Saturday Post -- 07/12/13

Bachelor boys Arnold...

...and Paulo.

It’s high school graduation season in Trinidad and, so far, we’ve been invited to three of them, for various teenagers in the youth group, as well as a lunch on Wednesday for the son of some old family friends. So you could certainly say that the week has been a qualified success. Did you see what I did there?

With so many other things to attend to over the past few weeks, we hadn’t really factored in the usual spate of certificate-bestowal, and so we’re increasingly glad for the extra time that finishing at FT a week ago has afforded us over the last seven days. We have been rattling through a fairly extensive to-do list, with Amanda looking to clear the laundry backlog, I looking to clear out our cupboards, and both of us attending to the presentation we’ll be giving, God-willing, from January onwards – we were keen not to have that hanging over us during the Christmas holidays. In the meantime, I’ve been getting my first emails from Cornhill Scotland indicating the arrangements for the new term in January. It’s starting to feel very real now.

A fair few pictures which will be included in our presentation were taken on Sunday, which was another really encouraging day for us as a church. As mentioned last week, a course called ‘The Culture of Blessing’ was organised and overseen by a couple in the church in the afternoon. Between the morning services and the afternoon event, we had a big lunch together. And the course itself was of great benefit to us all. It focused particularly on the huge impact, for better or worse, that our words can make. It was a great message for the church to hear, in a culture where people can be a little less restrained with the tongue than back home. Inevitably, the last exercise required us to act on what we’d been learning, so I ended up having to telling a chap how much I loved him and listing all the things that were so great about him. At first, the two of us could hardly have been more petrified if we’d been forced at gunpoint to attend an X Factor finalists concert. But we got there in the end – and some kind of wonderful it was, too.

Sunday capped off another busy weekend at church, which on Saturday included the end-of-year party for the Bible Explorers’ Club. However, Amanda always prefers to go that little bit further, and so on Wednesday evening she took her teenage girls’ class out for a meal. Indeed, our evenings have more or less disappeared as we aim to spend a last few hours of quality time with as many people as possible. Last night we were out with our Bible study companions Carlos & Carla, tonight my bandmates have invited themselves over after youth group for some pizza (in fairness, they’re bringing the pizza) and tomorrow we’re planning on a meal with our fellow youth leaders. From Monday onwards, we’ll doubtless have to tell people to take the musicians’ approach if they want to see us, as we have a lot of packing to do.

One item we were delighted to stroke off the to-do list was the installation of the church’s new air conditioners, supplied by LAM Canada, which had been purchased about a month ago, yet had lain dormant in the church for nearly two weeks since their delivery. Wednesday afternoon proved a useful ‘test event’ (Brazilian football tournament organisers, take note) in the shape of the end-of-year party for the Community classes. 40 screaming, kinetic kids proved no match for our new walk-in freezer. Attending church will never have been such a refreshing experience.

Prayer

• Right. Things are now, as one might put it, very much 'on'. We have six days to organise our house, get round all the people we need to see, and pack our possessions into four suitcases. Pray for good progress and for patience with one another – these things can get a little stressful!
• On Thursday, we begin our long trip to Scotland with a bus trip to Santa Cruz, whence we hope to post one final entry on this here blog (our flights to Brazil, and then the UK, are on Sunday and Monday, respectively). Pray for safety on the road.

Praise

• Amidst the busyness of all these graduations, end-of-year events and special times at church, we’ve had really tangible reminders over the last week of the special relationship we have with our ‘faith family’, if you like. Life here can be pretty challenging at times, but the closer we get to furlough, the sadder we feel about saying goodbye to so many dear friends for a year. And that’s a happy problem, in our book. 
• Give thanks, too, for the resolution of the air conditioner situation. We hope these will be a great help to the church, where Sundays can at times be oppressively hot. Pray too that the more pleasant conditions will encourage more people to come along and be part of our community in Christ.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 13/07/13

I write with a mild headache following a glass or two of wine late last night in celebration of our anniversary. We enjoyed a lovely evening at our favourite fish restaurant, taking the time to reminisce on these past six years and reflect on God’s overwhelming care for us as a couple.

Of course, if you’re one of those sorts of people who has everyone’s birthday and anniversary stored away in a mental Filofax (in which case you’d be more than welcome here – Bolivians’ obsession with birthdays is all-consuming), then you’ll have worked out that we were five days late in marking the occasion. Not a case, I stress, of either of us forgetting the big day; simply that the day itself fell slap-bang in the middle of a pretty brutal weekend.

Friday: youth leaders’ meeting. We had invited our cohorts to the house for an evening of planning for the next couple of months, while enjoying some social time when that was out of the way. In the end, time prohibited us from letting our hair down (as only youth leaders can!). That said, we managed to make some headway on our programme for the year, while also making our initial forays into planning for what, we hope, will be our first ever youth group camp.

Saturday: The Usual. 9am-Noon: Grocery shopping (Amanda)/blogging & sermon preparation (Craig); 2-4:30pm: Discipleship session with Grecia (Amanda)/piano lesson and band practice (Craig); 4:30-6pm: Bible Explorers’ Club (Amanda); 6.15-9:30pm: pre-youth group leaders’ meeting, youth group, driving youth to their various homes around town (both); 10pm: Crash.

Sunday: The actual date of our anniversary, was pretty much same-old Sunday, with two exciting additions: watching the last set of Murray-Djokovic, and a church leaders’ meeting in the afternoon! Oh, and an anniversary celebration, albeit not our own. For we share the same date (though a year later) with our old friends Jerry & Georgina. Excitingly, Georgina’s family, for the first time ever, had opted to pay a visit to Trinidad from their home way down south in Tarija, a lovely little city near the Argentinian border. A knees-up was in order. So we were delighted to join with their family and many friends to celebrate their seven years. Doubly exciting for me (and this picks up on the theme from the post a couple of weeks back) was the fact that several members of the church band had gotten together, independently of me and without prompting, to produce a programme of music for the evening, much of which was centred around the One at the centre of Jerry & Georgina’s partnership.

Monday: Party planning. Our weekly time-to-ourselves day was taken up with preparing for a great celebration, that of Maicol & KC’s boy Caleb’s adoption. They had requested the use of our home for a small party with family and friends in the early evening and, of course, we were more than happy to oblige. Pippa Middleton was nowhere to be seen but I reckon we made a decent fist of it under the circumstances. It would be back to our work at FT on Tuesday, but we hardly even required that incentive to make it an especially early bedtime, that evening, our final exchange before sleep took hold being a look that conveyed a thousand (or, to be more precise, five) words: Where did that one go?

I tend to prize my personal space a little more than the average person but you know what? Sometimes it’s OK to be busy, especially when there is so much to be encouraged by and thankful for in the process. We were particularly thrilled to be able to support Maicol & KC in that way as well.

This weekend, then, represents more of an opportunity to re-charge the old batteries. I’ll let you know how that’s going once Saturday’s out of the way.

Prayer

• A fair bit of travelling going on this week. First up, the Holts are currently in Santa Cruz, having left Trinidad on Thursday. God-willing, they will catch their flight from there to Sao Paulo tomorrow morning. And then on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, they fly to Edinburgh via Heathrow. Pray for protection, both for the family and for their belongings!
• Secondly, our guest this past month, medical volunteer Joe Sturman, is due to take a somewhat less staggered route to Birmingham, leaving on Wednesday afternoon for Santa Cruz before catching a midnight flight to Miami, and then on to London on Thursday. Prayers appreciated for Joe.
• I’m due to visit a church tomorrow to give another Emmaus presentation (indeed, the same church I’d been planning to visit a couple of weeks back – before I was rained off). Pray that more people might take advantage of the course to enhance their personal Bible study and growth.
• Pray for Amanda’s young women’s Bible study group, who meet tomorrow evening for the first time in three weeks. 

Praise

• For the encouragement in the midst of our various activities last weekend.
• For six years during which the Lord has been so good to us as a couple, often, as Amanda pointed out last night, fighting for us while we have (usually with great difficulty!) kept silent (Exodus 14:14). We have so much to be thankful for. 

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 22/12/12

A big shout-out to our friends at Strathaven Evangelical Church,
who sent out a stack of Christmas cards from the congregation;
they arrived this past week.

'Doing it for the kids' is very much the order of the day at Christmas time when you get to our stage in life. The turkey, the music and the all-round pageantry of the festive season retain some of their magic in adult life in large part thanks to the instilling of such traditions by our parents many Decembers ago. It was hard work – and now it’s our turn.

And while we await the exalted calling to parenthood, we are certainly getting in decent practice, with the best part of 100 little nippers to satisfy this year. Yes, the church’s Christmas celebration is almost upon us.

This afternoon, the various youth/children’s ministry leaders will be overseeing the final rehearsals for tomorrow’s special service. It will be the culmination of a busy week of preparation on our parts. When not seeing to audiology patients, Amanda’s spent large swathes of the week making cardboard donkey/sheep ears for the army of young participants.

Meanwhile, I’ve been overseeing band rehearsals, preparing my five small teaching slots which will be scattered amongst the set pieces, and making precautionary arrangements for the dreaded rain (the numbers are too great to have the service in the church itself). A huge 10x10m tarpaulin sheet has been laid on the grass outside the church. When the sun’s out, it gets cleared to help the grass dry. When the next storm comes (and there have been several this week), I do my best Wimbledon ball-boy impression and cover the area again sharpish. A temporary roof, in the form of a big tent we’ve hired, will be in place by tomorrow morning, but the weather is the overwhelming concern ahead of the service, so please remember this in your prayers. As stated previously, Christmas is always our biggest outreach opportunity of the year, so a rain-free afternoon is really important, particularly as Bolivians tend to run for cover at the merest spit.

No sooner will that be done-and-dusted than preparations for the next big event will kick into gear. I refer, of course, to us missionaries’ Christmas dinner on the 25^th. Being far from home at this time of year can be a bitter pill to swallow, but the very British nature of our annual feast in the company of our Bolivian ‘family’ goes a long way to mitigate the pain. However, once again, such jollity comes at a price and Amanda in particular will be putting in a shift in the day or so beforehand. Healthy lashings of Christmas-themed music and films will be on hand to catalyse.

These preparations will, in turn, be interrupted by FT’s own Christmas celebration and lunch, at midday on Monday. The afternoon of Christmas Eve is a holiday here, allowing locals to get ready for their festivities (which take place at midnight on Christmas day – this is one custom we’re happy not to embrace) and so, we’ll mark the looming holiday with lunch and a short message from fellow missionary Kenny.

Alas, Boxing Day is just another work-day, but I’m sure we’ll cope, as by then, we’ll just have three working days to go till our Christmas present to ourselves for this year: next Friday evening we’re dumping Santa Claus for Santa Cruz, heading through there for a week. We hope to catch a few flicks, stock up on clothes, eat decent food, and just enjoy being out of the mission bubble over the seven days.

And when we return from Santa Cruz, another countdown will begin in earnest. Because January 2013’s arrival will mean that only twelve months remain until our first furlough year.

Owing to our Santa Cruz jaunt, the blog itself will be taking a well-earned break for Christmas. God-willing, we’ll be back on the 12^th of January. Until then, check our Facebook page for updates on the Christmas festivities.

May we take this opportunity to wish all of our readers and supporters a happy, peaceful Christmas, and the Lord’s richest blessing in 2013. The blog has had a record-breaking 10,000+ visits this year and we are so thankful as we look back over the past twelve months and see the impact your prayers continue to make. Thank you all for your prayerful interest in the Lord’s work in Trinidad in 2012.

Prayer

• For the church Christmas extravaganza tomorrow at 4pm (8pm in the UK, 3pm in Toronto). Please pray for Amanda as she oversees logistics and Craig as he shares on the theme ‘God will provide’ (the name of our church ‘El Jireh’ is the Spanish rendering of the Hebrew terminology).
• For energy and patience over the next few, tiring days.
• For safety in our travels and a restful time in Santa Cruz.

Praise

• For the Lord’s goodness to us as a couple, and his work through us, and in spite of us, in Trinidad in 2012.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 08/12/12

I have to admit something a little sad to everyone - I unfortunately have not yet been able to attempt to make bagels (writes Amanda). I know it was something that everyone was looking forward to hearing about and I am very sorry that I have failed you all. Please be assured that it is still on my mental, and very long, to-do list. Sadly, every time I am presented with free time and I look at my mental to-do list (indeed it is - Craig), sleep seems to have jumped to the top. I don't know why that is. 

However, I have done some baking this past week, as I made cupcakes for my Esther Bible Study group. I think they enjoyed them as we had smaller numbers that night and yet there were only three cupcakes out of 18 left. Oh, a quick baking question... my cupcakes always come out a bit denser than I would like. How do I make them more light and fluffy? I already fold in whipped egg whites separately at the end, but they still come out too dense. Can anyone help me?

As for work this week... it was very busy. It was my last week in Audiology on a full-time schedule, which I am quite glad about. It has been a tad difficult to stay on top of my other work when I've been in Audiology mornings and afternoons. Odalys, the full time audiological technician, flew back into Trinidad this morning (or she was supposed to) and should be back at work Monday. I left her two little welcome back pictures on her desk. When she left to go away at the beginning of November she left me a to-do list and no little pictures. I think I am the better gift-giver based on that evidence. I will continue to work in Audiology in the mornings, helping out where I can. But am looking forward to getting back on top of my other work -- this would include house work, and maybe one day my house won't look like it threw up on itself. 

Actually, the biggest job I have this month, along with a lot of other people, is organising the Christmas programme. The script has been written, the parts of have been handed out, and the kids are practising (like later this afternoon), but there are still the questions of the costumes, backdrops, stage, seating, Christmas refreshments, prizes for the kids from the Bible Explorers' Club, etc. I have to make more donkey ears (like the ones we made for the youth group social night) and sheep ears... like 50 of them. But, thankfully, God has placed lots of people in the church who are wanting to lend a hand, and we are really looking forward to the finished product on the 23rd of December. We are praying that all these kids bring their parents, friends and neighbours to hear about how God provides for us every day, but especially through his Son Jesus. 

Big news -- we officially own both plots of land!!!!! The paperwork on the final plot came out of Derechos Reales (the equivalent of land registry????) yesterday... exactly one year and one month after we first started the initial, incorrect paperwork. Praise God. Unfortunately, the people who wanted to buy the land from us a while back are no longer interested, so we are praying that God would bring other interested buyers to our attention. We have to remember to continue to have faith that God is carrying us through this sometimes complicated process. 

Craig had a big week this week... he got to throw a party and eat cake (actually, I snuck upstairs and ate cake as well, even though I wasn't invited to the party... and there were left overs, so I invited all my work friends to eat Craig's cake as well). This past Wednesday afternoon was the end-of-year party for the community classes, both the one in the Foundation and the one off-site in Maná. It was held at the Foundation and there were games, a Bible quiz, balloons, loot bags (party bags) and cake. All the kids had a great time. Craig says party planning is not his gift and that now that the party is over he can get back to stuff he's good at, but I think the kids would disagree. I think they think he's awesome at party planning and maybe he should spend more time doing it. Please see below evidence of his natural ability (he did not bake the cake... this time).

Group Picture!!

No translation required here. Right? 

Prayer

• The planning and execution of the Christmas programme.
• The kids in the community classes who are now on vacation, and some will not have contact with the church/Foundation for two months.
• Education staff at the Foundation as they spend the summer holidays planning for next year.

Praise

• Receiving the ownership papers on our two plots of land.
• An enjoyable time for Amanda in Audiology full-time during the month of November.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 01/12/12

Here are some pictures of the house taken over the past week:

The view from outside the perimeter wall, now complete with entrances for
cars and humans.

A closer look at the front. The earth has now mostly been raised on this side
to the same level as the house.

Amanda checking out her the laundry room,

which has been integrated into the back wall.

The living/dining room. The ceilings were finally put in place this week
throughout the house.

An upstairs bedroom. Most of the wiring is now in place.

Thanks again to you all for your prayers for our land application. The process has been unusually slow but on Thursday we received documentation confirming us as the owners of one of the two neighbouring plots, and the other plot, we are told, will be fully registered in our name by Monday. We will therefore by next week, after a year of wrangling and paper-trails up blind alleys, be the owners of two plots of land which have doubled in value since we purchased them – a major answer to prayer. What remains now is to find a buyer and channel any sale proceeds into the building fund. Anyway, for now we give thanks for the impending conclusion of this long process.

This was the last week of classes for the year in Trinidad’s schools and there’s definitely been an end-of-term feel to things this week, as we wrap up some ministries and continue in our preparations for Christmas.

My R.E. classes in our local secondary school concluded with an investigation into the resurrection of Christ and the various claims and counter-claims surrounding it. Thanks to some extra funds available to us this year, I was able to give each of the students a couple of booklets which look at what it means to be a Christian and who God is. Many of these young people have accepted Christ over the past couple of months but most do not come from Christian homes – indeed, many will be actively discouraged from attending a Bible-teaching church. So it’s of vital importance that, with the holidays now beginning, they ‘don’t go home empty-handed’, as it were.

Elizabeth and I have also been winding down the Community classes this week, where we gave the kids extra time to memorise verses and key facts from the story of David, both of which they’ve been learning over the past months in the class. They’ll be tested on these during a quiz we’ve organised as part of the end-of-year party. Once again, we’ve received a generous one-off gift to allow the class attendees to mark the year’s end. But rather than stage separate parties for each group, as we’ve done in the past, we’re bringing the two groups together on Wednesday afternoon.

But as the rear-view mirror shows the school year disappearing from view, a cursory onward glance shows the festive season very much looming large. This afternoon the church’s children’s and youth ministries come together for the first of four weekly rehearsals for our Christmas service on the afternoon of the 23^rd of December. From early November, the leaders of these two groups have been busy planning the programme; now it’s over to our young people to see what they can make of it.

Prayer

• For the end-of-year Community class celebrations on Wednesday.
• For a smooth start to preparations for the Christmas service, the church’s biggest evangelistic opportunity of the year, this weekend.
• For the many teenagers who’ve put their trust in Jesus from the local secondary school, that they would have access to the support they need over the holidays. 

Praise 

• For a positive conclusion to the lengthy land application process.
• For progress on our house.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda