Tenemos Esperanza

The view from our bedroom of a typically beniano sunset last night. Welcome home.

Last Tuesday morning, it came to me again. It came to me, as it so often does, in a moment of tedium, as I was hoovering a patch of the carpet in Sam's bedroom, in preparation for leaving our rented flat just a few hours later. It came to me without warning, and without my realising it. And only a few minutes later did I realise I was once again whistling the melody of 'Tenemos Esperanza'. 

Since I learned this amazing modern hymn back in February in Guatemala, I very much doubt a day has gone by that this veritable earworm, with its incessant tango rhythm, hasn't passed my lips, so to speak (you can read more about the hymn's story and composition here). It is a hymn that reminds us of Christ's incarnation and all that entailed, and therefore as Christians, 'hoy tenemos esperanza' ('we have hope today'), even in the midst of dire circumstances such as those witnessed by its author, and many others in Latin America in recent decades. 

And as I turned off the hoover for a moment and thought for the first time in a months about what I was whistling, mere hours before we were to begin that long journey back to Bolivia and the place where all hope had previously seemed lost, the song took on greater significance. Yes, indeed: we all, as believers, have hope, a hope that can enable us to press on in all circumstances. And that truth is as valid for Amanda, Sam and me as a family, in the particular circumstances we face, as it is for the entire family of God worldwide. Nosotros tenemos esperanza!

It was at this point that I then remembered another hymn we had learned that wonderful week in Guatemala, a hymn that back then had found me in something of a 'valley' and had moved me to tears. Indeed, only the hardest of hearts could have remained unmoved as the song built to a momentous climax and a united people from many tribes and nations in that hall proclaimed,

You will restore the earth, and forever you will reign

and from the face of your people, you will wipe every tear.

To you be all glory, all honour and majesty,

Hope of the nations, our Prince of Peace.

Our hope is, indeed, in the Esperanza de los Pueblos, and all the greater for it. 

In all of this, our gracious God was simply trying to drive home a point previously made. In the previous few weeks, two separate parties, unknown to one another, had commended to us Romans 15:13, which says

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

"You are finally getting this, aren't you?" I could almost hear him whisper in my ear in that empty flat.

The six months in Scotland were merely the start of a long journey. A highly positive start, indeed, but burnout can take up to two years to recover from, and we are seeing that in action. In fact, in many ways -- many positive ways -- we will never quite shake the impact of this past year for the rest of our lives. Back in Bolivia, as we unpack our cases, re-establish old connections, and take steps back in to ministry, we find ourselves in a new crucible in which the Master Smelter can continue his refining work; all of it necessary, much of it very painful. 

But for the first time in a long, long time, we can declare these two precious words with confidence: Tenemos esperanza. And for that, we are excited and grateful.

Prayer Points

• Give thanks for a safe arrival in Trinidad on Saturday, at the end of a pretty exhausting few days! Our route was Edinburgh-Frankfurt-Sao Paulo with Lufthansa (with a separate onward flight to Santa Cruz), and our connection time in Frankfurt was already fairly tight. This was only exacerbated by our delay in leaving Edinburgh last Tuesday evening. We pretty much ran the length of the terminal at Frankfurt...only to arrive literally a couple of minutes after the doors had been closed! And mindful of the airport's late-night curfew, the airline were not for letting us on. This meant we couldn't fly till the same time (10pm) the next day, and we knew the airline would look after us during that time. However, a complication for us was that Sam, as a Bolivian, is only permitted up to twelve hours of transit time, and he is also required to stay in the airport. Mercifully, the transport police were sympathetic to us, and allowed us to stay overnight in the hotel Lufthansa had arranged for us. Having already booked a night in a hotel in Sao Paulo, we simply cancelled that reservation and were able to make the Thursday morning flight to Santa Cruz a few hours after arriving in Brazil. We stayed in Santa Cruz with friends while attending to one or two administrative matters, and set off on Saturday morning for the day-long drive back to Trinidad (our car had been in Santa Cruz since March).
• Give thanks for a really lovely day on Sunday, when we were able to spend a lot of time catching up with people here, thanks to a church lunch and a little birthday celebration for a friend in the evening.
• If we're honest, we're still a little exhausted after last week's exertions. Pray for energy as we re-establish ourselves here this week.
• Please pray particularly for Sam. As far as we can tell, the language adjustment hasn't been an issue, and he's enjoying his daycare. However, there has been a little naughtiness as he's clearly still working things out here again. Pray for patience for us both in dealing with this.
• Finally for now, pray for preparations for the Latin Link Bolivia retreat, which will be taking place next week back in Santa Cruz (mercifully we're flying!).

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig, Amanda & Sam

Saturday Post -- 14/12/13

Our final week in Trinidad continued in much the same vein as its predecessor, a heady mix of housework, packing up and the unavoidable farewells.

Last week I’d mentioned that the band were preparing a little something that very evening. Well, the band, their families and several others arrived at the house straight after youth group on Saturday night, armed with home-made pizzas (I’m pleased to confirm that after four years, I’ve finally come across a decent pizza in Trinidad), guitars and Bibles. And once the food was out the way, we were serenaded!

Serenading is a common custom here among the believers. It usually takes place on a birthday or in the event of someone's departure from town. The songs sung are infused with lyrics rich in blessing. Given that we will, God-willing, be back here in 2015, we don’t particularly feel worthy of such a tribute, but I won’t deny we were both very touched. Our friends sang and shared Scripture with us for some 45 minutes, and we too had opportunities to share from the word and express our own thankfulness to these people who have become so dear to us.

As the week progressed, there were a further three get-togethers, organised by ourselves or others, to say goodbye to people. But we weren’t the only people leaving town this week. Our volunteer Aline Sacher decided to leave Trinidad a little earlier than scheduled to return home to Germany, and she and some female friends, including Amanda, met on Monday evening. And a particularly fond farewell was granted to Kenny Holt, who arrived on Sunday morning for a flying visit to pack up the remainder of his family’s belongings and settle their affairs here in Trinidad. Having left for their own furlough in July, Kenny & Claudia and their three children have opted to stay in Scotland, following the Lord's provision to Kenny of a seemingly tailor-made job with The Vine Trust.

Church, then, on Sunday morning, was a fairly emotional occasion with all these exits taking place in the coming week. Nonetheless, we were hugely blessed over the weekend and encouraged by the kind words of so many. We also had a really special time with the youth group on Saturday evening, with Amanda in full waterworks mode.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, we leave the church without a missionary presence (though Maicol & KC return in March) but we see plenty of evidence that our brothers and sisters can run with the baton. This week’s women’s meeting was a great example, the first for some months after some struggles with attendance and commitment earlier in the year. 16 women from the church turned up and, most excitingly, eight of these were from the youth group. Potential.

By Thursday afternoon, we were packed and ready to leave that evening for Santa Cruz, whence I write as we await our flight to Sao Paulo tomorrow morning. Then it’s on to Heathrow on Monday evening and, provided British airports can get their act together, we will, God-willing, be in Glasgow by lunchtime on Tuesday.

As for this here blog, I think it’s fair to say that we will not be posting with the same frequency over the coming year. We have so many people to catch up with and, with only nine months or so in Sconnie Botland, I’m keen to ensure a decent chunk of my Saturdays are spent on top of hills than in front of computer screens.

However, furlough is as integral a part of missionary existence as time on the field, and so we will certainly endeavour to reflect the joys and challenges of re-adjusting to the Global North, now very much as outsiders, from time to time.

I’ve stated here beforehand that this blog was very much a last-minute idea back in early 2010, with the goal of providing up-to-the-minute (or up-to-the-week, at least) prayer information for anyone who happened to be thinking of us at any particular moment. But 32,000 hits later, we are well aware that we have built up a loyal following of weekly readers from a wide range of countries (readers in China, Russia and Romania, we’d love to hear from you personally!). And we know that the vast majority of you are fellow believers and read the blog not to be educated for knowledge’s sake, but so that you can pray better for us. Be assured: we have felt the impact of those prayers at every juncture over these past four years.

Thank you for your prayerful interest in us, have a wonderful, Christ-centred Christmas, and we look forward to sharing continued glimpses into the missionary lifestyle over the coming year.

Prayer

• For the remaining three legs of our journey home. Pray for safety and no luggage complications!
• For the Lord's work which does not stop at Fundación Totaí and El Jireh church. Please continue to uphold these great ministries in your prayers.

Praise

• For the encouragement of the new women's meeting in the church, particularly the high numbers of youth present. We've been praying that the youth would integrate themselves more fully into other ministries of the church, and this brings us great joy.
• For those special final moments with our Trinidad 'family' during the past week.
• For the Lord's work in us, in spite of us, and through us over the last four years. Soli Deo gloria!

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 07/12/13

Bachelor boys Arnold...

...and Paulo.

It’s high school graduation season in Trinidad and, so far, we’ve been invited to three of them, for various teenagers in the youth group, as well as a lunch on Wednesday for the son of some old family friends. So you could certainly say that the week has been a qualified success. Did you see what I did there?

With so many other things to attend to over the past few weeks, we hadn’t really factored in the usual spate of certificate-bestowal, and so we’re increasingly glad for the extra time that finishing at FT a week ago has afforded us over the last seven days. We have been rattling through a fairly extensive to-do list, with Amanda looking to clear the laundry backlog, I looking to clear out our cupboards, and both of us attending to the presentation we’ll be giving, God-willing, from January onwards – we were keen not to have that hanging over us during the Christmas holidays. In the meantime, I’ve been getting my first emails from Cornhill Scotland indicating the arrangements for the new term in January. It’s starting to feel very real now.

A fair few pictures which will be included in our presentation were taken on Sunday, which was another really encouraging day for us as a church. As mentioned last week, a course called ‘The Culture of Blessing’ was organised and overseen by a couple in the church in the afternoon. Between the morning services and the afternoon event, we had a big lunch together. And the course itself was of great benefit to us all. It focused particularly on the huge impact, for better or worse, that our words can make. It was a great message for the church to hear, in a culture where people can be a little less restrained with the tongue than back home. Inevitably, the last exercise required us to act on what we’d been learning, so I ended up having to telling a chap how much I loved him and listing all the things that were so great about him. At first, the two of us could hardly have been more petrified if we’d been forced at gunpoint to attend an X Factor finalists concert. But we got there in the end – and some kind of wonderful it was, too.

Sunday capped off another busy weekend at church, which on Saturday included the end-of-year party for the Bible Explorers’ Club. However, Amanda always prefers to go that little bit further, and so on Wednesday evening she took her teenage girls’ class out for a meal. Indeed, our evenings have more or less disappeared as we aim to spend a last few hours of quality time with as many people as possible. Last night we were out with our Bible study companions Carlos & Carla, tonight my bandmates have invited themselves over after youth group for some pizza (in fairness, they’re bringing the pizza) and tomorrow we’re planning on a meal with our fellow youth leaders. From Monday onwards, we’ll doubtless have to tell people to take the musicians’ approach if they want to see us, as we have a lot of packing to do.

One item we were delighted to stroke off the to-do list was the installation of the church’s new air conditioners, supplied by LAM Canada, which had been purchased about a month ago, yet had lain dormant in the church for nearly two weeks since their delivery. Wednesday afternoon proved a useful ‘test event’ (Brazilian football tournament organisers, take note) in the shape of the end-of-year party for the Community classes. 40 screaming, kinetic kids proved no match for our new walk-in freezer. Attending church will never have been such a refreshing experience.

Prayer

• Right. Things are now, as one might put it, very much 'on'. We have six days to organise our house, get round all the people we need to see, and pack our possessions into four suitcases. Pray for good progress and for patience with one another – these things can get a little stressful!
• On Thursday, we begin our long trip to Scotland with a bus trip to Santa Cruz, whence we hope to post one final entry on this here blog (our flights to Brazil, and then the UK, are on Sunday and Monday, respectively). Pray for safety on the road.

Praise

• Amidst the busyness of all these graduations, end-of-year events and special times at church, we’ve had really tangible reminders over the last week of the special relationship we have with our ‘faith family’, if you like. Life here can be pretty challenging at times, but the closer we get to furlough, the sadder we feel about saying goodbye to so many dear friends for a year. And that’s a happy problem, in our book. 
• Give thanks, too, for the resolution of the air conditioner situation. We hope these will be a great help to the church, where Sundays can at times be oppressively hot. Pray too that the more pleasant conditions will encourage more people to come along and be part of our community in Christ.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda