Saturday Post -- 08/05/10

Like a frantic hack dashing from Tory Central Office, I’m just a few minutes in the door from our three-month review meeting with the board. It was a great chance to reflect on our time here so far and plan for the coming months.

Amanda is to continue practising her Spanish writing and reading in the mornings, through her independent study and classes, and her speaking and listening in the afternoons, through her work in the Fundación. She’ll go to class for one more day of the week (Monday-Wednesday and Friday), while on Thursday mornings she continues her work with the head nurse, Cintia, at the local maternity hospital. She’ll continue to co-lead her Sunday School class with Jo.

Meanwhile, I will cease going to the classes in the mornings but will continue to set aside an hour each morning for Spanish study. In the afternoons, I’ve been given the green light to start the English classes in the Fundación, which I hope will take place twice a week. There may also be opportunities to take classes in local schools. I’ll be lending a hand in the Emmaus course, where currently, only three staff members are distributing and correcting increasing volumes of books on a part-time basis. And I’ll also be chipping in with the morning meditations, chairing one week in four. This is the period at the start of the day when the workers gather and the chair gives a ten-minute thought for the day based on a particular Bible passage.

Finally, I’ll be aiming to breathe fresh life into two areas that have fallen by the wayside a little over the past year: the Fundación’s library and – of particular importance to y’all out in cyberspace – the website. And I’ve formally been granted leadership of the Education division on an interim basis, which is likely to become a permanent ‘appointment’ in a few months’ time.

Additionally, we’re both hoping to start going along to sign language classes, which take place for an hour every Saturday in town. Given that one of the staff members is deaf, and that ear/hearing care is very much at the forefront of FT’s health division, this should be of real benefit to us.

So, we are really grateful to have left the meeting with a confirmation of our thoughts/prayers. Amanda certainly was looking to make further strides in language and I had been going a bit stir-crazy in the house during the afternoons, albeit keeping a close eye on important international affairs on TV. Looking at our new schedules, the Champions League theme-tune may be a distant memory this time next year.

A week is a long time in Bolivia, as Harold Wilson didn’t quite put it, and this has certainly been notable in several senses.

Not long after posting last Friday’s update, we received a phonecall from Jo concerning some friends of hers who were looking to sell their car. The couple popped round on Saturday morning to let us have a look and, by Tuesday morning, we’d agreed to take ownership of their 1995 burgundy RAV4. It’s great to have a sturdy, reliable vehicle to get around in, in a town with enough potholes to swallow a small country, and to maintain the Cunningham family’s proud Toyotastic traditions! More than anything, however, we’re really thankful to be gradually recovering our independence as a married couple.

This is also aided by the house-move, which moved up a couple of gears this week as we purchased a couple of essential kitchen items and prepared the kitchen for its paint-job. We’re on schedule to move into our new apartment next weekend. Tomorrow we’re off on a mad quest for all those basic household items you take for granted. Ikea haven’t quite set their sights on Trinidad yet, so we’ll just have to go with the local equivalent: visit every market going and barter hard.

However, it’s looking increasingly as if I’ll be left holding the Dulux, as on Monday the 10-day annual Campañakicks off, during which Diego and the team of nurses will be addressing a slew of the town’s more complex surgical cases with the aid of a team of ENT surgeons from the US. And helping in post-op will be Amanda. It’ll be like ten election nights in a row, except with clear and positive results at the end of it all. I tell you, you politicians have got nothing on my missus!

Prayer
• For Amanda as she faces an exhausting, and exciting, week in surgery.
• For Craig as he sets out in his new roles from Monday onwards.

Praise
• For a positive meeting with the board and a clear vision for the next few months.
• For the Lord’s provision of a car and a few other items to make our new house a home.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda