Saturday Post -- 11/05/13

The couples in happier times.

Mighty difficult to condense the last four weeks into just a few paragraphs, but I'll give it my best shot.

Chillin' on the balcony.

Mum and Dad landed in Trinidad on the afternoon of the 14^th of April, at the conclusion of 36 hours of departure lounges and restricted legroom. Actually, the morning before their short flight from La Paz to Trinidad had been spent paying a brief visit to La Paz itself. But this isn’t quite the equivalent of catching the Heathrow express train into the centre of London. La Paz’s main airport, in fact, sits at an altitude of 4,000-plus metres, while a steep descent by road is required from there to visit the city centre, which itself sits at a not inconsiderable 3,200 metres. The hijinks at high-altitude eventually took their toll.

Amanda took Mum along to a local school where FT is providing free
health checks for all the pupils.

So it was straight to bed that Sunday afternoon for a recuperative snooze, though within an hour or two they were up and about, and familiarising themselves with the house, of which they managed to get a photo or two during their time here.

Dad shows 'em how winnin' gets done.

As you’ll imagine, that first 24 hours or so was largely spent catching up on lost time, and we particularly enjoyed taking them out to the lake that first Monday afternoon, where we were able to rendezvous with our architect and his brother (the project manager), passing on thank-you gifts for their efforts that we had purchased in Scotland via the internet. Springwatch aficionados that they are, they appreciated the bird-life on show.

Mum gives her Spanish a test-drive at a local daycare
centre, where FT provides health checks.

The remainder of the week we spent together in Trinidad was largely taken up with showing them various aspects of our ministries and giving them time to relax when they required it. There was hardly an area of FT’s work that wasn’t visited during that week, not least our own lines of work. Amanda took Mum with her on her regular weekly visits to a local school and a day-care centre for underprivileged children, where FT provides health checks. They had a good time at my English classes, being particularly tickled to hear my rounded vowels (an occupational hazard), and were swamped with requests for photographs from my less than camera-shy R.E. students at the local secondary school.

Mum and Dad's visit to the English classes coincided with the end of the
first module.

Leisure time in the evenings and at the weekend was devoted to sampling the Beni’s vast array of wildlife – both on and off the plate (case in point: one of our favourite eateries, an alligator restaurant, sits on the edge of a huge river where pink dolphins, who love nothing better than a captive homo sapien audience, make frequent attention-seeking appearances). They also used this time to touch base with the other two missionary families who work alongside us.

The ladies in my life enjoy a moment.

Their time in Trinidad also happened to coincide with a special weekend at the church, which was celebrating its eighth anniversary (birthdays here don’t usually require a round number at the end to be celebrated with gusto) and, for one Sunday only, we held an extra-special service out by the lake. While in Bolivia, Dad was technically in the middle of a well-earned break from his myriad church duties, but he was only too happy to help the church mark the occasion by tinkling the ivories with the band and preaching on Nehemiah 2. The combination of a radiant sun, a warm, inviting lake, and 100 church folk meant the remaining activities that day weren’t quite so civilised.

They even had time to accompany us to a 15th birthday celebration for a
girl in the youth group. Looking good for half past midnight!

By this point, thoughts were now turning to our travel plans for remainder of the visit. On Monday night, we took the overnight bus to Santa Cruz, where we dropped cases off at our hotel that morning before a quick breakfast and then a trip out to the remote village of Samaipata by shared taxi. This traditionally two-and-a-half-hour journey was extended by an hour due to a blockade by lorry drivers on the way out of the city. Indeed, Dad and I would earn our breakfast that morning by helping our intrepid cab driver get his low-suspension Toyota Corolla (the taxis are always Toyota Corollas) over the barrier in the middle of the dual carriageway, allowing us to drive temporarily on the other side and pass the protesters.

Sunday, ergo, Dad on the piano. Accompanying bandmate Romina for
a solo. Amanda works the projector in the foreground.

Trinidad sits at only 200 metres above sea-level; Santa Cruz isn’t much higher. So Amanda and I were particularly chuffed to be driving on a steep uphill incline as we neared Samaipata (altitude: 1,600 metres). Here, the town was sleepy, the pace snail-like, the air fresh as a daisy. A greater contrast with the sprawling metropolis of Santa Cruz (or, indeed, the mini-Santa Cruz of Trinidad) you could hardly imagine. We spent our afternoon exploring this charming hamlet.

Dad with Carlos, singer in the worship band,
at the church's anniversary event.

And, in fact, an afternoon is really all you need, so small is the town. In fact, tourist-wise, Samaipata tends to be more a base for visiting the surrounding countryside (another few hours down the road takes you to the site of Che Guevara’s last stand). So the following day, we made a staggered trip back to Santa Cruz, visiting a major Inca ruin called ‘El Fuerte’ and some waterfalls (where we got the briefest of glimpses of some uncharacteristically shy, yet aesthetically striking, parrots).

Samaipata: sleepy.

That evening we checked into our hotel, where we were largely content just to while away the hours on the tennis court or by the swimming pool, save some trips into the city centre, the market, and Santa Cruz’s one and only golf course. Yes, I played my first eighteen holes in almost two years with Dad and our host for the afternoon, Steve Paterson (the previously-mentioned expat from Ayrshire, who lives in Santa Cruz with his wife, Dilys). The only thing is, we hadn’t left the alligators behind us in Trinidad. We spotted about half a dozen around the golf course’s water hazards – at one point, we had to cross what was effectively a two-metre wide bridge, upon which our ugly friend was happily lying in wait.

El Fuerte.

But the majority of our two weeks together, we were but four, and all too happy to get the full benefit of these precious moments, which naturally disappeared in the blink of an eye. Two Sundays after their arrival, we left Mum and Dad to venture beyond the security gates, feeling so blessed and abundantly refreshed for the time we had spent together, and earnestly looking forward to seeing them again in the new year.

Yep, still got it. Our golfing host, Steve Paterson, looks on.

But as I’d mentioned last week, we’d barely unpacked our cases by the time our next visitor, LAM Canada Executive Director Carluci Dos Santos, was in town. Understandably, Carluci couldn’t stay in Bolivia for quite as long, but his long-weekend visit also proved to be of real encouragement to us. Like Mum and Dad, Carluci had not yet visited our work at FT and El Jireh church, so we were delighted to receive him and show him a thing or twa.

Y'know. Birdies, albatrosses, eagles. Alligators.

And he made sure the favour in hosting him here did not go unrewarded. He very kindly spoke at both the youth group last Saturday and the family service the following morning, giving us church leaders a bit of a breather from our tight preaching schedule in the process. And best of all, he put his admirable culinary skills to good use by cooking up some melt-in-the-mouth steak dishes (those Brazilians certainly know their beef) and showing us a thing or two in the kitchen (not that Amanda needs no educatin’, of course! – bonus points for me this week???).

Cunninghams on court. There's a story behind this picture to rival
Federer v Nadal 2008. 

So we’re finding our feet again and getting used to just being by ourselves – which, let’s be honest, we all need now and again. And the work waits for no-one, so in the past couple of weeks we’ve been catching up on our FT and church endeavours.

With top chef and erstwhile LAM Canada boss, Carluci Dos Santos.

Anyway, more on that next week. For now, the usual closing comments…

Prayer

• We’ve been looking in a bit more detail into possible study options for our furlough next year and, so far, it’s raised more questions than answers for us. Pray for guidance as we make a decision on this – this may have to be fairly soon.
• For the new Intermediate English course which starts this week. Pray that the students from the Basic course would keep coming and not be too put off by the continued upward incline in the skills and abilities taught (to be expected, of course, but such things have a way of discouraging many people in this culture). 

Praise

• For a really encouraging time with Carluci and a safe trip home for him back to Toronto earlier this week.
• For a great start for Amanda’s young women’s Bible study group this past week in their new topic of the fruits of the Spirit.

Who knows? Perhaps this chap'll be our next visitor.
That man Fabio Capello says he's planning a world
trip with Cathy, after all.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda