and have this thing up and running by now. By now, I thought I would have figured this blogging business out! “Getting started” has never been my strong suit. But this delay was not Continue reading “Sometimes God says, “Wait!””