Episode 20: Your Honour

Walk this way for our latest podcast episode, the first since returning to Bolivia earlier this month. 

An important announcement: We will have a live Zoom session at 7:30pm BST/2:30pm EST on the 7th of June. There will be time for prayer and a general catch-up, for anyone who is interested in us and our work here. We will send the meeting link to those on our mailing lists. If you are not already, please write to us at cramandaham@gmail.com. 

Some pictures:

Quality time with Grandpa "Grandpa Bear" Kearon.

And one last cuddle with cousin Philip!

As you can see, Sam got glasses in Canada 
(though he was initially more intrigued by 
the box!) 

Charlotte Airport, en route home.

Back home, straight to the park, of course.

Prayer Points

• Give thanks for a safe return, and smooth transition, to Bolivia.
• Give thanks for Amanda's improving health.
• Give thanks for Sam's Kindergarten graduation, and pray for him over the holiday period.
• Pray for patience and wisdom as we settle back into our ministries.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig, Amanda & Sam

Episode 15: Samaipastors

Our latest podcast episode is right here (or on the right-hand side). Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Here we are in the main plaza of Samaipata, 
where we spent a few days out of the city.

Ta. Da.

This is El Fuerte, a stunning Inca ruin just outside Samaipata.

We went horseback riding!

Napoleon tagged along.

I think it's a sign.

This is Cuevas, a beautiful park about 30 minutes from Samaipata.

We were joined by Mark Hunt, the pastor of 
La Paz Community Church (you can hear an 
interview with him on the podcast).

Here are Sam and Mark, back in Santa Cruz.

Pigeon-feeding in the plaza. When in Rome...

This was really exciting. Dydier, a member of the church and 
one of the Langham students here in Santa Cruz, preached 
last Sunday for the first time!

Sam is learning about money in school (had to 
happen some day!). Here he is playing 'shop' 
for homework. Buying...

...and selling.

And staying with currency, Sam lost his first tooth! 
(PS. Its next-door neighbour fell out a few days later.)

Prayer Points

• Give thanks for the mutual encouragement afforded by Mark's visit with us.
• Give thanks for the chance to get away as a family for a few days.
• Give thanks for the progress of Dydier and other Langham students.
• Pray for continued wisdom for Amanda in her work with Latin Link short-term volunteers.
• Pray for the church, as we move into the season of Advent and hope to see more of our long-term absentees return.
• Keep praying that a second wave might be avoided here.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Episode 14: Bad Backs and Comebacks

Our late latest podcast episode is right here!

Here are some pictures from the last few months.

Sam on a visit to the Stansberry Children's Home, 
with our Latin Link volunteer Andrew.

Back in black.

Back in the pulpit.

Back to school.

Craig took part in a 120km cycle to raise money 
for a local rehabilitation ministry (don't worry, 
it was mostly downhill).

Sam and friends at the local Lomas de Arena.

A happy family. 

Prayer Points

• Give thanks for Amanda's re-emergence from burnout symptoms recently after a tough six months. Keep praying for this.
• Give thanks for Sam's positive start to the school year. Pray for wisdom as we help him through some behavioural issues.
• Give thanks for the church's re-opening in October and the great encouragement this has been to our faith community.
• Pray for Amanda in her role as Latin Link Bolivia's short-term co-ordinator, as she walks with our younger volunteers during this challenging time.
• Give thanks for a relatively peaceful presidential election in October.
• Pray for rain! This region of Bolivia is suffering from severe drought right now, and there have also been some terrible forest fires.
• A second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is likely on its way. Pray for wisdom on the part of key decision-makers, patience in the event of a lockdown and, above all, for a viable solution to this crisis.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig, Amanda & Sam

Episode 13: Heidi! Hi!

Not sure why, but the usual episode player isn't loading. In any case, you can find our latest podcast episode by following this link, or in the 'Podcast' section on the right-hand side. Thanks!

Our latest COVID discovery: the local 'beach'; really a river that is dry for most of the year,
which also plays host to a large construction site. It seems that health & safety remain a
less than primary concern in the Bolivian construction sector; suits us just fine!

One of these guys is a tired old dog in need of a shower and shave.
The other is our Yorkie.

Sam's latest COVID hobby? Rugby!

A low sun, petals and a classic Bolivian dusty road. So much beauty in the everyday here.

"When through the woods and forest glades I wander..."

