Saturday Post -- 09/02/13

Just been round at the site this morning to meet the guy who'll be fitting our kitchen. While there, we took some more pictures of what is now an Off-White House or, in Spanish, La Casa Casi Blanca.

The windows were installed this week.

Most rooms now have their first coat of paint. Here's an upstairs bedroom.

The titular couple.

A view of the back garden from an upstairs balcony. The temporary
foreman's shed is now gone -- it used to sit where the new earth has been laid. 

Three key players talk shop in the master bedroom. From left-to-right:
site manager "Chichi", kitchen designer César and project coordinator
Gunther.

The living/dining area, with 'accent wall'.

Things are really motoring now, with the security fence being put in place and the kitchen due to be fitted out in the next couple of weeks. It's not unforeseeable that we could be moved in by the end of the month, well ahead of the state visit of Mr. & Mrs. A Cunningham in mid-April.

Those readers who don't frequent planet Facebook may be unaware of a major answer to prayer during the week. As mentioned in our prayer points, Amanda had lost her wallet while out shopping, containing a little cash but, much more crucially, all of her major ID and bank cards from the UK, Canada and Bolivia. So on Monday morning (our day off), as we both slowly regained consciousness after the customary lie-in, we prepared ourselves mentally for a day which would be spent visiting Trinidad's police station, immigration offices and various lawyers' offices -- and this to simply get the ball rolling on the long process of replacing Amanda's driver's licence and Bolivian I.D. card. Particularly grating was the loss of the I.D. card, given it just had a few weeks of validity left -- knowing the authorities here as we do, it would not have been a surprise to be told to acquire a replacement and then apply for a renewal.

But, gloriously, we can only hypothesise. Because out of the blue Amanda received a phonecall from Anna, the secretary at FT. Someone had turned up with Amanda's I.D. card, no doubt assisted by the address supplied on the I.D. card. Amanda promptly made her way over to find that the family she met had not only that card, but her wallet too, lacking money, but complete with all the cards necessary to get by here and abroad (though the bank-cards had obviously been cancelled). Wisely, Amanda opted not to ask the family how they came about the wallet, and gave them a small reward as a token of our gratitude.

As it happened, answered prayer was to become something of a running theme this week, with a few other really hairy situations arising in which the Lord graciously proved once again (need we have doubted) that he is overwhelmingly 'for us' and our fellow believers.

Unsurprisingly, the schools were nowhere near ready to start classes proper this week -- perhaps I'll have something more to report next weekend, by which time Carnavál will be out of the way. In February of last year I gave a rough guide to what happens here in Trinidad for this, the biggest of all Latin American festivals. In terms of the church, we've made a couple of important tweaks to the customary all-day event we put on for the youth group: firstly, it will take place on Monday (the traditionally alcohol-soaked peak of the festivities) and secondly, appropriately for an event which involves copious water-fighting, we're staging the event at the laguna, Trinidad's man-made lake resort. It promises to be wetter than a girls'-night-out at Les Miserables.

Prayer

• For safety and a good time for all at the youth event on Monday. Pray especially for our friend Kenny who's speaking on Holiness, a theme with particular relevance this weekend. And pray for all of Trinidad these next few days, for safety and, somehow, that God's voice would speak through the chaos.
• Keep praying for Porfidia, who we are really keen to employ this year as a teacher in the community classes. She is getting closer to a possible job-swap which would allow her to teach school in the morning and work at FT in the afternoons.

Praise

• For the returning of Amanda's wallet.
• For another successful surgical campaign at FT this past week.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda