Lessons for Life

Five years ago, schoolteacher Arlie Peters and his wife Eva sensed God calling them into missions. They began by writing a letter to the director of their church conference missions program, simply asking how they should proceed.

That first tentative step eventually led the young Mennonite couple from Aylmer, Ont. to Bolivia, where they now reach out to displaced Mennonites who have left or been excommunicated from some of Bolivia's estimated 50 colonies.

"The first job description for me was to start up a school for [outcast] Mennonites in the Pailón area," says Arlie.

Since the late '90s, the town of Pailón, some 60 km east of Santa Cruz, has become a mecca for disaffected Mennonites who are at odds with colony leaders over farming practices, religious freedom and other issues.

Missionaries from the Evangelical Mennonite Mission Conference (EMMC), as well as others, reach out to them, through various ministries utilizing the Plautdietsch (PLOWT-deech) Bible.

The Peters family was a welcome addition to the EMMC missionary team based in Pailón: Arlie and Eva's families both came from Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonite colonies, in Mexico and Belize respectively, and both Arlie and Eva have some knowledge of Spanish. Eva is also a registered nurse.

When the Peters' arrived in 2002, about five Mennonite families, with 20 school-age children, formed the core group of the Evangelical Mennonite Church. But the children were not receiving any education.

"They were just at home," recalls Arlie, "or running around on the streets." A number of people worked together to provide a facility outside of town, while Arlie worked to put together a curriculum and formed a team of teachers.

Lacking Skills
By the time the school—now called Centro Educativo Menonita—opened in March 2003, other Mennonite families had moved into Pailón. Thirty-plus students attended classes in a building that had little in the way of resources or amenities. And because some teenagers were so far behind in their education (due to inadequate colony schools), they were placed in classes along with younger children.

While the classroom configurations continue to be a challenge, Arlie says the children's lack of social skills has been equally daunting.

Part of the problem, says Arlie, is that most Mennonite parents in the Bolivia colonies have never been taught biblical principles for raising their families. That, combined with a tradition that teaches that women must bear as many children as possible in order to be saved, means most children grow up in large families, which makes supervision and training in relational skills difficult.

In the classroom and on the playground, Arlie's students are learning how to treat one another positively, with love and respect.

"We have to teach them, right to the point of saying, 'You don't stomp on your classmate's foot all the time because that hurts them.'"

Late in 2004, Mennonite church teams from Canada helped build a new school with four classrooms on a site just outside of Pailón. For the 2006 academic year, the school added a brand new playground in time for its opening last February. Fifty-five students currently attend classes under the supervision of seven teachers/assistants.

The children all come from Mennonite homes and speak Plautdietsch as their first language. Most days begin with readings from the Plautdietsch Bible, singing and prayer. With the exception of those in kindergarten, the children are divided into groups based on their level of proficiency in English and Spanish. Students then dive into subjects that include traditional disciplines like language arts (in Spanish and English), math, social studies and science as well as music, art, physical education, and Low German Plautdietsch literacy.

The school uses the Spanish version of the A Beka curriculum (popular with home schoolers and Christian schools throughout North America) as well as other materials, currently offering classes from kindergarten through grade six. Its adult education courses even attract men and women from nearby colonies who want to improve their language skills in Spanish or English.

Teaching the Basics
While Eva tries to spend most of her time taking care of the couple's two young children, Joshua and Naomi, she often uses her nurse's training to help Mennonites in need. She accompanies some to medical appointments in Santa Cruz, where she helps translate for her Plautdietsch-speaking friends and the English-speaking doctors.

City physicians also counsel their Mennonite patients on ways to improve their children's hygiene and nutrition.

But Eva is also able to use her medical training to speak into their lives. Her role as a young mother has opened new doors of influence among the former colonists.

"Up until Joshua's birth, if I tried to do any teaching on child care, or the care of newborn babies, it just wasn't accepted. But then, once they saw what I was applying to my own child and they saw some positive differences between our child and their children, they started changing their practices."

Both Eva and Arlie pray that God will use them to demonstrate His love to Mennonite parents and children alike, and that many will come to a genuine faith in Christ.

"That it wouldn't be a religious thing to them," says Arlie, "but where they really get to know Christ."

Arlie and Eva have already seen how a relationship with Christ is making a big difference for some families that had struggled for years with anger and broken relationships.

"There is change happening in the parents themselves and in the family life," says Arlie.

Such changes are being fueled by the availability of God's Word in their heart language. In one colony east of Pailón, some Mennonite couples have been meeting to study De Bibel, despite the elders' disapproval.

"But they can't stop reading the Bible now, because they understand it—and they want to."