The Absence of Something Beautiful

On the third Sunday of every month, my (Amanda's) youth group at my home church in Canada, would visit two seniors' homes between the morning and evening services and sing hymns for the residents. When I was eleven years-old I remember being so excited about turning twelve because it meant that I would be in youth group and get to go to the seniors' homes too. My excitement was not borne out of a calling to the geriatric community, nor do I feel I have a musical gifting. The excitement was that the youth got to stay in the church building between services, as there was not a lot of time to go home after singing and then come back for evening service. In reality the singing at the seniors' homes was just something you had to do to be able to hang out with your friends afterwards. I am sure some of the youth might have had stronger feelings towards the singing than I did, but the truth was that I was there for the social aspect, not the ministry one. 

Despite my shallower motivations, I have fond memories of those Sunday visits. I can still see some of the residents' faces and how much the visit meant to some of them. And the truth is that I learned some very important life lessons over the years visiting the same two seniors' homes. One important lesson was about pushing myself outside my comfort zone; you see, after the singing we were encouraged to walk around and shake hands with the seniors and try and chat. When I started I was twelve and none of the residents were my own grandparents. I definitely felt awkward trying to talk to strangers; I mean, what does one say to old people? But over time I was able to see what the effort meant to some of the residents, and I learned that, while my comfort zone might be comfortable, it wasn't helping anyone but me. I learned that we are supposed to live outside our comfort zones, which is a lesson that has stood me in good stead on the mission field. 

However, I would like to focus on the second lesson I took away from these monthly field trips: true beauty. We visited two seniors' homes; one was a private Christian seniors' home and one was a state-run seniors' home. Firstly, I am not saying the Christian nursing home was full of Christians and the secular one full of atheists, because that's not statistically probable. But I will say that the Christian home had a higher percentage of people who held to the Christian faith as residents.  When I started as a twelve-year-old, I probably wasn't able to put my finger on why one home was easier to visit than the other, or why one home had a brighter atmosphere. The two homes were probably filled with residents fighting the same chronic conditions, who grew up in the same city, if not the same neighbourhoods, with very similar cultural experiences, and while a little bit of the difference could be attributed to private vs. public healthcare, the difference wasn't really on the walls or in the medical equipment: it was in the people. I spent years observing the difference and not being able to put my finger on it, until one day I had a conversation with my one of my youth leaders afterwards. I can't repeat the enlightening conversation verbatim, because I don't remember it. I only remember the lesson, but maybe it went something like this: 

Youth Leader: Did you have a nice conversation with 'little old lady x'?

Me: Yeah, I did. She's really nice and I like talking to her.

Youth Leader: She's not nice, she's beautiful. 

Me (really looking at the elderly lady): Yeah, you're right. She is beautiful. 

Youth Leader: It's because you can see Jesus in her. When I'm her age, I want to be beautiful like her too. 

Me: [mind blown!]

What teenage girl doesn't struggle with their own appearance and the concept of beauty? What teenage girl is not exposed to society telling them to be thinner, have a smaller nose, larger breasts, wear make-up, etc? Until that moment, beauty was physical for me, and then suddenly it wasn't. Or, better said, until that moment physical beauty was dependent on something we did to our physical bodies, but then I realised that true beauty (all of it... physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) was dependent on how much of Christ people could see shining out. It was like an equation in my mind; as Christ grew and I diminished, I would be more beautiful. And, as we know, this is the act of sanctification in our lives. That is why a seniors' home is a great place to go to see true beauty; there are people there who have spent more years than I can even fathom letting Christ grow and becoming more and more beautiful! 

The reason I have written all of this is because of Edwin. If you are supporters of ours, or on our email list, you will have received an email from Craig this week about the passing of Edwin Fernandez, and this post is about him, because he was truly beautiful. I can't think about him without thinking about those seniors' homes and learning the meaning of beauty. And I can't stop crying every time I think about him, because someone who was truly beautiful is just not here any more, and it feels like something is missing.

The truth is, I kind of feel like I don't have the right to have such strong feelings about Edwin because I didn't even know him that well. Edwin was the Bolivian national coordinator for the Langham Preaching programme. He traveled all over Bolivia running the training sessions for the 'escuelitas' and I first met him in 2015 when Craig helped organise the 'escuelita' in Trinidad. I wasn't involved in Langham, I never went to one of the weekend training sessions and I never worked with him. But most times he passed through Trinidad he stayed in our house for a night and I had the privilege of hosting him. He first came before we adopted Sam, and every time he came back after Sam's adoption  he got to see how big he had grown.

He was also the first person to challenge me about my struggles. He saw the problem before I recognised there was one. Near the beginning he would ask Craig if I was OK and if everything was alright. He would comment to Craig that I didn't seem like myself and ask if anything was wrong, and once I admitted I had a problem, Craig would share with him what we were struggling with. And one month ago, I was sitting next to him in a restaurant in Santa Cruz and he told me that I seemed so much better, with more life in me and more joy. He was so happy for me and in a way, even before he passed on, I felt he had walked with us through our burnout experience. He was a truly beautiful person. With very limited contact, he impacted my life in an indescribable way, so much so that I am really struggling to process his death. 

I bet we could all close our eyes right now and picture that person or those people who are truly beautiful in our lives, because we see Christ shining out of them so clearly that the beauty is blinding. Praise God for these people in our lives, and thank God that we get to witness real beauty. 

Prayer Points

• We are expecting a visit next week from Joel Likins from Lexington Church of Christ in Ohio. We are looking forward to spending time with him and showing him around Santa Cruz. Please pray that God would bless our time together.
• Last week we were in La Paz for our Latin Link Bolivia Conference for five days. We had a great time, but please pray that we settle back into our life and routine quickly, especially for Sam. 
• We lost Small Tiggy. This was Sam's special stuffed animal since he came to live with us. We think Tiggy got left on the plane on the way to La Paz. While Sam is consciously dealing with his loss well, we think he has lost an avenue of comfort and this is affecting his behaviour. Please pray for him in this.
• For our time in the Latin Link Bolivia Conference. We feel blessed to have such great support in-country and enjoyed this time with our 'family' (pictured, above).
• Sam had his English assessment for the English Christian school that we would like him to attend; he cooperated and there was no behavioural meltdown. Praise God. 
• For the friendships we are developing and enjoying in Santa Cruz. 

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig, Amanda & Sam

Saturday Post -- 02/05/15

Hernán and mother, Zonia.

If you subscribe to FT's Facebook page, you will have picked up on the news earlier in the week that Hernán passed away on Sunday evening.

As mentioned a couple of weeks back, the two of us had begun doing a Bible study together, with Friday afternoon being our agreed time. As it turned out, I spent most of the afternoon touring Trinidad's pharmacies in order to get my hands on some medicine that he needed. He had caught a fever, and was in no shape to cope with the rigours of study, lying on his side with his eyes glazed over in pain. I hoped to return the next day, but not for the first time in past weeks, as one medical worker after another passed through his room, I was struck by the dreadfulness of the condition this 19-year-old found himself in.

In the end, that turned out to be the last I saw of him. His mother let me know over the phone on Saturday that his condition was no better, and on Sunday morning Elías informed the church that things had deteriorated further. Amanda and I were relaxing in front of the TV on Sunday evening when we received word of his passing.

Here in Bolivia, the first thing to do in the event of a friend's death is to find out where the wake is, and head there directly; for a culture which can be laid-back at the best of times, such occasions are organised with remarkable haste. So at 11pm, we found ourselves gathered with friends and family in a small church, his casket front and centre, as the rest of us sat quietly while being offered refreshments (it's also customary to bring food here). 

Normally, the internment would go ahead the following day, but with many family members having to travel from the village of San Ignacio (about four hours' drive west), it didn't take place till Tuesday morning. Amanda and I had agreed to transport mourners to the funeral, which usually means turning up at the wake venue and then joining the caravan of vehicles which will trundle along slowly to Trinidad's cemetery. This time, however, the caravan took an unexpected turn into Trinidad's central plaza, with the hearse (or, more accurately, black flat-bed truck) parked outside the cathedral. It turned out Hernán's father had requested a Requiem Mass.

