Saturday Post -- 31/08/13

You find me this morning with only the dogs and your dear self for company. But never fear – my solitude is of a most temporal nature. For last night, Amanda upped and left me for the bright lights of Santa Cruz with the stated mission of rendezvousing with her mother and aunts, who are themselves due to arrive there in the very early hours of Sunday. God-willing, they will then take the overnight bus on Sunday night, arriving in Trinidad on Monday morning. We are excited to see some more family members, to welcome yet more first-time visitors to Trinidad, and, of course, get to sample Trinidad’s finest eateries on the ‘family tab’.

Naturally, we’ve had a few minor jobs to do around the house in anticipation of their arrival. In between all that, however, things have been busy enough. Amanda has once again been left in sole charge of Audiology, with Odalys not returning to Trinidad until yesterday afternoon. And I, all keenness personified, have been bashing out a sermon which isn’t due till next weekend, hoping to clear the schedule for time with our guests.

On Tuesday evening, we had the opportunity to spend a little time with Carlos and Carla, a young couple from the church (you may remember that the Lord did a mighty work in Carlos’s life about two years ago, restoring him – as an alcoholic – to sobriety, and rekindling his desire to serve him). A while back, they had been meeting regularly with our fellow missionaries Kenny & Claudia Holt (Carlos and Claudia come from the same family). We had grown aware recently that they were maybe in need of continued encouragement, with the Holts having returned to Scotland in July – and it turns out that they had too! So, on Tuesday, when we proposed meeting together on a weekly basis to study the Bible, they were extremely appreciative of the offer. We already have positive relationships with them – I with Carlos through the band, Amanda with Carla through her young women’s Bible study – and are looking forward to deepening these.

As with my own parents’ visit, we are anticipating the next few weeks to be pretty busy, in the best possible sense. At the tail end, we have taken some time off work in order to accompany Amanda’s mum and aunts to Santa Cruz for a few days, and we’re hoping to stay there a little longer ourselves post-departure. So we shall once again put the blog into shutdown mode, probably returning at some point before the end of September. Should anything urgent come up, we’ll be sure to notify the Facebook community. In the meantime…

Prayer

• For safety for Amanda’s relatives, who are currently travelling south from Toronto, with a short layover in Panamá. And, indeed, for safety for all of our travel between Trinidad and Santa Cruz over the next few weeks.
• For a really blessed, refreshing, encouraging time with family.
• Please remember Tuesday evenings in your prayers – i.e., our times with Carlos and Carla, a couple who need a lot of encouragement.
• Continue to remember FT’s need of an Otoacoustics Emissions machine in your prayers – Amanda and Odalys could really do with replacing the ones that broke some time ago.

Praise

• For a really encouraging start to the ‘Sex & Relationships’ topic at the youth group. Lots of open, relaxed, Bible-based discussion last week.
• For those participants in the R.E. classes who are coming to a saving faith in the Lord Jesus – a few more this week.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 31/08/13

You find me this morning with only the dogs and your dear self for company. But never fear – my solitude is of a most temporal nature. For last night, Amanda upped and left me for the bright lights of Santa Cruz with the stated mission of rendezvousing with her mother and aunts, who are themselves due to arrive there in the very early hours of Sunday. God-willing, they will then take the overnight bus on Sunday night, arriving in Trinidad on Monday morning. We are excited to see some more family members, to welcome yet more first-time visitors to Trinidad, and, of course, get to sample Trinidad’s finest eateries on the ‘family tab’.

Naturally, we’ve had a few minor jobs to do around the house in anticipation of their arrival. In between all that, however, things have been busy enough. Amanda has once again been left in sole charge of Audiology, with Odalys not returning to Trinidad until yesterday afternoon. And I, all keenness personified, have been bashing out a sermon which isn’t due till next weekend, hoping to clear the schedule for time with our guests.

On Tuesday evening, we had the opportunity to spend a little time with Carlos and Carla, a young couple from the church (you may remember that the Lord did a mighty work in Carlos’s life about two years ago, restoring him – as an alcoholic – to sobriety, and rekindling his desire to serve him). A while back, they had been meeting regularly with our fellow missionaries Kenny & Claudia Holt (Carlos and Claudia come from the same family). We had grown aware recently that they were maybe in need of continued encouragement, with the Holts having returned to Scotland in July – and it turns out that they had too! So, on Tuesday, when we proposed meeting together on a weekly basis to study the Bible, they were extremely appreciative of the offer. We already have positive relationships with them – I with Carlos through the band, Amanda with Carla through her young women’s Bible study – and are looking forward to deepening these.

