Placido

Placido was born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, into a proud, traditional agricultural family. His grandfather made sugar and transported it for sale to Argentina by oxcart. Most of the workers on the family property were indigenous and the attitude of the family toward them was typical of the times and of the geographical region. Indians were considered inferior in every way, untrustworthy and useful only for hard labor. Placido’s elders would not even consider eating or drinking from the same dishware as an Indian and would never invite one of them into the home.

When he was 13 years old his parents separated and he was sent to live with his father’s relatives. As time went by a strong desire grew in him to “be somebody” in order to prove to these relatives that he was worthy to belong in the family. Since several of them were physicians and surgeons, he decided that this would be his course of action and immediately started to take steps in this direction.

When Placido was 14 years old, he began to hear the Gospel of God’s love and grace through the lives of an American Baptist missionary couple. They began visiting Placido’s family to pray for his younger sister who had been hit and left behind by a drunk driver. They did not preach at the family, but faithfully visited and prayed for the little girl who was in a body cast and had been given a bad prognosis by the doctors. The doctors were amazed when, after removing the cast, his sister´s xrays showed no damage and she was completely healed.
The missionaries invited Placido to visit their church and during the following year Placido was drawn closer and closer to Christ until he finally made the crucial commitment to be His follower.

His resolve to “be somebody” remained and actually became grew stronger over the next few years as he faced  rejection for his conversion to Evangelical Christianity.

After graduating from high school he attended Bible school for one year and then found he did not have the means to attend medical school in in the city of Sucre. He took and passed the entrance exams at the State Veterinary University, but after two years realized that his heart was just not in it. By this time, a medical school had opened in Santa Cruz, his hometown. He decided to try the entrance exams and passed. That year we met. Together we began studying medicine and through the invitation of John and Phoebe Depue, soon to retire SAM missionaries, visited the Ayoré. Placido suddenly saw the Indian people in a completely different light than that which he had grown up with. He realized that the goals he had for his life did not fit in with the real needs of Bolivia´s poor and with God´s view of the world. Together we committed to a  friendship with them and to work among them, especially focusing on medical need. Although he is now a urological surgeon, his goal is now to be the kind of person who makes God proud.