The non-Catholics among us sat on the benches for about 40 minutes before the casket emerged and was re-placed in the truck for its final journey. Upon arriving at the cemetery, I was handed a guitar that someone had sourced and asked to accompany some hymns, including 'When the Roll is Called up Yonder' and 'Because He Lives'. This would normally take place during the internment but, as it was raining heavily, we did this at the entrance to the cemetery where there is the shelter of a high roof. Finally, the party embarked on the ten-minute walk to arrive at the corner of the cemetery where Hernán's hole-in-the-wall was located. And, as is increasingly customary here, the silence was only broken by a strange mix of hearty wails and mobile phones being answered.

The official mourning process here takes place so quickly that it is only afterwards that one can really start contemplating what has just happened, and inevitably the, "Why, God?" questions have surfaced in our minds this week, with such a vital flame being snuffed out so suddenly. 

Of course, we may not know all the answers to those questions in the near future, or even in this life. But we trust there is a purpose, and have seen hints of that during the last three months. For a young church such as ours, Hernán's illness was a great proving-ground for the quality of our compassion for others (especially during the time he spent at FT) and Amanda and I were continually taken aback by the exceeding generosity of the church membership. But this wasn't simply a case of passing a bucket around to raise funds. Rather, our brothers and sisters were continually visiting Hernán and individually providing for specific needs, whether helping with his physio, or making food for the family.

Ours was not the only church to rally around the cause, and although Hernán had a casual church connection, he probably had more exposure to pastors and parishioners in his final months as he did in the 19 preceding years. We don't know if he had made a commitment before this stage, but it was clear from conversations that Elías and I had with him in the final weeks that his trust, by this point, was in the Lord.

The great sadness of this time, however, is that, as Amanda put it to me earlier this week, being on the receiving end of such an injury in a place like Trinidad is something of a death-sentence in itself. Never mind the total lack of societal infrastructure to cope with the reality of disability; accounts of Hernán's 'care' that have emerged from his time in hospital have been truly eyebrow-raising. Thus, we mourn his passing but we are also thankful that he is truly 'in a better place'. That's a phrase that we western Christians are at times perhaps guilty of uttering with a touch of glibness; some of us are so content with this life that we secretly worry about the 'quality of life' to come. No chance of that here.

Prayer

• Naturally, we would ask that you remember Hernán's family in your prayers. They, too, have had great exposure to gospel workers in this time. Pray that they would be comforted, and that they would feel the impact of such visits in the days to come.
• Sunday sees a second round of the by-election, meaning that we cannot meet as a church during the day. However, we will be getting together once again in the evening to share a meal together and give thanks for the Lord's faithfulness over the church's ten years of existence.

Praise

• After a month of waiting, the Langham committee finally received word this week that the retreat centre we had requested had been granted to us for the proposed four-day preaching conference in early June (the civil service here is intensely political, and so the recent spate of elections was a factor in dragging out this process). The planning committee, which Craig heads up, will be meeting this week to discuss final preparations; prayer appreciated for that.
• Finally, for the non-Facebookers, here are some pictures of the latest addition to the Cunningham clan. Genghis (who, like older brother Arturo, is named after a great warrior-king; it only seemed right) is six weeks old and enjoys car rides, taking power-naps on his Costa Rica towel, and chewing on fingers which he thinks are teats. We're looking forward to seeing how this one turns out. 

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 05/10/13

The Birthday Boy, with friends and family, church and otherwise.

Forgive me for bleating on about the weather yet again, but I write in the midst of another south wind, the second this week, and easily the latest such occurrence we have experienced here. Searing, unquenched humidity tends to dominate in October, as referred to in last week’s post. Not this year. Indeed, my suspicions that something really is askew with the weather are only confirmed by reports from Scotland of temperatures pushing 20 Celsius.

Who knows? Perhaps this is a little blessing from the Lord to help us endure the Furlough Countdown. The reality of our looming exit, however, is really beginning to kick in now, with Maicol, KC and Caleb entering their final week of ensuring ‘i’s are a-dotted and ‘t’s a-crossed before they leave Trinidad for the States a week tomorrow. In eight days’ time we will be the last missionaries standing.

Going back to the weather, it has not been without its difficulties, as the south wind has been accompanied this week by copious amounts of rain. This has battered our abysmally-installed patio doors upstairs and we have spent far too much time with a mop! As rainy season is now not too far away (or, at least it would be in a normal year!), we’ll probably need someone to come this week and fix the whole thing good and proper. Immensely frustrating, but very typical of this part of the world, where pride in one’s work is considered of little importance.

The week at work has been fairly routine, with a province-wide shutdown declared on Wednesday (in protest at the ‘results’ of last year’s census) breaking things up nicely! Still, I had a sermon to write and, as I’m the kind of person who needs a lot of preparation time on these things, I was able to make take advantage of the day off to make significant headway. Philippians 4:1-7 is the passage, on standing firm in the Lord through joy and prayer. As ever, much to dwell on before I even started typing.

Amanda has been putting in her usual shift in Audiology in the mornings since coming back. However, her afternoons tend to be dominated by church/social work. This week she and Rachel (back from Scotland for another short visit) spent some time planning a 1^st birthday celebration which, it is fair to say, probably wouldn’t have taken place without them.

This time last week, as I was waxing lyrical about last Friday night’s praise event, so ably put together and led by Carlos, something really quite tragic was taking place. Carlos’s younger brother, Rafael, had taken a fatal blow to the head at his boxing gym. By the time they’d flown him to a half-decent hospital in Santa Cruz, he was clinically dead, and in the early hours of Sunday morning, he passed away. Carlos being the responsible older brother, he accompanied Rafael both to Santa Cruz, and on his final journey back to Trinidad. ‘Rollercoaster’ barely begins to describe the emotions felt by Carlos within the space of 48 hours.

However, Carlos excelled himself in appalling circumstances, and represented the family with great dignity at Rafael’s wake and burial. And in the midst of great tragedy, Carlos continually looked on the overwhelmingly positive side of things: that Rafael, a believer, is now in heaven.

Carlos & Carla, with Kenny Cristobal.

As we’ve probably mentioned previously here, the mourning process is fairly brief in this culture. Indeed, Rafael was buried less than 36 hours after his death. Still, as you can imagine, Carlos and Carla’s attentions were somewhat distracted from their son Kenny Cristobal’s looming birthday. So, in stepped Amanda and Rachel to give Carla a hand in putting on a big party, for what is always a big occasion in this part of the world. Everyone had a good time and it was a particular blessing to see so many of Carlos’s family there, enjoying a moment of familial joy after a turbulent few days.

Prayer

• Two youth group items today. First up, we are wrapping up the Sex & Relationships topic tonight. Incredibly, we embarked on this subject a couple of months ago, anticipating we would have it wrapped up in a couple of weeks. But the youth have posed so many interesting questions – reflecting the deep confusion in this culture regarding these issues – that only now are we able to wrap it up. Anyway, please pray that the youth would really be thinking about, and applying, the lessons learned to their own lives.
• Secondly, we met this week to begin preparations for our first ever camp. As anyone who’s grown up in a church will know, youth camps are a big deal. Up until now, our youth have gone along to a camp run by another church, but this year we’ve decided to start out on our own. The proposed dates are the 16^th and 17^th of November (we’ve decided to keep it to one night – but two full days – to ease ourselves into this whole business). Please pray that, as leaders, we’d keep preparation for camp high on our to-do list, busy as we are in many other areas.

Praise

• Further to what I mentioned above, we’ve also been meeting with Carlos & Carla on Tuesday evenings to study the Bible together. This week, naturally, we ended up just reflecting on the events of the past couple of days. Still, we are finding these times to be of real blessing and encouragement for the four of us.
• We were able this week to book our flights to Canada for next summer. God-willing, Amanda will arrive there on the 30^th of May, while I, with studies to complete, will travel three weeks later, arriving on the 22^nd of June (we already have some church dates booked, too). We’ll then return to Scotland on the 14^th of September. Give thanks for God’s provision in enabling us to book these seats early – when they’re cheap! 

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 02/06/12

The past seven days have been a strange mixture of joy, frustration and sadness. Our life here is often a case of ‘two steps forwards, one back’ (or, at times, vice-versa!), with ‘events, dear boy, events’ never failing to bring one crashing back to earth with a jolting thud. If I may be so bold as to paraphrase another premier called Harold, a week is a long time in Bolivia.

Our main fillip this week has been to see major leaps forward in our land dealings. The plot we bought some weeks ago is now fully registered in our name at municipal level and it is now just a case of preparing for construction – this weekend, a friend of a friend is busy hacking away at the 8-odd-foot worth of growth on our plot with a machete in order to clear the ground. And, with the help of a lawyer, we finally had the two plots we bought in 2010 transferred – we had done this last year, but it counted for nothing due to several errors in the paperwork, which have now been rectified by the seller. We effectively need to sell these plots to help towards the construction costs of our planned home, so to now be in a position where we can take care of this is a huge boost.

But the ink had barely dried on our last blog post when we heard some really terrible news: Rut, the three-month-old sister of our dear sister Elizabeth, died due to heart complications late on Saturday night. And so, on Sunday afternoon, we attended our first funeral, along with family and friends of the bereaved family. Elizabeth’s parents are not believers, however, they allowed the church to pay for the casket and the pastor, Elías, to pray at a couple of junctures during the afternoon.

It was our first experience of a Bolivian funeral and something of a cultural eye-opener. Throughout our time here, I’ve always had the feeling that the locals here are a lot more in touch with their mortality – death is not the taboo subject it is at home. This was evidenced by the frantic activity outside the cemetery, where, if you were feeling peckish, you could treat yourself to candyfloss, a bottle of Coke, or an ice-cream. ‘VELAS! VELAS!’ shouted the several candle-sellers dotting around the massed throngs at the entrance. Where there’s a crowd, such people gather in Trinidad (school gates are a big target) and it would appear that cemeteries are no exception – after all, they wouldn’t bother if no-one bought their product.

The refusal to bow to let grief get in life’s way even extended to the internment, where the casket was literally placed in one of the pre-excavated holes in the wall, which was then slowly but surely covered with bricks and cement by a worker. The silence was broken only by the wails of various family members…and the ringing of mobile phones, which, rather than being promptly switched off, were answered without hesitation!

But for all the cultural insights, it was just a great shame that we had to go at all and our thoughts are very much with the family right now, who live in real poverty. Elizabeth, 20, has four other siblings and, thankfully, two of those are strong Christians themselves, so she doesn’t have to face this alone. However, she will be in great need of your prayers as she seeks to witness to her family in such hard times.

Elizabeth’s family come from the small village of Maná, on the outskirts of Trinidad, as do many of the young people who have been helped by FT and El Jireh church over the years. These are families that we have put a lot of effort into and, sad to say, this was one of those weeks when you sometimes find yourself wondering why you bother, with two sets of parents leaving their kids very much high and dry. One girl we know, for example, has been in need of major optical care for a year now. It turns out the parents haven’t lifted a finger in all that time and we discovered this week that she is certain to lose sight in one eye.

You may also remember Emilixy and her siblings, who we wrote about in the bog some months ago. Last Christmas, they discovered they wouldn’t be seeing their mum again for years to come due to some wholly preventable goings-on on her part. We found out last week that they will now be without their father for some time for similar reasons; he is stuck in Santa Cruz, and the children’s aunt has decided to take some of them to stay with the father, while the two remaining children will move into the local men’s prison, where their uncle lives. Desperate ain’t the word.

However, encouragement is on the way in a most surprising package. A couple of weeks ago we received an unexpected email from my cousin Douglas, now living in Thomas Jefferson country in Virginia (we visited this charming corner of the world last summer). Well, it turns out he’s at a loose end for a couple of weeks and has decided to come to Bolivia! He’s flying in and out of La Paz, where he plans to explore the Altiplano, but before then, he is paying us a visit for the week, arriving in Trinidad tomorrow afternoon. Weeks like this one are an important reminder to us of a blessing in such short supply here, yet one God has graciously allowed us to partake of: a supportive family.

Prayer

• That sense would prevail in those families mentioned, and that we would be able to support them responsibly (a further problem in this culture is that white people are seen as walking-ATMs, an outlook which helps no-one). Please pray too for encouragement for us.
• Pray for Douglas’ travels over the weekend and for a special time together this week. He’s on holiday, so pray that he’ll get a break (to the extent that that’s possible in Trinidad).
• For Craig, preaching tomorrow morning on Psalm 19. 

Praise

•  For major breakthroughs this week in our pursuit of a living space we can call our own.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda