Saturday Post -- 02/04/16

Not every day you come home to this.

A busy few weeks are upon us. On Thursday, I’m due to travel to Virginia for a family wedding; sadly, Amanda and Sam will be unable to accompany me due to his adoption not yet being finalised. Meanwhile, Amanda’s mother is due to arrive next Sunday afternoon to lend a hand with his lordship. I’m due back in Trinidad the following Saturday (following an overnight journey from the USA), and then we’re off to Santa Cruz for a break for a few days the following Tuesday, dropping Amanda’s mother off at the airport before returning to Trinidad on Monday the 25th of April.

Chances of any prayer updates between now and then: slim to none.

So, I’ve done my best to remember all the things that will be going on between now and the month’s end, as well as mentioning the week’s highlight as usual.

Boo!

Praise

• The English class was great this week. The group are really getting used to both the format of the lessons and each other’s company. In many ways, it’s a shame we have to break up for a few weeks after this Tuesday’s lesson. Still, much to be excited about.
• Craig is just back from the monthly Langham early-morning escuelita, where it was his turn to preach to the group. Give thanks for continued enthusiasm there.

Prayer

• Amanda is speaking at the youth group tonight on the small topic of making wise decisions.
• Pray for safety for all of us in our various travels over the next few weeks. Pray for an encouraging time for Craig with family in the US, and for some much needed R&R in Santa Cruz later in the month.
• Sam and Amanda were a little off towards the end of the week with a suspected stomach bug, though you’d hardly guess from his lordship’s general demeanour. They’re gradually getting over it now; pray for continued recovery.
• Craig would also appreciate your prayers for wisdom for himself and the other leaders with regard to some challenging situations we are facing among attendees of the church, including a family whose parents have not been around for a couple of weeks and a youth group member who was caught stealing at the Foundation yesterday.
• The 17th of April (Sunday) is a big date for two reasons. Firstly, in the morning, we’re hoping to have a special event for the church’s anniversary. The hope is to stage our usual service in a neighbouring street, and to include a meal for all attendees post-service. Please pray for wisdom as we plan this event, and for the necessary finances. Pray, too, for all those who attend and who will hear the gospel preached.
• Later on the 17th, God-willing, we’re hoping to host our own little celebration for Sam, who will have turned one year old on the 14th (alas, Craig will still be in the US on the day itself). Birthday parties here tend to be fairly uniform, with much birthday boy/girl-glorification at the centre! So it’s a great opportunity to publicly give thanks for Sam, and above all, give the glory to God alone; pray that this would indeed be the case.
• And speaking of Sam, of course, we value your continued prayers for the adoption process. We are very tentatively looking into going on a short home assignment in Canada and Scotland early next year, so in order to get the ball rolling on visas etc., it would be a help to have the adoption confirmed sooner rather than later. Pray that God’s plan would prevail and that we would gladly submit to it.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 12/09/15

Early yesterday evening, we received word that the adoption we have been pursuing was now all but dead in the water. Due to the circumstances of the birth-family, a small chance remains of this working out in our favour, but this would not be for another few months.

Twelve hours later, we are naturally still pretty raw. In theory, either outcome would have represented something of a miracle, especially given the circumstances around the initial abandonment, and yet two weeks ago, in so many respects, the thumbprints of providence had seemed so evident to us. Time will doubtless reveal the true significance of what has just happened, but right now, we are struggling to make sense of it all.

Above all, the process has been a salient lesson to us on the land-mines that are laced along the road to adoption in this cultural context. Back in the UK and Canada last year, we were reminded of the treacle-like pace of such processes in the west, and were comforted that at least we wouldn't face such long waits once we got the ball rolling here. But, of course, there are good reasons for such safeguards, one of which is that they serve to protect prospective adopters and adoptees from the emotional strife we have recently undergone in having such great exposure to the case in question. Bloodied but unbowed, we now have to either proceed with greater caution in future, or develop a thicker skin; this may simply have been the opening salvo. Those are questions we hope to resolve over the next few days and weeks.

*        *        *

And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own,  they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people.

Those words of Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians have rung so true in our community this week. On Tuesday, our friends Carlos & Carla, with their young son Kenny, took a trip to the zoo in the afternoon to mark Carlos's birthday (you get half-days off work here for your birthday, believe it or not). After an enjoyable hour or two, they returned to the entrance to discover their motorcycle had been stolen. Motorcycles are the traditional family vehicle here, but the loss was doubly traumatic as Carlos works as a taxi driver to supplement his main income (Carla stays at home to raise Kenny). They ended up taking the long walk home knowing that their very wellbeing was now on the line. 

(To their credit, they kept a commitment with us that evening to come round for Chinese food -- prepared by Selene -- to mark Carlos's birthday. Given that things had taken a significant turn for the worse with the adoption, we all had ourselves something of a pity-party!)

