Hi, my wife, religion friends, Professor Anthony Sweat here from B.O.U. Church History and

Doctrine.

Welcome to another great episode of the Religion Apartments podcast of Why Religion.

Back in the 1990s, I served a full-time mission in Bolivia.

It was and is a wonderful country.

The geography of Bolivia is really interesting.

It has both towering and these mountains and dense Amazon jungle.

And although the church has been present in Bolivia for many decades, when I served there,

there were still remote parts of the country where the church was unestablished and missionaries

had rarely gone, particularly in the jungle.

I'll never forget a pair of faithful missionaries who were sent on my mission to open up one

of those areas.

There were no known converts, no immediate church leadership, and no church buildings.

The missionaries began teaching and faithful Bolivians in the area responded to the restored

gospel.

But a problem became quickly apparent.

Where to meet on Sundays.

The elders wrote to our mission president back in the mission office for permission to

turn part of their house that they were renting into a makeshift meeting space.

They cleared out a 10x10 foyer and hung up some gospel art kit pictures, made a makeshift

stand or podium, and even nailed together their own crude wooden benches for people to

sit on.

...