Meredythe Scheflen

Single-minded for Bolivia

When Meredythe Scheflen asked her mission board to be appointed to Bolivia in the 1950’s, she was immediately refused. “I was told that they could not send single missionaries to Bolivia because the Mission only had work among the savage Indians in the eastern jungles of the country and that there were snakes, tigers, and huge tarantulas the size of a man’s hand – so that would be too dangerous for single women. They suggested that I pray about India or Africa, where the fields were more secure,” she remembers.

Three days later, however, the board decided to pair her with another single woman and send the two to Bolivia together. Scheflen has been proving just how effective a single woman can be in that country ever since.

When she first arrived in Bolivia, she started a school in the little church which was nothing more than a thatched roof, a half wall, dirt floor, rough boards hewn out of the jungle for benches, for eight young barefooted students. Through the years, Scheflen developed the Rio Nuevo Grade School, Berea High School and Berea Bible Institute, a grade school created to train Christian children in Rio Nuevo. Still, she knew in her heart that her work was not yet finished.

“Each year a new group of studious and purposeful students were graduating from Berea, but there was no higher education available to them except the government university that was a hotbed of Communism, political unrest and turmoil,” she says. “The newscast each day showed swarms of students from the government university rabble-rousing in the streets, overturning cars, breaking store windows, setting fire to buildings, and carrying flags for Che Guevara. As we watched these scenes, our hearts ached to see even some of our Berea students involved in this turmoil. I remembered what my own college experience had meant to me in my youth, and I often cried out to the Lord, ‘Isn’t there something better we can do for our Berea graduates?’ But there was no alternative then.”

Over the next few years, the seed was planted and cultivated in her mind to establish the first Spanish-speaking Evangelical university in South America. “I knew that it could not be done in my strength or that of any other human. It must be of the Lord, alone, so that all the glory would be His,” she says.

April 15, 1982, was the first day of classes, where more than 200 students enrolled in nursing, electronics, communications, English, music, or theology. Today the university offers 15 majors.

On May 24, 2005, Scheflen became the first rector in Bolivia to be awarded the country’s gold Medallion of Merit to the degree of Comendadora (ambassador), presented by the vice minister of education of Bolivia.

“I later found out that in the historical Court of the King of Spain, the ‘Comendador o Comendador(a)’ was the representative of the King who officially presented him all the royal national and international visitors that came to the court,” she says. “I liked that – all the years of my educational ministry in Bolivia have been spent as a servant to introduce generations of Bolivian young people to the King of Kings!”

During the same award ceremony, the vice minister presented her with the official certificate of the Bolivian government recognizing that BEU had successfully completed the process and requirements for the full accreditation of the University as “UNIVERSIDAD PLENA,” the highest level of recognition for a private educational institution.

Today, though officially retired, Scheflen remains in Bolivia as chancellor and member of the board for life of Bolivia Evangelical University.