Amanda and her fellow teachers at the Sunday School launch party.
Sam giving his presentation at school.
Here's the poster for Craig's gig. It's official!
Igor in teaching mode at the Langham Level 1 workshop.
Here is Freddy, Igor's wingman for the four days, with an escuelita.
The obligatory end-of-event group photo.
Prayer Points
Give thanks for Sam's improved behaviour on Sundays!
Give thanks for a great Langham Level 1 workshop, and pray against eventitis -- i.e., for perseverance for all of the new participants.
Pray for us as we head to the Latin Link team retreat in La Paz next week: Pray that we will be reinvigorated physically and spiritually. Pray for Sam's health at altitude. Pray that it will be a special time for us as a team.
I was going to start this post with an apology for not having posted very much recently. Then I realised I’d be sounding like the proverbial broken record.
When first we came out to Bolivia nearly a decade ago, we were on the lookout for an easy way to keep our friends and supporters appraised as to our news. And so, we surfed the blogging wave, very much in vogue at that time. It was fresh. It was instant. And we had the self-discipline to ensure that it was regular.
That was certainly the case for the first five years or so. However, parenthood, as it is in the habit of doing, altered things somewhat. Looking at the blog archive (on the right-hand side here), I’m somewhat amazed to note that we managed 44 posts with a baby in tow in 2016: not far off a post per week. But that was to plummet to 18 in 2017, a mere ten last year (we had our reasons, mind) and an as-it-stands total for 2019 of…six!
Now given our experiences in recent years, we probably have a healthier outlook on time-management and supporter accountability; we know that supporters can cope if they don’t hear from us every week, and to be honest, if you look back at some of those earlier posts, they barely get beyond a functional list of accomplishments for the week. We can certainly live without that, and doubtless so can you.
Nevertheless, even given the new and more balanced status quo, our friends and supporters ought to be able to hear more from us than just the occasional email news update. And wasn’t this whole blogging thing supposed to be fun too?
Well, we think we might have just come upon a solution. And we’re not too proud to admit that it’s a total rip-off!
Something I (Craig) enjoy doing in my spare time, particularly in the car or when exercising, is listening to podcasts. For all my interest in these, it had never crossed my mind to start one myself; I assumed you needed a significant investment in gear, for one thing, and what on earth did I have to say anyway?
That was till a couple of months ago, when some missionary friends of ours launched their own podcast, primarily as a method to update their friends and supporters – just as we had set out to do with the blog all those years ago. They did so with the most basic of equipment and with minimal preparation and recording time – unlike those blog-posts, which were sometimes taking us up to half a day to produce.
Moreover, it was conversational in tone, as close to being ‘in the room’ with them as it was possible to be; hearing their voices rather than seeing their written words made a huge difference. And, yes, on occasion, it was fun too!
And so, for better or worse, we have decided to go down a similar path. We hope to upload new episodes about once every couple of weeks at least, at an appropriate length to give you a decent update without overstaying our welcome. At the same time, we’d like to use the new format to maintain something we always wished to achieve with the blog: namely, give people something of a backstage pass to the world of missions and its assorted quirks.
We hope to keep the format of each episode fairly simple. We will open with a little bit of our personal and ministry news, and we will close with some relevant prayer points.
In between these bookends, we hope in the longer-term to bring something different to the table each week; for example, something of our personal testimony, or an interview with some fellow worker, or a conversation about a particular aspect of missionary life (e.g., what is Christmas like when you’re so far from home all the time?). The possibilities seem endless, and we’d be particularly keen to receive any suggestions or questions for possible conversation topics.
So is this the end of the blog then? No way! We aim to use the blog to complement the content generated by the podcast, and vice-versa. We would still hope to post about once a month to that end.
Furthermore, we will upload each new podcast episode to this very website. And on that note, if you still want to get our news but have no interest in listening to yet another podcast, we will post a written bullet-pointed summary of our prayer points with each episode uploaded here.
And so, without further ado, please give the ‘Los Cunningham’ podcast a listen whether here or through your usual podcast provider. And if you can’t quite manage that right now, please keep in mind the points listed below for prayer in the coming days and weeks.
Here goes nothing!
Prayer Points
Give thanks for our three weeks in Canada. It was a little crazy, but we were encouraged to see friends and family, to visit churches, and that we didn't collapse in the process!
Give thanks for how well Sam is doing at his new school, which is an English-language Christian school.
Please pray for Sam (and by extension, for the two of us) on Sunday mornings at church, which he is finding challenging just now.
Pray for the preparations for the Langham Preaching Level 1 workshop in Santa Cruz, which is taking place from the 21st till the 24th of September. Pray for Craig as he leads this effort.
Pray for us as a family as we adjust to a slightly busier pace of life.