But their loss only served to galvanise our church community here. Within 24 hours, Carlos & Carla had received several generous gifts from individuals and from the church's own funds. They kept another commitment on Thursday evening -- to host the church's prayer meeting -- and it was there that the men of the church came together to discuss a plan to get enough money together to carry out the expensive repairs required on a motorcycle belonging to one of our cohort, and then give said vehicle to Carlos & Carla.

Over the last six years, Amanda and I have regularly documented our work in seeking to bring the church here to greater 'maturity'. This essentially has become shorthand for, say, increased Bible knowledge or deeper devotional lives, and these things are just fine. But when it comes to generosity -- and particularly coming together to support needy brothers and sisters -- I would suggest that their maturity levels far exceed ours in the west. Their means are meagre, their margins are tight, yet their response in times of crisis is one of 'rich generosity'; some in our own cultures might even call it 'recklessness'. 

It's probably been my biggest lesson as a leader, too. It is all too easy to begin to regard oneself as the sensible westerner (dare I say, Scot?) whose good sense is a necessary balancing weight against occasional Latin American impulsiveness. And such an attitude, in the past, has brought me grief in leaders' meetings, where my colleagues have sought to meet great congregational needs when the church itself is barely making ends meet. "Well, Craig, so what," has essentially been the LORD's response as I have seen us reach deep into our pockets for one cause after another, yet somehow always have more than enough to keep going.

In a sermon I heard on the above text some years ago (and stop me if you've heard this one before), the preacher referred to statistical evidence showing that, in the USA, Mississippi was at one and the same time the poorest state per capita, and the biggest giver to charity per capita. That's very Bolivian. Indeed, that's very Macedonian.

We have learnt so much from, and grown so close to, this little church community (NB: they run rings round us westerners in that respect too), that it was nothing short of a privilege to host them and other friends last Sunday to mark Amanda's birthday. The steak was devoured, the trampoline was well-worn, and most people stayed long after the food (which isn't always the case here!). We must do it again some time. To close, here are some pictures.

Prayer

• Pray for us as we seek to get over the disappointment of the last day or so, and for the courage to forge ahead with an adoption in the future. If nothing else, these last weeks have confirmed that we have bountiful supplies of love to share with a wee one.
• Pray for Craig as he touches on issues of faith and unbelief with the youth group tonight, who are reading their way through The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe.
• Pray for safe travels for Amanda's mother, Selene, who leaves Bolivia on Thursday afternoon.
• Looking further ahead, we have a busy couple of months looming, with two big events looming large: a marriage course in early October (more details soon) and the annual youth camp in early November. Amanda in particular has a lot of preparation to put in for both of these; pray for a healthy work-life balance, and for peace when it's simply not possible to spin all the plates at once.

Praise

• For the LORD's grace to our church in allowing us to consistently and joyfully meet each other's needs.
• For a happy day last Sunday.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 05/09/15

In Bolivia, vegetarianism is a mere rumour.

First of all, we had been hoping that by this point we might have something more substantial to say with regard to the adoption process. Things, however, haven’t moved quite as quickly as we had hoped, and so, for now, we’ll ask that you continue to uphold that whole situation in your prayers.

One upshot of what happened last week is that the judge deciding the case in question has recommended that we visit the prospective adoptee as often possible, in order to demonstrate our suitability and our caring intent. This we have done over this past week, though inevitably, we have only grown closer, which would make any decision that goes against us even tougher to stomach.

In addition, then, to the points outlined last week, please pray for emotional protection for us both right now. This is really as much as we can say right now on such a public forum, but we are happy to respond in more detail to any emails or private messages.

Many happy returns to this purdy lady.

While dealing with all of the above, we’ve had plenty of other things to distract us, not least the arrival of Amanda’s mother, Selene, at Thursday lunchtime. Her flight was booked some time ago, but we are naturally delighted to benefit from her practical and emotional support at a time when we really need it. And not just because of adoption issues! Amanda bid farewell to her twenties on Friday, and to celebrate, we’re hosting the mother of all parties at the house on Sunday afternoon, replete with a rented trampoline, 25kg of prime steak (note to supporters: it’s really cheap here!) and about 60 friends from work, church and elsewhere. We’ve never hosted an event on such a scale, but we’re delighted to be able to open the house up to so many dear friends.

Meanwhile, last Sunday, we hosted a more intimate social gathering, inviting our good friends Maicol & KC round for the evening. 15 years since KC first arrived in Trinidad on a missions team, they and their son Caleb are due to leave Bolivia for the USA at the end of this month, and we are going to miss them all greatly. What with Selene’s visit over the next two weeks, and the inevitable chaos involved in packing-up-one’s-life-for-good, we knew that we had to act sooner rather than later to get any face time with them pre-departure. Three hours disappeared as we looked back on our time together here over the last six years, and how God has been so faithful to us all. We certainly hope to see more of them before they go, but if last Sunday were to prove our last meaningful time with them in Bolivia, we wouldn’t have much to complain about.

Nor do we at church, where we continue to be encouraged by what we are seeing. The Dig Deeper Bible study seems to be only growing in popularity, with most of the books we ordered for the church now having disappeared. Thursday evening saw us consider the importance of parallelisms; if it all sounds a bit technical, I can assure you that our study of the parallelism in Hebrews 1:1-2 was immensely emboldening and affirming to us as a church in this ‘Jesus-plus’ evangelical culture.

It was also of great encouragement to us to see FT president and church elder Miguel-Ángel take to the platform on Sunday to deliver his first ever sermon (you may remember that Miguel-Ángel had been among the main beneficiaries of the Langham conference back in June). This will prove a huge help to me and our pastor, Elías, and we pray that the church would be challenged to see another of its members expound God’s word.

So much to be praying and giving thanks for this week, and again, we ask you to uphold the adoption situation before the Lord in particular (see last week’s post for more specific prayer points). In addition…

Prayer

• For Maicol & KC as they prepare to leave Trinidad in just over three weeks’ time.
• For the various individuals with whom we usually meet for discipleship each week. Our current challenging circumstances have caused this to largely be put on the back-burner at the moment. Please pray that this would be a time in which those individuals can experience growth in their faith, and that we, in particular, would depend on God for this rather than developing a messiah complex!
• Craig and the elders again had to address a challenging pastoral situation involving church members this week. Pray for continued wisdom here and for a softening of hard hearts.
• For a great time tomorrow afternoon with friends and family.

 Praise

• Speaking of Langham, Craig’s small-group met last Sunday afternoon, and the momentum from June’s conference has largely been maintained, with both small-groups continuing to meet once every month. Give thanks for this.
• Give thanks, too, for the young women’s Bible study, who met once again in our home last Sunday, and who continue to experience a deepening of fellowship.
• Finally, give thanks for the Lord’s great faithfulness in Amanda’s life over her three decades to date.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 02/11/13

FT staff and assorted family members, last Saturday.

Another Saturday, another early exit from the house, this time a breakfast date with a friend, before the usual slew of church commitments this afternoon and evening. I commented to Amanda the other day that I don’t feel we’re taking things one day at a time so much as one weekend at a time, so busy are we now on Saturdays and Sundays. In any case, I will do my best to recount some of the major points of the past week in the short time available.

I posted last week’s update as we were leaving for Fundación Totaí’s anniversary celebration out at the lake. As it happens, the steak was not quite up to the standards we usually expect around here. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a relaxing day as a staff, playing games, paddling in the lake, and reflecting on the Lord’s goodness to us. Amanda spoke for fifteen minutes about what God has done in her own life through FT, as well as the tremendous growth she’d witnessed in the institution and the staff during the time we’ve been here.

The rest of Saturday and Sunday were taken up with our usual church commitments, including a church leaders’ meeting for me on Sunday afternoon. But a two-day ‘weekend’ lay in store, which served as a motivator; in addition to our usual Monday day off, with the anniversary falling on the Tuesday we enjoyed a whole 48 hours outside the FT building (which is also where our church meets, so it’s somewhat difficult to avoid): pancakes, reading marathons and extended Wii sessions ensued.

However, we did set aside a little of our time on the Tuesday to meet with our fellow youth leaders to discuss camp, now just two weeks away. There were a whole range of key points we still hadn’t finalised (the timetable, the transportation, the makeup of the teams) so it was worth sacrificing a couple of hours of everyone’s day off to emerge with a better idea of what we want to do. The week before camp, we will meet with those from the church who have volunteered to provide assistance. If nothing else, the whole endeavour should do wonders for church unity.

Another desired, if not essential, component to a good camp is good weather, and these are interesting times in that regard. Usually the winter winds die down by late August and September till November see temperatures and humidity soaring (40 Celsius is an achievable target) only for rainy season to come and ease the tension somewhat from late November onwards. Well, this year winter stretched out well into September, there were perhaps two weeks of heat and humidity in early October and since then, we’ve had nothing but heavy rain every day! As yet another storm broke during the night, I felt a strong urge to pray for this particular aspect of camp. We could really do with a couple of hot weeks to dry out the campsite in preparation for the invasion of El Jireh church.

Five paragraphs? I’ve had shorter posts on non-breakfast-date Saturdays. Here are our main prayer points.

Prayer

• For our latest overseas volunteer, Aline Sacher (Germany), who is currently enduring something of a travel nightmare – although unusually, Bolivia is this time in no way at fault! It seems her first flight (within or from the UK) was delayed, knocking everything back a few hours. She had been due to get the midday flight from Santa Cruz to Trinidad, but that won’t be happening seeing as she arrives in Santa Cruz at lunchtime. Worse still, no seats on internal flights are available until Sunday, so she has an overnight in Santa Cruz before arriving here at 11am tomorrow – or that’s the plan, at least! Pray for a safe arrival for Aline and for a good first week of settling in.
• Pray for the continued camp preparations.
• For another hectic weekend, particularly Sunday, in which Craig is preaching and Amanda has her Bible study group. Somewhere amongst all this, we also need to pick Aline up from the airport.
• …and then we some work to do on Monday! Amanda will (God-willing) be giving Aline her induction, while I have been asked to give a sermon on missions at the local offices of Samaritan’s Purse, who have a fellowship morning on the first Monday of the month. I took a missions angle in a sermon I gave on John 21 in the church last year, so it’ll just be a case of tweaking for my audience.
• These prayer points are getting almost as long as the post itself! We’re going through a somewhat nerve-shredding experience at FT right now. About a month ago, we registered Amanda’s audiology colleague Odalys for a training course in Guatemala next weekend, buying flights in the process. There were, however, two not insignificant obstacles. Odalys didn’t have a passport, and Bolivians require a visa to enter Guatemala. The passport came through early last week and on Thursday the 24^th, the visa application was sent to the nearest Guatemalan embassy in Lima, with the aid of a world-renowned courier company, to ensure that no time would be wasted
  
  
  . Well, let’s just say that the ability to track packages online is a mixed blessing. This has been the route of the application since leaving Bolivia for Peru (a neighbouring country, for the uninitiated):

o   Miami, USA

o   Montevideo, Uruguay

o   Buenos Aires, Argentina

We are, to say the least, lacking in confidence that the visa will be processed and sent back to Trinidad by next Friday, when Odalys is due to leave. Moreover, the embassy staff in Lima have thus far answered not a single phone call or email. Prayer is required for a mighty work of the Lord in this situation.

Praise

• Amanda is thankful that she managed to get through a pile of marking this week. She was correcting the ‘Kids Games’ exams, with this year’s session having wrapped up last week.
• For a good time together as a staff out at the lake last weekend. 

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 26/10/13

Better late than never: a picture from the annual dinner on Thursday the
17th of October, marking the end of this year's English classes.

We're a little short on time today as we have an especially busy Saturday coming up. Tuesday is Fundación Totaí's ninth anniversary (regular readers will know that any annual milestone is celebrated here with no shortage of enthusiasm) and so, two important things are happening. Firstly, and most excitingly for me, everyone is getting the day off on Tuesday, resulting in an extra-long weekend for Amanda and I, who already have Mondays off. And secondly, we're having an event for staff and family members out at the lake today. Barbecued steak is on the menu and let's just say that if you had any idea what the steak is like here, you a) would renounce your vegetarianism and b) would certainly have no desire to spend your morning writing a blog post.

The event kicks off at 9am, so I have just enough time to share some extended prayer points.

Prayer

• Craig has his fortnightly church leaders' meeting tomorrow afternoon. Pray for wisdom for Craig and his fellow leaders Elías and Jerry as they seek to make the right decisions. We are often faced with some very murky situations, so this is not always easy.
• Pray for Amanda, who is more-or-less in charge of organising our church's first-ever youth camp, taking place on the weekend of the 16th of November. We have only just been able to settle on a final budget, so the costs will finally be announced at tonight's youth group (these vary depending on each member's attendance throughout the year).
• Keep praying for positivity for us both; the closer furlough gets, the longer and more stressful each day seems to become! The enemy seems keen that we leave here with every last modicum of enthusiasm for Trinidad and its people sapped out of us, thus rendering us less likely to ever return. Pray for divine protection as we take our share of the hits in the war of the ages.

Praise

• Give thanks for Craig's largely productive visit to Santa Cruz last weekend. He had initially planned on picking up some air conditioning units for the church, but at the last minute we were informed of a cheaper solution through a contact in Trinidad (highly unusual, as things are almost always more affordable in Santa Cruz). Nevertheless, he was able to pick up some much-needed equipment for the music ministry.
• For some really beneficial time together this week as a couple. Our evenings can disappear very quickly here, but we made a conscious decision to say "no" to one or two things and we feel refreshed as a result. As the only missionaries now left here, methinks we'll need more of this in the coming weeks.

¡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

Holiday snaps

No regular post this weekend, but here are some pictures from our time with Amanda's relatives so far.

Token picture at the lake. Amanda with her aunt
Sally, her mum Selene, and her aunt Cathy.

With the English class.

We celebrated Amanda's 28th birthday on Wednesday at (unofficially)
the world's greatest steak restaurant: Estancia.

Aunt Sally brought whole suitcases of toys with her all the way from
Singapore, via Canada. Here are the kids from the Friday afternoon
Community class with some of them.

Mother and daughter reunited.

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