Saturday Post -- 11/04/15

Alan, Jim and John.

There are few things we enjoy more down here than hosting visitors. If you've ever had the slightest notion of setting off into the wilds of darkest Bolivia (and let's face it, who hasn't?), then we recommend you get on the case sharpish: the warmest of welcomes awaits you.

This week saw the year's first foreign lodgers at Casa Cunningham in the shape of three representatives from British missionary agencies Interlink and Echoes of Service. John Aitken is Echoes' Operations Director, and was joined by Interlink board members Alan Smith and Jim Armstrong. Jim was also killing two birds with one stone, in that he was accompanied by volunteer Ruth Young, who is a member at his church and is back in Trinidad for her third short-term stint. The visitors were armed with copious supplies of ministry items and British confectionery -- sort of a pre-requisite for staying with us, I might add.

The bad news from the airport was good news for Trinidad's ice cream merchants.

Interlink and Echoes have historical links with the work of Fundación Totaí and El Jireh Church. Our old friends and former colleagues Kenny & Claudia Holt were Interlink missionaries, and the two bodies are also partners in 'First Serve', a year-long missions taster programme, through which a number of volunteers (including Ruth) have come to FT and the church in the past.

Trinidad was simply the first of a three-leg tour of Bolivia and Argentina, and the trio were barely off the plane on Tuesday morning when some unfortunate news landed in their inbox: Thursday's flight to Cochabamba had been cancelled. Amanda and I simply presumed that the flight was insufficiently booked and had therefore been cancelled, a fairly regular occurrence here, and so my first task with the Scots was to pay a visit to the Trinidad offices of an alternative airline -- only to be told that they too had cancelled their flights, due to the airport deciding that the next couple of days would be a nice time to catch up on some maintenance work. "Welcome to Bolivia," quipped our pastor Elías, in perfect English that evening in the church.

(if you took our pleas of the opening paragraph to heart, you might want to go ahead now and take out a hefty travel insurance policy)

Mercifully, the airline was on top of the situation, and simply moved them to the earliest flight out, on Friday afternoon. The visit, then, was extended by another day, but we made sure they had plenty to do in that time.

John was quick to get in on the act at the
football pitches...

Wednesday was the main day for visiting FT and its various ministries, with Amanda giving a tour of the health work in the morning. Providentially, there were a couple of surgical cases that day, and the visitors got the chance to have a look in at a core component of the ENT work from the viewing area. The afternoon saw them take in the Education and Sports work. Around 30 children from the area were learning the story of Esther at the afternoon homework class under the watchful eyes of Elizabeth and Elías; it was my first visit since stepping down from that side of things a couple of years ago, and a real encouragement to see how things had developed. Then, it was off to the various football pitches and basketball courts, to see the FT Sports department at work in training and Bible study. Thursday morning also saw the team sit down with the FT board, so as to get a better idea of the challenges of the work here.

...before apologising for another defensive slip-up.

Such visitors are not only a great encouragement to us as a couple, but also the church, and we made sure that the congregation here benefitted from John, Jim and Alan's missions insights. The excitement over visitors is always visible in the increased numbers in attendance -- we had about three times our usual crowd for the prayer meeting on Tuesday! And there, the visitors (from Scotland, not from Trinidad!) shared a little about what their respective organisations do, and touched on specific needs around the world for Christians. This can be a pretty insular corner of the world -- most people here couldn't even give two hoots about what is going on other Bolivian cities like La Paz -- and so Amanda and I have always been really keen to keep awareness of the global work at the forefront of people's minds in the church. Tuesday evening, then, was really helpful.

And when it dawned on John that an extra 24 hours in Trinidad was on the cards, he kindly agreed to give a short talk at the Thursday evening Bible study, from Titus 2, an appropriate passage for a young church such as ours. 

Amanda in bossy-boots mode. That's right: she's made a full recovery.

Besides seeing and participating in the work, of course, some time was carved out to visit the various sights in and around Trinidad; a fine opportunity for getting to know one another a little better and for hearing about another holiday nightmare from well-travelled anecdote machine Alan Smith.

All in all, it was a pleasure to play host to people who have such a keen interest in the work here and in ourselves as missionaries. A fond farewell was bid yesterday afternoon at the (newly-operational!) airport and as we wondered off into the sunset, we wondered who the next purveyor of guitar strings and Kit Kat Chunkys might be.

Our idea of a steak-out: anticipating the usual feast at Trinidad's carnivore paradise, Estancia. You booked those flights yet?

Prayer

• Pray for John, Jim and Alan as they spend time encouraging Interlink missionaries in Cochabamba, before heading to a conference in Buenos Aires on Tuesday.
• Please don't let Hernán slip off your prayer radars. He has twice been scheduled to have his skin graft surgery in the past couple of weeks, and that has now been twice-postponed, due to his failure to bulk up. We learned this week that he's not been eating well, and based on one or two things we've heard, we're worried there might be some issues here in terms of his will to carry on. Craig and Elías are hoping to start working through an evangelistic book with him, beginning this week.
• Pray for Craig as he begins a new series in 2 Peter tomorrow at church. He'll be taking the first three sermons of a seven-sermon series over the next couple of months.
• Pray for FT's sports coaches and for other Christian sports coaches in the area, who are attending a training event this weekend, the purpose of which is to equip sports coaches to communicate the gospel effectively through their coaching. Sounds interesting.

Praise

• For an encouraging few days -- both for us and the wider community -- with our guests from the UK.
• Amanda came back to work on Tuesday and has had a week without any more health issues; give thanks for complete restoration following that nasty bout of dengue.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amadna