As with my own parents’ visit, we are anticipating the next few weeks to be pretty busy, in the best possible sense. At the tail end, we have taken some time off work in order to accompany Amanda’s mum and aunts to Santa Cruz for a few days, and we’re hoping to stay there a little longer ourselves post-departure. So we shall once again put the blog into shutdown mode, probably returning at some point before the end of September. Should anything urgent come up, we’ll be sure to notify the Facebook community. In the meantime…

Prayer

• For safety for Amanda’s relatives, who are currently travelling south from Toronto, with a short layover in Panamá. And, indeed, for safety for all of our travel between Trinidad and Santa Cruz over the next few weeks.
• For a really blessed, refreshing, encouraging time with family.
• Please remember Tuesday evenings in your prayers – i.e., our times with Carlos and Carla, a couple who need a lot of encouragement.
• Continue to remember FT’s need of an Otoacoustics Emissions machine in your prayers – Amanda and Odalys could really do with replacing the ones that broke some time ago.

Praise

• For a really encouraging start to the ‘Sex & Relationships’ topic at the youth group. Lots of open, relaxed, Bible-based discussion last week.
• For those participants in the R.E. classes who are coming to a saving faith in the Lord Jesus – a few more this week.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 24/08/13

That's more like it!

Another sur (our third in the space of a month) has just blown in and, while the south winds are an immense source ofjoy to us white people (temperatures had been averaging mid-30s over the past few days, for any sake), they can have a somewhat disruptive impact upon the various ministries we’re involved in, not least with young people, with many parents reluctant to let their darlings leave the house and catch a cold (not that the average home here provides much protection from a chill wind).

That’s certainly been the case with my old Emmaus course buddy, Alfredo. During the day, Alfredo works as a cobbler in a market and, depending on the extent to which business is a-booming, he’s usually happy to sit and talk about his current book there and then. However, Alfredo also has a minor disability and can only walk with the aid of crutches. When the south winds career through Trinidad, they provide another unwanted obstacle to getting to work.

So the last few Wednesday mornings (our agreed weekly meeting time) I’d shown up only to find a closed shop (Alfredo doesn’t have a mobile phone to contact me beforehand – very unusual in this town, where text-messaging is the paramount non-oral form of communication). The surge in temperatures over the last ten days, however, meant Alfredo could get to work this past week and we had a productive time of it on Wednesday morning as we discussed his book, which focuses on the doctrine of the Trinity.

The week has provided several such opportunities to dig deep into Scripture and uncover life-changing truths, not least in the classroom. You may remember that last year, having studied John’s gospel with my R.E. classes in the local high school, KC and I spent some time talking to individual students about their responses to some personal questions at the end of their textbook (this, again, is material from the Emmaus course); through this process, many of the young people put their trust in Jesus. This year’s book had a similar set of closing questions, and KC and I are once again sitting down with the students.

This year, we have once again had the privilege of praying with some students who have made a decision of faith – though some of them, it has transpired, had already taken that step themselves earlier in the year. However, there are, of course, a decent chunk of students in the classes who became Christians last time around, and so the last few days have given us an opportunity to assess how they’re progressing in their faith. Many come from homes where their parents are reluctant to let them come out to church (particularly for the Saturday night youth meeting – understandable given our relatively isolated location on the edge of town) and so we’ve been pointing them in the direction of good core Bible books to read, while encouraging those who are able to attend church to make the effort if they wish to grow.

Whereas many of these students had some idea of the gospel message, the majority of people in the English class were confronted with it for the first time this week. This year we are once again using the text ‘What Christians Believe’, a purpose-built guide to the basic tenets, written in a simple, short-sentence style, with English students in mind. This week’s lessons looked at why it was necessary for Jesus to die and what his death means for us. On Tuesday, for example, I put it to the students that we’re all familiar with the idea that we’ll go to heaven if we’re good people. And, of course, they had all heard of this. When I then told them that there was zero biblical basis for this belief, the majority of faces in the room performed contortions that the Cirque du Soleil’s troupe would be proud of.

One student, in fact, came to me at the end of both reading lessons this week to tell me (in as nice a way possible!) that the teaching this week had ‘messed with her head’ but that she’d be really keen to sit down and discuss these things in greater detail. Please pray for this woman, Teresa, whose two children also come to the class – Amanda knows her well as she has some hearing issues, and so she will hopefully have the opportunity to talk with her soon, it being more appropriate for a woman to meet privately with her.

In between all this, I’ve been faced with the daunting task of preparing the teaching this week at church on Philippians 2:1-11; daunting in the sense that, well, the passage itself read 20 times over would make for a far better teaching spot than anything I could say. Nevertheless, I’ve got something vaguely resembling a sermon awaiting my attention on the desktop post-Post. I’ve also been able to make some headway on a sermon on the end of the chapter (on Timothy and Epaphroditus), due in a couple of weeks’ time. By that point, Amanda’s family will be here, hence my desire to get it polished off ASAP.

Amanda has been a little under the weather this week, having been hit by a viral infection over the weekend. Recovering surely but slowly, she returned to work to find that her Audiology partner in crime, Odalys, had travelled to La Paz to address a health concern of her own, and wouldn’t be back till the end of the month. So she’s been (wo)manfully working through the Audiology caseload while doing her best to get back to full health. A tough old week.

And in her position as youth group coordinator, shared with KC, her afternoons have been dominated by preparations for the next couple of weekends, in which we will be touching on what the French surely don’t call les oiseaux et les abeilles. Yes, our focus this time around is on Sex & Relationships, a topic of great importance in any society and particularly in a culture where promiscuity and teenage pregnancies are as much a part of everyday life as the rice consumed with every last meal (even the pasta-based ones). So please pray for wisdom and discernment for all of us as we navigate these choppy waters.

You’ve made it this far? You’re made of stern stuff, my friend. Before signing off on this relative epic, we thought you might be interested to know that Amanda has made a decision as to her own course of studies next year, this being a requirement of LAM Canada for our furlough year. She will be enrolling in a distance-learning ‘Certificate in Christian Studies’ course provided by St John’s College in Nottingham. The course meets several important criteria: 1) it’s cheap; 2) it enables her to study ‘at’ a different institution to my own (something which, weirdly, she says she’d find far too stressful); 3) did I mention it’s cheap?; and 4) she can take the course at her own pace, with no time-limit, meaning she can pick it up again the next time we are on furlough.

We’re glad that we can now both, at long last, start preparing for next year’s studies and what I’m sure will be a great opportunity for growth for each of us. But there’s still some way to go here until we head for home (16 weeks, not that we’re counting) and we’d appreciate your prayers for us to keep focused on the work here in the meantime. As you can see from today’s post, it’s not as if we’re lacking in things to do.

Prayer

• This time next week, Amanda’s mother (Selene) and aunts (Cathy & Sally) will be airborne and headed for Santa Cruz. Pray for their, and our, preparations for what, if I were a boxing promoter, I would simply have to label ‘The Asian Invasion’.
• Pray for all the people with whom we have contact through evangelism (the English/R.E. classes) or discipleship (Alfredo, most of the youth group, the church) activities.
• Pray for sensitivity and clarity tonight as we discuss Sex & Relationships with the young people.

 Praise

• Give thanks for so many opportunities to share our faith with others this week.
• Give thanks for further clarity for next year, and for having the resources to be able to plan ahead with confidence.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 17/08/13

We'd mentioned last week as a prayer point that we've been having to deal with some 'difficult issues' in church. One of those over the past couple of months has been the youth ministry.

Regular readers will need no reminding of the stresses of the first few weeks of the school year, in February (well, it's stressful for me -- not really sure that anyone else is bothered). Staff and pupils return to a scene of anarchy, as the teachers don't concern themselves with sitting down and thrashing out a timetable until the first week of the semester. Furthermore, the biggest annual shindig here in Latin America, Carnaval, is just around the corner (picture, if you will, the school year in Europe and North America beginning in early December). Why, indeed, bother?

