Bonnie Timmer with Viviana (pictured) made a huge impact on one another.
A Christmas message from our team in Bolivia.
In an isolated village in the Amazon River rain basin, a little girl named Viviana became an orphan. Struggling to survive completely on her own, Viviana moved through her village from family to family requesting food. The villagers reluctantly shared what little they had, but the other children began to despise her. Over the next three years, that bitterness continued to grow.
What happened next would change Viviana’s life and community forever.
Village children gathered around a bonfire. Their lives were about to be marked by more than play. Finding Viviana, some of the children pushed her into the roaring fire. She quickly escaped the flames, but in that moment 60% of her body was severely burned. The villagers concluded that this was the end for her and laid her on a sheet to die.
The following day, they found her alive. The villagers continued to wait.
The next day, she was still alive.
On the third day, they decided to call for help. Thirty-six hours later a plane arrived to transport her to the hospital in the city of Cochabamba. Looking at her, the pilot was sure she would die before landing.
God had other plans for Viviana. Despite overwhelming odds, she survived the flight. After a week in the hospital she slowly began to heal. ITeams workers Mike and Bonnie Timmer were already working with orphans in Cochabamba. Mike was asked to consider taking Viviana into one of their orphanages. The obstacles to this seemed legitimate and insurmountable.
Despite not yet having the needed resources to care for her, Bonnie visited Viviana in the hospital daily.
Her daily visits with Viviana broke her heart as she began to understand the terrible atrocities that this little girl had experienced. When she was physically able,
she was welcomed into the Timmer household.
Not only had Viviana’s life changed, but the way the Timmers thought about ministry would change as a result.
When Viviana left the hospital, she entered an entirely new world. She still spoke the language of her village with a little bit of Spanish learned while in the hospital. She had never seen a car. When she saw her first traffic light with the reds, yellows, and greens, she thought it was the most beautiful thing in the entire world. While her body healed, she also needed to learn to live in a foreign place.
This reality opened Mike’s eyes to a stark truth. Viviana wasn’t the only orphan living in remote jungle villages. Until they met Viviana, the Timmer’s ministry model required removing the children to grow up in an unfamiliar culture in the city.
Even though significant challenges existed, the Timmer’s team began building orphanages in the communities where the children actually lived. This shift allows continued connections with extended families and leaves cultures and languages undisturbed after the tragic loss of parents. Children can stay in their schools and continue to embrace the culture and heritage where God placed them.
Viviana is now eleven years old and she still lives in the city of Cochabamba. She is too scared to go back to her village, but Mike
hopes that someday God might use her to reach back into the very village where people had once tried to kill her. Whatever the future holds, Mike and Bonnie are convinced God has plans for Viviana.
“She’s an amazing little girl. She’s a spitfire. I honestly can’t talk about her enough,” Mike reflects tenderly.
Viviana’s changed life changed the Timmer’s lives, their ministry model, and the lives of other orphans growing up in their own communities in Bolivia.
Viviana’s story represents beautifully the expanding power of a transformed life. A transformed life, like Viviana’s, can transform a community by the power of God. Eagerly, we look to what’s next because of this precious young girl.
