Pray for our bishop and the church in Bolivia

What follows is an article from the Great Falls Tribune. (Thanks to Tom for sending it to me)
Please keep the travelers and the people of Bolivia in your prayers.

September 11, 2008
Violent protests in Bolivia cut Crist's travels short
BY TRAVIS COLEMAN Tribune Staff Writer

Increasingly violent protests in Bolivia have halted the travels of a Great Falls-based Evangelical Lutheran Church bishop.
Jessica Crist, bishop of the Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, is traveling the central South American country with a group of Great Falls and area residents to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Lutheran Church of Bolivia, dedicate a retreat center and oversee the ceremony of the first two women to be ordained in Bolivia.
But protestors angry over natural gas revenues have blockaded airports in Cobija and Santa Cruz, which were set to be the next destinations for the local group. The group was stuck in a La Paz Wednesday.
"We will stay in La Paz another night, and fly to Santa Cruz (Thursday) at 9:30 a.m.," wrote Crist in an e-mail message sent to the Tribune. "We will plan to stay there until our scheduled departure on Monday, getting home on Tuesday.
"Several government buildings have been taken over by protestors in Santa Cruz, and the streets are supposed to be full of burning tires," she wrote.
The traveling group includes Crist, Turner Graybill, Great Falls residents Colleen Busby, Marjorie Holland and Tom and Linda Rosenbaum, and Robert Nilsen from Kalispell.
They next head to Santa Cruz, which is more than 200 miles southeast from La Paz.
Bolivia has been rocked for two weeks by increasingly violent protests led by opponents of Bolivian President Evo Morales in the country's more prosperous eastern lowlands. The fight is over natural gas revenues and Morales' insistence that fallow farmland be given to landless Indians.
Crist wrote the group will not take unnecessary risks while in the area. The group is accompanied by Spanish speakers.
"We are not afraid. We are here with the church. We are not naíve, but we do not think that worrying is productive," she wrote.