Craig's band now has its very own (personalised) face-masks!

"I don't wanna be the Prrrresident of America..."

We had a Bolivian-style barbecue for Craig's birthday on Monday. We forgot to take
pictures, but the aftermath tells its own story. Truly sublime.

Sam's stated motivation in learning to cycle was being able to ride a motorcycle some day.
Our good friend Lewis kindly gave him a flavour recently. 

Chau!

Prayer Points

• Give thanks for God's sustaining hand over these five months. Remarkably, they have flown by!
• Pray for wisdom and safety as the lockdown eases and the pandemic shows no signs of abating.
• Pray for Sam as he embarks on his new school year later this month.
• Pray for the country as a whole. Pray that we might begin to see reversals in the spread of the virus, and pray for an easing of the political tensions in the country, which among other things are severely hampering the efforts of the health sector.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig, Amanda & Sam

Episode 11: Diecinueve

The Langham escuelitas enjoyed a great day-workshop back in early mid-March,
in the 'BC' era. This picture may as well have been taken a decade ago. 

A trip to the zoo...

...yielded monkey-spottings.

Cheer up, Sam! The joy of schoolwork by WhatsApp.

Extra-curricular activities have included the crafting of plasticine aliens.

No social distancing round these here parts!

Prayer Points

• Give thanks for this extended time together as a family.
• Pray for this extended time together as a family!
• Give thanks that we remain, so far as we can tell, untouched by COVID-19.
• Pray for Bolivia as a country, that inter-class tensions would not be exacerbated by current events.
• Pray for the Christian community here, whose work has either ground to a halt or can only be continued via God-given creativity and imagination.
• Be assured that our prayers go with you in these uncertain days. May you know the peace of God, our Refuge and Strength.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Circular Motions

New blog-post, same old excuses. In the busyness of this initial spell here in Santa Cruz, we aren't quite managing to reach that one-post-a-week target. More broken promises. We really should go into politics.

Be assured it's not the worst busyness. If we don't have as much time for writing, we're at least lining our stomachs, as the oh-so-generous hospitality afforded us by church members and others here shows no sign of abating. We really could not have felt more welcomed. Just wait till they find out what we're really like!

But we wouldn't want you to go thinking that we're too good for you, our old friends. And so, without any further ado, here is the first of what we hope will be a fairly frequent series of blog posts about adjusting to Santa Cruz life, with some prayer points to close. We will begin in an area where the differences between the two cities could not be starker: driving.

Driving was just no fun in Trinidad. The roads were abysmal, so every journey took our poor car one step closer to the next inconvenient visit to our mechanic - at least once every couple of months. Both access to easy credit and the city's population had grown so quickly in the last decade or so, but the infrastructure had not come close to catching up. So the town's already narrow and liberally-potholed arteries were becoming increasingly clogged up with motocicletas. 

All of which meant we rather looked forward to our occasional journeys both to and in Santa Cruz over the years. For a decent part of the road between the two cities, you could really gie it laldy (Scots, verb: give a hunner percent effort), not passing another vehicle for miles. You could finally enjoy music on the road the way its makers intended (the epic Hamilton became something of a favourite). And when you got to Santa Cruz itself, you could drive on relatively developed road networks, several lanes wide in places. The longer cross-town journeys were fun because they were so novel.

Well, I (Craig) can report that the day-to-day reality is a little more gruelling! In Trinidad, we lived on the outskirts of the city, and yet it never took us much more than 15 minutes to get anywhere else in the city. Here, true to our personalities, we also live on the edge, on the southwest of the city, where both Sam's school and my workplace are located, and these alone from our house are a 15-minute journey. Getting into the centre, meanwhile - or, say, the north or east of the city - will take at least 30 minutes. 

Being a more urban environment, things are of course more spread out in their own districts. But even, say, our 'local' supermarket is still a 20-minute drive. The reality of this hit home in our first week or two, when we had impromptu visitors from the church for lunch, and I decided to pop out and get a tub of ice-cream, a ten-to-fifteen-minute inconvenience in Trinidad. It took the best part of an hour to pick up that single solitary tub. Not worth it!

The 'bicycle wheel' from above. We live to the south-west of the city.

Now, Santa Cruz is a city of around 2 million people; quite a step up from Trinidad's 130,000. And the size of the city obviously reflects this. Yet, it's surprisingly straightforward to make your way around…quite literally, in fact! Because the city is built around a ring system, with up to eight ring-roads depending on where you are. If you think of a bicycle wheel, the main thoroughfares are like spokes. I like that, if you are in the centre, you can get to the 'spoke' you want quickly and make your way out from there easily, if not always speedily.

Long-time readers may remember that Amanda spent an extended period here in Santa Cruz in 2012 when we had infertility treatment. During that time I remained in Trinidad for work purposes, but came through to the city at various points to visit. Amanda was on strict bed-rest, of course, but I needed my exercise. So I spent many hours simply walking. And that helped me get to grips with the city's layout, which has been most helpful as we have settled in.

So while navigation here is something of an art, with a little bit of practice it can be learned fairly quickly. Driving norms also require a little getting used to. The junctions for the spokes and thoroughfares mostly take the form of roundabouts. So far, so British. However, there the similarities end - and not just because they drive on the wrong side of the road. Insofar as the rules are observed, it is those in the roundabout who are expected to give way to those approaching it. But as you probably had already worked out, this being Bolivia, the application is somewhat elastic, and essentially the same 'road safety' rule applies here as anywhere else: drive to the same maniacal extent as everyone else, and you'll probably be OK.

We recently enjoyed an overnight stay at the spectacular Refugio Los Volcanes, 
just 90 minutes' drive from our home.

Prayer Points

• Amanda and I are both still having some niggling health issues, particularly of the gastric variety! Probably a byproduct of moving to another city, but a real pain (quite literally) nonetheless when they arise. We are hoping to see a doctor soon. Pray for some answers.
• Continue to pray for the sale of our house in Trinidad. We are thankful that with the help of the tenant, we have been able to address some of the security issues there (see our last prayer points).
• In addition to my pastoral work, I am hoping to do a little work with Langham Preaching again here in Santa Cruz, which remains a real untapped market for what has been a very successful ministry in most of Bolivia. There will be an information meeting this morning to gauge interest, chaired by Langham staff from Cochabamba. Please pray for this.
• Amanda has been keeping busy with her new short-term coordinator role with the Latin Link Bolivia team. We had a new volunteer -- Regina, from Germany -- at the house to stay with us in the last week as Amanda oversaw here orientation. Give thanks for the opportunity for Amanda to serve again, and pray for wisdom.
• Sam continues to excel at school, but we are in the process of applying for a place for him at an English-language Christian school with which our church has an affiliation. He will likely be called for an aural exam at some point next month. Pray that God would be in this. 

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig, Amanda & Sam

Saturday Post -- 16/12/17

Mother and conjunctivitis-riddled son, washing dishes
together, Wednesday morning. With hindsight, maybe
not the brightest of ideas.

Freak. Demon-eyes. Pinko. Alien spawn. Watermelon woman.

At this time of year, with its great emphasis upon giving and receiving among loved ones, the above is a mere sampling of the good-natured insults that Amanda and I have exchanged. Yep, you've probably already guessed it. This week, we were given the gift of conjunctivitis.

Trinidad has been in the midst of something of an epidemic these past weeks. For most of the last month, a good number of our friends in the community have been struck down by the highly contagious pink fiend; albeit, to varying degrees. By last weekend, we had somehow managed to steer clear of it, and assumed we were home and dry.

That was until Sunday night, when I felt some low-level itching and throbbing in the middle of the night, and struggled to get back to sleep. Sure enough, the mirror confirmed the worst, and Sam was next in the firing line. Still, for us lads, said mirror and Amanda's barbs were the only reminders of our ocular abnormality; the pain and irritation were minimal. Any pink remaining was of a decidedly Financial Times hue.

So we were glad that the worst seemed to have passed, and especially that Amanda had somehow kept out of its path of destruction.

That was until I woke up on Thursday morning next to an extra from a Star Trek episode set on Planet Zug-Zug. Overnight, Amanda's eyes had swollen to the size of small rugby balls (and more league than union, I might add). Not that I could see them, as it took vast quantities of chamomile tea (supposedly the best solution) just to be able to open the eyelids, stuck together with no end of gunge and gloop. Dynamite wouldn't have gone amiss. The eyes themselves were blood-red and highly painful. A few hours later, she was gripped by a fever. 

Sam shows off a little stable decoration he made at the club
this week.

All this, and Sam's tearing around the house like Hurricane Humphrey. Did this have to happen during the school holidays?

Anyway, with a little help from good friends, we were able to subcontract Sam's care, and I was freed up a little to attend to Amanda, whose eyes haven't shaken off that redness, but the pain is significantly reduced and they have reverted to their normal, beautiful, shape.

Working, as we do, in a health institute, meant we were necessarily based at home for the whole week, and that enabled me to work on end-of-year updates for FT sponsors and our own supporters, as well as starting to prepare for next weekend's Christmas Eve service, where I'll be giving a short evangelistic talk.

On that note, Sam's been able to get along to holiday club again this week, where much of the activity is building towards that same Christmas Eve service. And on Monday, he had his little end-of-year show with his class from school, in which he more than held his own in the much sought-after part of Bunny Rabbit #3. 

Sam with one of his teachers, Valeria,
on Monday evening.

Oh, and Amanda's Mum is arriving on Tuesday for an extended visit. I do hope she packs her goggles. 

Prayer

• That Amanda recovers soon from her conjunctivitis.
• For Amanda's mother's (Selene) travels over the next few days.

Praise

• For Sam's largely cooperative behaviour during these difficult days.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 14/10/17

Craig with fellow Mr. Bolivia contestants MCB new membership candidates.

During a dramatic week of World Cup qualifying, one of the big headlines was Panama's president declaring a national holiday the day after their first ever participation in the tournament was secured. The slapdash nature of this was certainly a key component of the story. I joked with a friend that, were the same thing to happen to Bolivia, we'd probably get a week! For spur-of-the-moment days off work are standard practice down here, so much so that we're struggling to remember the last time Sam attended school for a full five days.

(Utterly irrelevant tangent alert: Bolivia, like Scotland, share the honour of having played in the opening game of the World Cup, Bolivia against Germany in Chicago in 1994, and Scotland against Brazil in Paris in 1998. And Bolivia, like Scotland, have since failed to qualify. See also: Senegal, South Africa.)

Local holidays and the like, curiously, have taken on a strikingly different complexion since Sam started school, with things reaching something of a nadir this week. Two consecutive days went down the proverbial, with the added bonus of being announced only on the afternoon of the day before. Wednesday was international women's day so, naturally, all members of the fairer sex were entitled to an impromptu day off (at no inconvenience whatsoever to their employers, one would vouch), while a a maintenance mishap rendered the school unsafe for Sam and his toddler cohorts on Thursday. 

The circumstances were not ideal, not least for Amanda, who had flown solo on the parenting front from Thursday till Saturday of last week, thanks to a conference I attended. This was the annual national assembly of Misiones Cristianas Bolivia, our church's denomination, which, for the first time in its 57-year history, was taking place in Trinidad itself. This was my first time in attendance as a delegate (my membership was confirmed on the opening day), with two others in our church already among the membership. Essentially, the national assembly was an extended business meeting, with a significant chunk of time given over to reviewing the body's constitution (so long that much of it will have to be reviewed via email communications over the following year). A necessary evil, then, if not quite my idea of fun. 

That said, it was a great opportunity to meet like-minded individuals from across the country. Like Mark and Carol, an older American couple who run a seminary in a rural part of the country. Or Mario and Helen, who are commended from the very first church I attended as a boy back in Hamilton. Or Felix, a Bolivian missionary who works with a tribe who are based 12 hours' from the nearest major city. No electricity + no internet + no telephone lines = a calling!

Helpfully, the fellowship opportunities were extended beyond the conference itself. In the evening, three special services were held for the Trinidad churches to attend, with a series of talks given on the Reformation. One of the main speakers was Canadian Jürgen Schultz (or 'Jorge' to Bolivians) whom attentive readers may remember as being our speaker at camp last year -- and a very good one at that! It was good to catch up with him, too, and his 40-minute overview of the life and impact of Martin Luther was soul-stirring.

At the Foundation this week, the annual ENT surgical campaign has been in full swing and Amanda has been helping to keep things ticking over. Meanwhile, I've been preparing more teaching materials for church: a sermon for this Sunday and, for Thursday, a new Bible study based on a book called 'Living in the Power of the Gospel'. It's a book that was recommended to me by a missionary friend as having had a powerful impact on pastors and laypersons throughout Bolivia recently. We began by reading the first couple of chapters and thinking particularly about Colossians 2:6, with its encouragement to the believers to live their lives 'just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord'. In other words, it is the same power that saved us that now sanctifies us, and not an ounce of this comes from within ourselves. If you've read the blog of late, you can see that this ties in nicely with some of the issues that have arisen in the light of our sermon series in Galatians.

Anyway, best get on with the rest of my day. After all, Sam never seems to have classes on Saturdays!

Prayer

• This week we met with a young couple called Cristhian and Milena, who are having some marriage difficulties. They have a three-year-old son. Please pray for them, and for wisdom for ourselves in counselling them.
• For our work as board members at the Foundation, where we are occasionally having to deal with some difficult staff issues.

Praise

• Craig and the rest of the Langham Preaching group had their first meeting this morning since the Level 3 workshop. Give thanks for a good start.
• For a great initial Bible study on Thursday.
• For a good first MCB meeting for Craig last weekend.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 23/07/16

Told you.

The momentousness of the decision made in our favour yesterday was somewhat belied by the circumstances. They could hardly have been less dramatic!

In principle, the adoption was confirmed on Monday morning, when we had our final hearing at the judge's office, in the company of the usual representatives from the appropriate agencies around town. As has been the case since we began fostering Sam, there were no objections whatsoever. All that was left was for the judge to prepare the 'sentencing' document, which she said would be ready by Friday. As well as confirming the adoption, this document would officially request the name-change (though known as Sam by all and sundry, he still officially went by his old name).

Yesterday morning, then, Amanda and Sam swung by my office -- where I was in the midst of writing a sermon -- and we drove into town one more time. And things could hardly have been less formal. We sat on the couch in the judge's office and had a natter with her (as well as a fine decision maker, she's a lovely woman!), while she waited for her staff to have the sentencing document printed. Half an hour later, one of her administrators summoned us to his cluttered desk, asked us to put our John Hancocks in the relevant slots, and that was it.

After that, there was really only one thing for it: off to Sam's favourite restaurant Pizza Hut, where we celebrated by playing in the ball-pool and having extra servings of chocolate sauce at the ice cream factory.

I jest. The closest thing Trinidad has to a Pizza Hut is, er, a literal pizza hut! 

We did at least pick up a tub of our favourite ice cream on the way home from the supermarket. But after that, it was back into our routine: me finishing my sermon, Amanda attending an afternoon meeting, and then spending the entire evening with volunteers from Fundación Totaí, preparing for a major-league food sale this lunchtime.

Hollywood it was not. But, then again, our main concern over the past months has not so much been over the probability of an approval , but the pace of the process in general (the extinction of parental rights -- granted to us at the end of March -- is supposed to trigger a final consultation process for the adoption of 30 days; hah!). We're just glad the whole thing is at an end so we can start thinking about things like passports and visas. Things started feeling pretty 'real' some time ago anyway.

As for a celebration, we're off to Bolivia's capital city, Sucre, next Saturday morning, ostensibly for a conference and a meeting with Latin Link (see prayer points for more), but we're spending a week there to get some much-needed family time. Sucre -- really a colonial town, if anything, and a beautiful one at that -- is as child-friendly as Trinidad is not, so we're excited about that.

So we hope the adoption news is enough for regular readers to go on; the blog will likely take a break for a couple of weekends, but we'll surely get things going again with plenty of pictures from Sucre. Maybe we'll go skydiving or something too. At least then we'll have something dramatic to blog about.

Prayer

• In Sucre, we are hoping to join Latin Link on the field in Bolivia. If you are a UK financial supporter of our ministry, you know that gifts are given through Latin Link. But our commending organisation is, in fact, LAM Canada, with whom Latin Link have an informal relationship, one which has enabled us to raise support both in the UK and Canada. We have never been formally affiliated with Latin Link. However, as the missionary team here has slowly dwindled (we are now the last ones standing), we have increasingly felt our need for fellowship. While recognising our commendation from LAM Canada, who have no missionaries in Bolivia, Latin Link are offering to welcome us to their team of missionaries in Bolivia, something which will give us greater accountability on the field, and increased fellowship opportunities, with built-in events each year on both those fronts. To that end, we have an interview in Sucre a week on Wednesday. Pray for a positive outcome.
• Craig is preaching on Titus 3 at church tomorrow morning.
• Pray for wisdom for Craig and the other elders in dealing with a difficult issue at church.

Praise

• Amanda is doing a lot better; thanks for your prayers.
• For Sam's adoption. Been looking forward to saying that for a while.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda