Teo, Bartola and their children.

“Teo was not a good husband. He was really mean before he knew God,” Bartola says. Even after he was married, Teo says, “I couldn’t see a young woman without wanting her.” Bartola knew that when he went out, sometimes it was to be with another woman. So she would get angry with him, and they would fight, and he would tell her to take the baby and go to her mother’s house.

A couple of years into their marriage, Teo was out of work and they were finding it extremely difficult to feed themselves and their baby without an income. “We didn’t have anything; we suffered a lot,” Teo says.

They came to the conclusion that they needed to follow God. They were already friends with Dan and Christie Reich, the SIM missionaries living in town, so they went to their house and the missionaries gave them a book about marriage. Teo and Bartola found the book really helpful, and would read it together. Teo said to his wife, “I think we should follow Jesus. What do you think?”

There in their house, they asked Jesus into their lives. They began to trust in the Lord and ask him for the things they needed. They had no work and no money to buy food. Their cotton field was only producing half as much as it should have done. They’d even had to sell their bed. One morning after they began to pray, they were having breakfast, but didn’t have either bread or enough sugar. In desperation, they asked God to give them work. Later that morning, they went to visit Teo’s mother and there was someone there who had a broken light. She paid Teo to fix her light and so he was able to buy bread and meat for lunch.

That very day, they were eating lunch when someone else came to their house offering Teo two or three weeks of work.

In this way God manifested his goodness to them and they experienced the reality of his love in a very practical way.

They wanted to learn more about God, so they went to ask the missionaries to help them. Their lives started to change as they began to understand how to follow Jesus. Their cotton field began to produce well and their marriage improved. Teo is ashamed of how he used to act and Bartola has forgiven him for his infidelities. They say their home is much calmer now and Teo even helps around the house, which is something he would never have done before because he saw that as women’s work. They have discovered that Jesus is the answer; “When we have problems, we pray,” they say.

Teo’s brother has invited him to go and work in a bigger city with him, but Teo knows that it is much better for him to stay with his family. His brother is not a believer and Teo realises it would be very hard not to give into temptation if he went. He is grateful to God for providing all they need right where they live, so that he doesn’t have to leave town to look for work.

Teo and Bartola began to listen to MP3 recordings of Scripture and Bible teaching in their mother tongue, Guaraní. They would walk all over the place with their baby daughter, and they would listen to the MP3 player as they walked. At Bartola’s parents’ house, her mum used to like listening to the Bible recordings, but her dad didn’t want to hear them. However, her mum would have the volume turned up so loud that everyone in the house would hear it, whether they wanted to or not! Then, one day, when Bartola’s dad, her brother and Teo were returning from working in the field, the brother wanted to put the radio on, but her dad said, “No, let’s listen to the MP3 player.”

Nowadays, Bartola’s family is following Jesus. Teo says, “They don’t fight anymore, they are calm and happy.” Bartola’s dad used to go to town a lot, because he had mistresses there. When he became a believer, God showed him that it’s not good to have a mistress. Now he doesn’t go to town at all and his marriage is much better. He even told his brother (Bartola’s uncle) that it’s not good to have a mistress but his brother couldn’t understand that and yelled at him.

Teo talks about God to his friends and family. Not everyone understands. Some of them ridicule him for being faithful to his wife. Others accuse him of being like a pastor, because he knows the Word of God and enjoys talking about the Lord. However, this doesn’t prevent Teo from talking to them because he has such a heart to see them come to Christ and experience the peace and grace that he and Bartola have found.