Thousands Respond at Bolivia Crusade

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia—South America once again has shown a warm heart for the Gospel.
     Franklin Graham preached the Gospel to more than 138,000 people November 10-13 in Santa Cruz’s Ramón Tahuichi Aguilera Stadium. More than 19,200 people came forward to make public decisions for Christ.
     Both numbers were the largest ever for one of Graham’s crusades. Last year in neighboring Peru, 132,000 attended a crusade and 17,152 made decisions.
     "Bolivia Para Cristo" was Graham’s final evangelistic festival of 1999. The next one will be Feb. 11-12, 2000, in Managua, Nicaragua.
     Graham also led crusades this year in Canada, Scotland, Jamaica, and the United States. During the year, he preached before more than a half-million people, and almost 46,000 made public decisions for Christ.
     The response was encouraging in Santa Cruz, which is home to 1.3 million of Bolivia’s 8 million people. Each night, after Graham presented God’s plan for forgiveness and salvation, people responding to the invitation ran from their seats across the soccer field to the foot of the stage.
     As he watched people being counseled the first night of the festival, José Luís Suárez wept. "This is precious," said Suárez, the executive chair of Bolivia Para Cristo. "It encourages us to continue working. We can see what God has done. When I saw the people coming down and running, that was the most emotional part for me."
     In addition to the four-night festival, there was a special Saturday-morning session for children. There were 4,233 decisions among the 32,500 who watched a presentation of a children’s Gospel musical called "The Puzzle."
     The outreach to children also included the distribution of hundreds of gift-filled shoe boxes at a children’s hospital and in a poor neighborhood.
     Musical guests included Jaci Velasquez, who has the No. 1 song on the Latin music charts and was performing for the first time in Bolivia.
     The Santa Cruz festival committee organized 400 churches and trained 6,000 counselors.

Franklin Graham Festivals in 1999