Diego & Jo: An Appreciation

Trinidad has lost a couple of great servants this week in the shape of Diego and Jo Santana, who on Friday set off with their three daughters for Santa Cruz, a few days ahead of their departure for Diego’s native Tenerife on Monday, bringing to an end a combined 28 years of missionary service in this corner of the globe. In their most recent guises, they served as president and administrative director of Fundación Totaí and it has been our pleasure to work alongside them over the past couple of years. Trinidad will be without a couple of rare vision, who have, with the Lord’s help, established an Ear and Hearing Care service which is unrivalled throughout Bolivia; we, meanwhile, say goodbye to a family who have made a great impact upon us as individuals and as a couple.

I first got to know Diego & Jo during my gap-year at a project called La Palmera in 2000/1. The Santanas arrived in October 2000 for the first time as a married couple and got down to business in typically speedy fashion. Diego took charge of the fledgling health centre, while Jo resumed her duties as the school’s headteacher.

Professionally, I learned much from Jo, who imbued me with the confidence I needed to stand in front of thirty unintelligible teenagers and teach English. It proved to be the first step along my education-centric career path, even if I wasn’t to know it at the time. Though I had no medical interest, Diego was a particularly powerful example to me as a young Christian. He’d come to Bolivia as a highly-skilled ENT surgeon but his work that year – and for a few more later on – would be limited to general practitioner shifts with the schoolchildren and their families, as he endured a seemingly endless wait for his papers to come through from the government. Years later, his wait would, in the end, be rewarded, as thousands of ENT patients can now testify. But his patience and grace as he went about his day-to-day work impacted me greatly.

Diego and Jo’s influence was, if anything, even more keenly felt outside of work hours. Though conversation in the home often took in our shared sporting and cultural interests, it was never too long before spiritual concerns came to the fore. With their vast array of apologetics texts, Diego and Jo were the first Christians I’d met who challenged me to be a critical thinker when it came to my faith, and brought to my attention aspects of my faith I hadn’t even yet considered. Furthermore, I saw at first-hand a fine personification of Biblical teaching on the roles of husband and wife. To be in their home in the build-up to one of Diego’s sermons or Bible studies was to witness not simply a marriage, but a partnership, with Diego busily scribbling notes to the sound of pages being sifted, as Jo plucked out one supporting verse after another.

In summer 2008, a year into our own marriage, Amanda and I were feeling a lack of satisfaction about our professional and personal lives, and sensed that God might be calling us to full-time service – though exactly how, we were not then aware. That same summer, the Santanas (now with three bonny daughters in tow) arrived in Scotland for their latest furlough and when we got round to meeting them, we were left in no doubt as to the need for people with our skills at Fundación Totaí (which they had since set up in 2004). Though keen on a change of direction, we were somewhat unprepared for such a big one. Jo, in typically brusque fashion, encouraged us to take the decision in prayer and the doors would open. And as many of you know, they did and some!

Since January of last year, we’ve been glad of the opportunity to renew our acquaintance with the Santanas. I’m not really sure that white guys like us can truly adapt to life here, but to the extent to which it’s possible, Jo has been of seismic importance, whether pointing us in the direction of the best TV repair guy, waiting for hours with us in queues (or melees as they so often become), recommending the best place for ice cream, or providing us with transportation in those first six months when we were sans voiture. And this time around, they have opened their home to us in the most literal sense, effectively converting their upstairs into a separate apartment and thus giving us a place to call ‘home’.

But this is no eulogy. The family is moving on to pastures new but their passions will not go unpursued. Indeed, Diego is taking on a high-profile Senior Global Advisor role with CBM (Christian Blind Mission) and will, in fact, be able to return to Trinidad a couple of times a year to carry out ENT surgery, as part of his remit. And with the girls continually growing stature and independence, Jo will be freer to pursue her own career, whether that be in health or education (she’s supremely gifted in both). So we look forward to seeing them all some day in the future – Diego, God-willing, in 2012. But until then, we will, as the writer to the Hebrews urges, ‘remember…those who spoke to [us] the Word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.’