The pace picks up after the city recovers from its collective hangover and all is well until the end of June and the mid-year break. Because when classes return in mid-July, another major-league national holiday, Bolivian independence day on the 6th of August, is looming large. No problem with timetables etc. here -- the main hurdle is a parade in which all schools must participate, and three weeks of classes therefore disappear so that the students can practice marching to 'Ode to Joy' again. And again. And again.

Now usually, the winter break in July naturally impacts on attendance at the youth group during the two weeks of vacation. Many families choose to travel during this time. By the end of the month, normal service is resumed. But this year, we found ourselves down to around 15 young people (compared to an average of around 30) by early August, with the numbers having steadily fallen week-on-week. 

Now, of course, we as human beings have a tendency read success or failure numerically, and such circumstances give the devil much ammunition with which to discourage us. Our concern was not so much a drop in numbers as the sudden absence of many young people whom we have been discipling for a long time, and the vast majority of whom come from non-Christian homes. The 90 minutes or so they spend with us on a Saturday night is, in many cases, the only Christian input they'll receive in their week.

So at a leaders' meeting a couple of weeks back, we decided to do a little 'field work' and split up the long list of recent absentees between us, visiting their homes in our spare time. From this, we learned that one girl's parents had recently split, another girl's parents had told her she wasn't allowed to go any more and, of course, several of the young people were required to practice their marching at weekends too! But most were able to make a verbal commitment to coming back.

Well, wouldn't you know it? Last Saturday, almost all of them turned up again for an evening which was as encouraging for us as we think it was eye-opening and horizon-broadening for them. It was the last week of our series on prayer and, to round things up, we had an evening of prayer. The young people were divided into four groups and they spent the evening moving between four stations, at each of which, a different prayer focus, or prayer method, was presented and practiced. These touched on praying the Scriptures, worship in prayer, prayer for our city and country, and prayer for the persecuted church. I manned the persecuted church station and it was a privilege to give a presentation on this most important subject to the young people, most of whom would have had no clue as to such perils beforehand. Indeed, the theme turned out to be pretty relevant to what we've been going through as a group, as the young people were able to appreciate that being part of a faith community is, in fact, a great privilege.

So we're really thankful for the positive response to our visits and we'd appreciate your continued prayers for the youth group, particularly as we move on to the sensitive topic of sex and relationships over the next couple of weeks.

Prayer

• It's not long now till Amanda's mum and aunts arrive (two weeks tomorrow, in fact). We have a few last-minute preparations to make around the house. Pray that everything goes smoothly.
• Pray for the church band, who are beginning a fundraising drive this weekend to raise money to buy new equipment.
• For the youth group (see above).

Praise

• For the return of so many young people last Saturday to the group.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 10/08/13

James May: Decreasingly uncool; increasingly 'right on'.

You know you’re getting old when...

1. You go upstairs only to forget what you went upstairs for. Only this being Bolivia, you sacrifice half a pint in sweat in the process.
2. This year’s graduating class at your alma mater began their degree the year after the graduating class who began their degree the year after you graduated. (to clarify: it’s eight years since I graduated)
3. Alan Partridge remains hilarious, but he’s also – occasionally, but increasingly – how can one put this…right.
4. This music brings tears to your eyes.
5. Your mother-tongue becomes increasingly infected by your ‘working language’. No further explication required. But I’m definitely not embarazado about it, put it that way.
6. >9.30pm = A Late Night.
7. Your inability to recognise a single ditty by that One Direction mob that everyone (especially one’s sister) prattles on about on Facebook fills your heart with untold gladness and a renewed sense of purpose in life.
8. The summer’s customary excesses diminish, rather than enhance, the appeal of the upcoming football season.
9. No Saturday evening in Bolivia is complete without a couple of hundred decibels’ worth of reggaeton blaring from some neighbour’s back garden – and you can sleep through it.
10. This is easily in the top-five of your ‘reasons to be excited about furlough’.                      See also number 3.

Prayer

• For wisdom as we deal with some difficult, complicated issues in the church right now -- for us both in our capacity as youth leaders, and for Craig on the church leadership team.
• For Amanda's young women's Bible study group. There are some members of the group going through some tough times -- pray that tomorrow evening's study would be a great encouragement for them.

Praise

• For the Lord's goodness to Craig over 31 years and his wonderful plan for the future.
• For some cooler weather this weekend, offering a welcome respite from the heat of tropical Bolivia.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda