Saturday Post -- 24/09/16

The humble Lada: big in Bolivia.

Six years after we got the keys, and 21 years since it trundled off some Japanese production line, our car is still going. Just. In reality, years of bouncing along the ‘roads’ here and spluttering on the ever-present, engine-devouring dust, have slowly but surely taken their toll. The motor repair bills are, like so much else here, eminently affordable, but the frequency with which our 1995 Rav4 is paying visits to the mechanic means we’re probably spending as much on maintenance – if not more – as our contemporaries in the UK or Canada.

So, while we’re not really in a position to buy a replacement right now – what with home assignment just round the corner – we’re certainly considering our options. Which is why, a couple of weeks back, I got an email from our Latin Link stable-mates Graham & Debbie Frith, who run a student ministry called ‘El Alfarero’. “What do you reckon to coming through and checking out the deals at Fexpocruz [the big annual Santa Cruz trades fair]? Oh, and while you’re at it, we’re running a course at the same time that you might be interested in.”

It was all rather out of the blue, and my mother-in-law had only just arrived in the country for a month-long visit. What kind of signal would my departure for three days send? And what if she cooked that Pad Thai dish I really like while I was gone? Regardless, I showed Amanda the email, and she didn’t need much persuading. “A course on cross-cultural communication? Yeah, I think we both know you could do with some help with that, Craig!”

She was not wrong. She’s been the one rolling her eyes every time I joyfully report that the electrician said he’d come ‘right away’. She’s been the one sitting in on youth leadership meetings when, in a bid to add a dose of levity to proceedings, I have proposed non-serious solutions to genuine problems, only to be met with looks of utter perplexity. “Wait, was that another example of humor escocés, Craig?”

She was more than happy, then, to grant my release, though guarantees over the cooking or otherwise of Pad Thai in my absence were not forthcoming.

The course took place on Thursday evening, Friday evening, and all day on Saturday, and was led by Steve Hawthorne, a medical missionary from the US, currently working in Potosí. With more than two decades’ experience of living and working in Bolivia, Steve was able to draw on a wealth of practical examples to bring the theory of the course to life.

The course drew heavily from an excellent little book called ‘Foreign to Familiar’, by Sarah Lanier, an author who has lived in a wealth of international contexts. The book was required pre-reading for the course and, within a few pages, I was wishing I had been given it many years earlier. Lanier’s basic premise is that the prime cultural dividing line runs between ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ climates (there are exceptions to this, of course: parts of the USA and Latin America are climatically hot, but follow ‘cold’ practices; and most of Russia, sub-zero for a great deal of the year, generally has a ‘hot’ climate mentality). Being born and raised in a ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ climate determines greatly one’s outlook on life.

So, for example, people from hot climates tend to be more relationship-oriented than task-oriented, a largely cold-climate mentality (you even see this played out in the American South relative to the rest of the country). Those from cold climates place great stock in verbal communication, whereas those from hot climates communicate much more indirectly. If you’re from a hot climate, you’re less likely to have much of a voice in, say, a work meeting chaired by the boss (indeed, a hot-climate boss probably won’t want to hear what his subordinates have to say anyway), while cold-climate inhabitants benefit from shorter ‘power-distances’ in the workplace and elsewhere. And, of course, people from hot and cold climates have vastly different conceptions of time (to be fair, I’d grasped that point some time ago!).

These differences and others were drawn out by Steve over the three days. Above all, what he wanted the group (which mostly comprised Americans and Bolivians) to leave with, was not so much a rejection of cold-climate mentality or an unquestioning adoption of hot-climate practices, but an understanding of both and, above all, an acceptance that “I am ethnocentric.”

Many was the moment over the three days when I laid my pen down, leaned back in my chair and thought to myself: “So that’s why that happened!” So much of our experience over the last seven years began to make a lot more sense than before. Indeed, it shed great light on our current circumstances.

Amanda, for example, was dealing with a very difficult situation at work last week, in which Christian principles seemed to have gone out of the window from the person concerned; all of a sudden, grasping the greater ‘power-distances’ in the Latin American mentality, while not solving the problem, at least helped her to understand a little better where the person was coming from.

Less seriously, we have recently made the most of Amanda’s mother being here by occasionally inviting church groups or other friends over for Chinese food. Indeed, by the time I went to Santa Cruz, we had already invited a couple we know to come this past Wednesday evening. They are good friends of ours, but, without seeking to be presumptuous, I’ve often wondered why they never invite us to their place. Well, as I learned from the book and the course, an invitation to one’s home in a developing world context is taken more as a summons than a friendly gesture (indeed, on reflection, something we learned quickly here was that if you got an invitation to a birthday party that very day – as is usually the case here – you had better have a decent reason not to show up in the evening). In fact, the friendliest thing you can do in a hot-climate culture is not to invite, nor to respond to an invitation, but to show up unannounced. On one hand, dropping in on people without warning is something we have barely even considered as a couple (though in fairness, it was still fairly common in Scotland when I was a child); on the other…we have had the, “Really?! They choose this moment of all moments?!” exchange too many times to recall! (Thus informed, we informed our friends that our next encounter would be a) anything but pre-planned, and b) at their place!)

The course ended, all that remained was to head to Fexpocruz on Saturday evening in the company of the Friths and Steve. There were bargains to be had (that’s a relative term; the car market here is expensive), but we’re keeping our bank details to ourselves for now. Still, I feel I have a much better grasp of things for when we come to finally replace our current vehicle, probably next year. I will, however, surely disappoint Graham by not buying a Lada – yes, they are making a big comeback down here. Sorry: I just can’t take back all those playground jokes (Example: “Why do Ladas have heated rear-windscreens? To keep your hands warm when you have to push them.). For North American readers out there, the Lada reference is unique to late-20^th century British culture. Turns out that owning Ladas was not conducive to our cold-climate predisposition to arrive at appointments on time.

Prayer

• We have booked our tickets for home assignment. Roughly, we will be in the UK in January and February, Canada in March, April and May, and back to the UK just for a couple of weeks in late May/early June. However, our travel to the UK and Canada (and possibly the USA) is visa-dependent, so pray for a positive outcome to our first visa application for Sam, which we hope to submit in November (we’ll probably just do the Canadian and American visas from the UK).
• Our travels confirmed, the need to delegate responsibilities is brought into sharper focus. Pray for a smooth transition over the next few months.
• Pray for wisdom for us both in our leadership duties at Fundación Totaí and our church.
• We’re travelling to Santa Cruz as a family later this week, where we’ll have a few days’ break before saying farewell to Selene. Pray for safety in our travels and pray for our readjustment to post-Grandma life! The Chinese food has just been the start; she has been a huge help with Sam and around the house in the last few weeks. We will be coming back down to earth with a bang. Pray for ample cushioning!

Praise

• For a beneficial few days of education and fellowship for Craig in Santa Cruz last weekend.
• We had an encouraging prayer meeting during the week, at which one of our members (Mariana) gave a presentation on the work of Open Doors; there was a really positive response to this. She is hoping to give monthly updates at our prayer meetings.
• We had the opportunity to go out last night as a couple, reflect on things a little and begin to think about what life out here might look like for us in the coming months and years. We found it so helpful. Pray for more such opportunities in the midst of our busyness.
• For Selene’s visit and the encouragement this has brought us.   

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 19/12/15

The journey to Monday afternoon past began, as these things tend to, on the Belfast to Dublin bus.

“Here, what do you think about the whole idea of adoption?” It was December 2004 and Amanda was over for her first visit to the British Isles since we’d gone ‘official’. But, in all honesty, she might as well have asked me: “Quantum mechanics: discuss”.

As I was about to learn, in Amanda’s circles back in Canada, adoption was fairly par for the course, and a particularly big thing for Christian couples. I had had limited experience at best and was beginning to wonder if I was supposed to have produced an engagement ring at this point. So I brushed the notion aside, saying we could perhaps think about it after the first couple of ‘naturals’, expecting we probably wouldn’t, and assuming (i.e., hoping) that the matter was closed.

Just over five years later, we found ourselves in Bolivia, with two-and-a-half years of marriage under our belts. “Why don’t you have kids?,” the local women would ask, bearing in mind the fact that we were over 20! As it happened, we had been talking about it ourselves, and decided that it was time for another new chapter to begin.

By spring 2012, we weren’t getting anywhere, and on our way out to LAM Canada’s missions conference in Costa Rica, we had an appointment with a urologist to begin investigating further. But a far more significant development was to take place at the conference itself.

There, we had been assigned a lodge with a young couple called Dave and Esther Bettany, serving in Honduras. They had recently welcomed a new addition to their home, and we had the pleasure of meeting her face to face. I was particularly struck by the connection she had with her parents; she was perfectly contented in their company. It was, I reflected, typical of the relationship that can only be forged in the womb, between biological parents and their children, a key weapon in my armoury as I continued to resist the adoption question.

Except, a few hours later, in the quiet of our room, Amanda informed me that she was, in fact, adopted.

My prejudices addressed, if not eliminated, we headed back to Bolivia and, eventually, a spell in a private fertility clinic that woulditself end only in further disappointment. Forget about ‘conceive first, adopt later’; if we were to have children at all, it was beginning to seem as if I would have to make a big compromise.

And, in theory, we could have gone ahead with it there and then. But we were also conscious of our home assignment in 2014. Though it was a whole eighteen months away at this point, we were required to be away for a year in order to pursue further training, meaning we would not have been in Trinidad for the required post-adoption visits from social work over two years. During this period, however, my resistance was further diminished by the adoption of a baby boy by some close friends (he even looked like his adopted dad!).

Still, however, I was not completely convinced. And it was here that we learned that our home assignment year really was, in fact, an important part of this journey. Towards the end of our spell in Scotland last year, we attended a conference for Christian couples struggling with infertility and infant loss, with yours truly signing up for the seminar session on adoption. There, the speaker shared about his own personal journey to adoption (he and his wife had only recently taken in a four-year-old boy, with a view to adoption), and it was one remarkably similar to my own. Indeed, it was here that my eyes were opened to how prideful I had been over the years. Like the speaker, I had played the role of a typical man, inventing difficulties where none existed and resisting the possibility of there being any children in my family, living in my home, who were not mine.

Or, to put it another way, I had completely denied the essence of the gospel in my own domestic life. Where, indeed, would I be if not for the greatest adoption of all? What right, then, had I to enforce selection criteria?

Of immense help in this process has been Russell Moore’s ‘Adopted For Life’, a text I would recommend to anyone. Moore, no slouch as a theologian himself, has personal experience of adoption and its associated stigma, and so helpfully and clearly unpacks adoption as Biblical theology.

I commend Moore’s work particularly to my fellow Christians, parents, would-be parents or otherwise; indeed, if I may, I’d like to impart some friendly counsel at this juncture to the people of God. Since deciding to push ahead with adoption, we’ve had several variations of the following conversation with a number of people, and not just here in Bolivia (where people can be a touch more liberal with their tongues):

Friend: “So, I hear you’ve decided to adopt.”

Craig/Amanda: “Indeed we have. We know God has clearly brought us to this point, and we’re hoping to have something in place fairly soon, God-willing.”

Friend: “Och [OK, maybe not in Bolivia, that one], that’s lovely.”

Pause

Friend: (lowers voice slightly) “You know, you mustn’t stop trying.”

C/A: “Indeed. That’s why we’re going ahead with the adoption.”

Friend: (it’s a whisper now) “Yes, I know, but, what I mean is, it’s still, you know, possible.”

C/A: “Well, of course we believe that, but--”

Friend: “I mean, you must have faith. God can still provide you with a child, you know.”

C/A: “Oh, of course, we know that. But you don’t have to be Don Carson to see the centrality of adoption in the sweep of salvation. In God’s eyes, we are all adopted, wouldn’t you agree?”

Friend: “Yes, well, I suppose you have a point.”

Pause

Friend: “But, seriously, have faith, alright!”

Friends, there is no hierarchy here. Let those of us who are biological sons of God be the first to waggle the finger of faith in the faces of the infertile. As for the rest of us, our best approach in such moments would be to keep our fallen thinking to ourselves.

                                                                            *        *        *

January saw us arrive back in Trinidad and hit the ground running on the adoption question. Pre-July (which we spent back in Scotland for a family wedding) was all about filling in forms and making sure no egg-shell was leftbehind. We had only been back in Bolivia a matter of weeks when things cranked up several notches.

We got word form a nursing friend of an abandoned baby boy in the maternity hospital – music to our ears, as our preference was for a baby. We got in touch with a lawyer friend, whose husband works there as a paediatrician. He confirmed the boy was there, but that there were other family members now on the scene. In other words, adoption was a non-starter. Not the first time something like this had happened in our experience.

A few weeks later, we were at a fundraiser for the children’s ministry at the church, where we bumped into a former colleague, now working as a GP in the local orphanage. She told us of a very bright and sweet four-year-old girl who was ‘available’ there, and suggested we get in touch with a legal representative. Up until this point, we had ruled out older children, but we were beginning to sense that God was challenging us on this; how did a baby have any more right to a loving home than a four-year-old? Struck by the hard fact that ‘adoptability’ decreases with age, we prayerfully decided to pursue this lead.

And so, a couple of days later, we found ourselves in our lawyer’s office, she too being aware of the situation. However, she had to inform us that, in fact, another family were interested in the girl, and were already a few steps ahead of us. “But aren’t you aware there’s a baby boy in the hospital?” she asked. We quickly worked out that she was talking about the same boy who, it turned out, was far from a lost cause; it transpired that the ‘family members’ were not who they claimed to be, for reasons that I cannot go into right now.

Indeed, much that follows is heavily filtered due to the fact that the legal situation is ongoing; hopefully, there will be time to write in greater detail when I get round to writing the book, something I’m seriously considering – it can’t be denied that we have more than enough material.

Over the next few weeks, we faced a rollercoaster of emotions as the situation seemed to be changing day by day until we came to a hard realisationthat the ball was no longer in our court. This was made all the more difficult by the fact that we had visited the boy in hospital (from which, by the way, he should have been discharged weeks earlier) twice daily and had very quickly developed a deep connection with him. He was little, weak and helpless (drinking his milk from a syringe – welcome to Trinidad), but at the same time, the most supremely contented infant we had ever met. We loved him to bits, and the feeling seemed mutual, making the disappointment of the legal roadblocks even harder to deal with. Especially when we could have given him a home situation far superior to most in Trinidad at the click of a finger.

As we were coming to terms with this, the Santa Cruz possibility opened up (see here for the full story on that). Yet it was an episode that ended with a twist, like a well-honed chapter of airport fiction. Because before heading back for Trinidad, we received word that, as far as the boy was concerned, we were very much ‘back in the game’.

The last two months, then, saw us get back into a visiting routine, this time at his new home of the orphanage, to which he’d been moved at long last. To fortify our hearts, we enforced upon ourselves a limit of two afternoon visits a week. These joyful times were sufficient to solidify the connection, while keeping our emotions at bay in the event of another disappointment.

All of which led to Monday, and the long-awaited hearing, at which we were granted foster care of the boy, albeit on a provisional basis; no fault of ours, just that the officials who were supposed to terminate the mother’s rights had – no joke – simply not got round to it. There is to be a further review meeting in February, at which we’re hoping the adoption process proper (which would take two to three months) will formally begin.

In the end, Monday’s meeting was remarkably straightforward. And we had been fairly hopeful of a positive outcome. But so careful were we to protect ourselves that we had done very little to prepare the house for his arrival that same evening. The last few days, in other words, have occasioned a seismic change of circumstances, made tougher by the fact that the Samuel Archie, as we have named him, is no newborn.

But, as we suspected might be the case, he has so far played ball. Every morning, I am woken at around 5am by the most joyfully innocent creature I have ever met, and getting another hour or two’s sleep before the long day ahead just feels like a waste of time. We, too, have been granted the reserves to cope physically and mentally.

Amidst the confusion, delays and frustrations of the past six years, God was preparing the way for us to meet dear Sam, just as he has been doing from eternity past. And whatever happens from now on, his purposes will be fulfilled in this relationship. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Adoption? The best thing I’ve ever done.

Prayer

• We are not out of the woods yet on this (hence the deliberate lack of legal detail and photos here), so please pray for the couple of months and the decision to be reached at the review meeting in February.
• The adjustment proved a bit much for Sam’s health, with some diarrhoea and vomiting, followed up by some respiratory problems. He’s settling now and is getting into a really solid eating schedule, so much better than what he was on at the orphanage. He’s a little bit premature and needs to bulk up a little. Continued prayer appreciated here.
• Pray for the events at the church over Christmas, particularly the Christmas Eve service on Thursday, where we hope to welcome many friends and family of participants.
• With the upheaval of the adoption, we’ve decided not to travel to La Paz next week, where we were due to attend a wedding. So we’ll be here in Trinidad for Christmas after all. It’s never the easiest time to be away from home, and this year may prove especially tough as, for the first time out here, we’ll be the only non-Bolivians around (i.e., the only people who eat their main meal in the late afternoon rather than at 1 in the morning on Christmas day!). Still, mustn't complain: we’ve been given quite a present this year.

 Praise

• For the outcome of Monday’s hearing. Thank you all so much for your prayers.
• For energy to get through this gruelling – yet so rewarding – first week of parenthood.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 07/03/15

Last night at around a quarter past eleven, some seventeen hours since horizontality, and as I applied a little more elbow grease to the last plate's pizza residue, I thought to myself, "Back in Scotland, when visualising what this new stage in Bolivia would look like, it would have looked awfully like today."

In the morning, I met with Daniel and Yonatán for their weekly discipleship session, half an hour earlier than planned, at 8:30am, to accommodate some last-minute changes to Daniel's diary. A couple of years ago, we would have had to scrap the whole thing due to the fact that I would have had to attend Fundación Totaí's morning staff meeting, which takes place around the same time. And while I do still try to make it there most days, the fact that my only real work for FT now is in supporter communications means that I am under no obligation to attend, and can be much more flexible in the mornings. And as anyone who's read this blog with any frequency can attest, flexibility is an important commodity in Bolivia.

It was another terrific session with the boys, during which we worked through the next part of our Spanish translation of 'God's Big Picture' by Vaughan Roberts -- a text I strongly recommend, by the way, if you struggle in your Bible reading to see the macro for the micro; so easy to read, too. Resources of the calibre of 'God's Big Picture' just don't exist here, and naturally, the boys are lapping it up. It's a joy to guide them through these vitally important concepts for understanding Scripture.

Finished by 10am, I was free to head over to FT (just a five-minute walk from our house) and the office which has kindly been lent to me in the mornings. There, I took care of some more church business, writing out music for a new song, preparing for the men's ministry launch that evening, and sitting down with a church member and FT worker to discuss something that had come up in the church leadership meeting the night before.

With everything pretty much in place for the evening's activity, and having worked morning, afternoon and evening since Tuesday (Monday being our day off), I was able to afford myself a few hours of relaxation in the afternoon, during which I touched base with a former Cornhill colleague via Skype. Since coming back, I have set up a network of four friends from the UK, who vary in age and background but who also share a passion for the gospel. They have each agreed to meet online for about an hour once a month, which in turn means that I can get a bit of encouragement most weeks. I hope they can too. The effort it took for me to set all of this up has already paid great dividends.

Weather permitting, Friday late-afternoon usually sees me running podcast-assisted laps on the track at the nearby stadium (I try to do the same time on Mondays and Wednesdays too). Exercise is another important tool I have in maintaining personal sanity, and Fridays are particularly anticipated, what with the Guardian Football Weekly/Kermode & Mayo double-bill.

I then had a couple of hours to make myself socially acceptable again, before the first motorcycles revved up the driveway for the church's first official men's ministry meeting (the front garden soon resembled a two-wheeler garage). We enjoyed some Wii U, the half-dozen pizzas that one of the group had specially made with his wife, and a whole lot of blokey banter, before I gave a short talk I'd prepared about how the world's perceptions of manhood conflict with what God has to say on the topic, prompting a short discussion before we wound things up at around 10:30pm. There was a general acceptance among the group that strong male spiritual leadership both in the home and in church (with the latter's activities all too often encroaching on the former) too easily becomes something for which we eschew our God-given responsibility. I'm very excited to see where this ministry takes our church.

But just to keep our feet on the ground, Amanda's afternoon yesterday could hardly have been more deflating. As has been mentioned here before, she's now in charge of Human Resources at FT and just needs a bit of assurance now and again that she's doing her job well, particularly as she's not been trained in it. Anyone who knows Amanda will know that she most certainly is; the discouragement comes when positive results are not all that forthcoming. 

What with Google translate and other such tools, this is not the place to go into details about what happened yesterday, but I'll try to hit the main notes. Essentially, she had a long-arranged meeting with members of the health staff, most of whom were not Christians. And for most of the meeting she had to walk a tightrope: laying down discipline where required, due to some grumbling about the working conditions; but endeavouring at all times to do this in a way which maintained her own, and FT's, Christian witness. 

The meeting was made particularly difficult by the fact that one of the participants was asked by Amanda to adapt their working method a little to help the others and staunchly refused. This was especially hard to take from the one member of the group who is a believer; indeed, the person in question plays an active role in our church and is someone we would generally consider to be a good friend. The loneliness of leadership, in a nutshell.

A great contrast in experiences, then, yesterday, and not in any way untypical of an average day here; Amanda has had to support me through some challenging days too. As individuals who are not always the most stable, emotionally and mentally, we in no way take for granted the great gift that God has given us to stand strong when such circumstances arise: each other.

Prayer

• It's been mentioned here before, but particularly in the light of experiences like yesterday's, please keep Amanda and this new work of hers in your prayers. The FT board (on which Amanda sits) are also dealing with a few weighty matters just now and have their monthly meeting this coming week. Wisdom required by the bucketful!

Praise

• We had a really encouraging members' meeting at the church on Wednesday night, where the leaders (including Craig) put forward proposals to alter the programme. It is possible for a church member at the moment to attend up to six meetings a week, and while we're glad that such a range of services are available, most people quite understandably can't make it out to everything, and attendance has taken a hit. So we've dropped one of the two midweek meetings -- we'll now alternate the prayer meeting and the Bible study on Thursday nights -- and are going to drop the communion service the first Sunday of the month to incorporate it into the family service. There was a generally positive response, and some constructive discussion too as to the overall direction of the church.
• For the men's meeting last night; an encouraging start.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda