Saturday Post -- 18/04/15

Not infrequently, as I read over my sermon notes early on a Sunday morning, I think to myself, “This of all weeks”. That was certainly my experience last weekend.

As mentioned last Saturday, we have just begun a new sermon series in 2 Peter, in which the apostle expresses his desire that his readers ‘be on your guard, so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. But grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.’ We do not know too much about the recipients, but it is clear that Peter is concerned for his readers’ continued growth, and especially in the light of repeated assaults by false teachers. Indeed, the theme of false teachers is woven right through the letter, implicitly and explicitly.

So where does this all fit in to April 2015 in northern Bolivia? Well, back in February, I was kindly given the opportunity to speak at a dinner for Trinidad’s pastors and church leaders, in order to promote the Langham Preaching course. The event was really my first foray into the wider church scene here, and an instructive one. The singing was fervent, the music vibrant, the prayers ardent, and chiefly focused on the need for unity among the city’s pastors. The sermon was merely passable – more a meditation on a theme, really – but encouraged by the generally positive tone of the evening, I was happy to see past that.

This group, I was to learn, met once a month on Saturday mornings; I resolved immediately to make the effort to pop along. Well, maybe it was the early start (6am!) and the lack of a free meal, but I began to get a fuller appreciation of things that morning, and I was concerned about what I was seeing and hearing, not least the sermon, which was totally unrepresentative of the text, heavy on prosperity-gospel theology, and despite this, was answered by a chorus of ‘Améns’ at every juncture (is it naïve of me to expect sermons given to fellow pastors to be of an especially high quality, given the preaching abilities of the listeners?). An invitation was then given at the end for those who wanted more of this in their ministry to come forward and be anointed with oil. All but three of us did so. In a town where education levels are so poor that people tend to simply do what someone in authority tells them without so much as a moment’s thought, perhaps I had been overly-optimistic in expecting pastors and church leaders to take the lead in the discernment stakes.

In all honesty, the only thing stopping me from not turning up last weekend was a promise to our fellow missionary KC that I would promote the Emmaus correspondence courses (which FT administers in Trinidad) at one of the meetings. This time, the meeting was largely dominated by administrative concerns, but something that got my nerves twitching was a casual reference to ‘apostles’, e.g., ‘we need to be praying for the situation in such-and-such-a-village, where Apostle Bill has fallen out with Apostle Ben’. Later, an upcoming evangelistic event was being promoted, for which it was incumbent that everyone bring as many people along from their church as possible, in order to hear what ‘Apostle Moses’ had to say.

The apostolic movement is a big deal in Latin America, with many pastors assuming for themselves the title of ‘apostle’ in order to claim for themselves an authority equal to that of the Twelve. And what need, indeed, would one have of Peter and his cohorts, when the Bible is rarely read, when it is mis-preached anyway, and when the word of a pastor in the 21^st century is supposedly more relevant than the ‘living and active’ word of God? Naturally, people tend to get seriously exploited. Up until now, these were things I had only heard about; last weekend was my first exposure to its out-workings right here in Trinidad.

Indeed, going back to 2 Peter, he introduces himself straight out of the blocks as ‘an apostle of Jesus Christ’, stating right from the off that his word carries divine authority; an early salvo against the false teachers of the readers’ time. Here there is only assumed authority in the title, and its occupants are largely preaching heresies.

The prayers for unity, this time, were harder to go along with, all of a sudden sounding more shallow. Unity in the body of Christ is, of course, a noble aspiration, but I’m increasingly realising that its implied meaning in these meetings is more like, ‘willingness to leave one’s brain at the door and submit to some seriously ropey doctrine’.

At the end of the meeting, I got my five minutes to plug the Emmaus courses, with their particular emphasis on personal growth through – wait for it – reading the Bible. For the first time that morning, there was barely an ‘Amén’ to be heard among the assembled pastors and church leaders. A silence that, to me, appeared to speak volumes.

Over the last week, I’ve been chewing over the whole ‘joint-church’ scene, and whether my continued participation can be of any benefit, to myself or others. I’d appreciate your prayers as I think on these questions.

There can be a tendency for us reserved westerners to watch the vibrant Latin American church scene from afar and get a bit sniffy about the emotive nature of it all. But to do so is to question the God-given nature of these peoples. Indeed, such passion is a tremendous asset. Oh for a taste of it in the church in Scotland! As this video reminded me, it’s a question of directing these energies down the correct channels.

Which brings me, finally, to this weekend – specifically last night – when we had our first Bible study as part of the men’s ministry. As we delved deeper into questions of Biblical manhood, I found my interjections as the study’s chairman increasingly infrequent, my Bolivian cohorts taking it upon themselves to minister to one another, be open and honest about personal challenges, and speak truth into the individual needs of the group (“But you must remember, Diego, what the Bible says in…”). So deep did we go that I effectively had to ask my friends to leave, otherwise we could have kept going till well past midnight. No loud music. No emotive gestures from the pulpit. To all intents and purposes, all we were doing was sitting around an open book. But the Latin fire was no less in evidence.

That’s more like it.

Prayer

• Amanda has just got back from the youth leadership meeting (they also take place first thing on a Saturday!) and was telling me there are a lot of interpersonal tensions between some of the young people. Mostly silly stuff, but pray that it wouldn’t become a stumbling block to their participation in the group.
• For Craig as he preaches on 2 Peter 1:5-15 tomorrow. 

Praise

• Craig was able to visit Hernán this week to begin a Bible study, which went really well. He and Elías will each be visiting him once a week in order to keep the momentum going, and give him something important to be thinking about during those long hours in that hospital bed.
• Amanda had an encouraging time this week as she began discipleship with a couple more women.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 24/08/13

That's more like it!

Another sur (our third in the space of a month) has just blown in and, while the south winds are an immense source ofjoy to us white people (temperatures had been averaging mid-30s over the past few days, for any sake), they can have a somewhat disruptive impact upon the various ministries we’re involved in, not least with young people, with many parents reluctant to let their darlings leave the house and catch a cold (not that the average home here provides much protection from a chill wind).

That’s certainly been the case with my old Emmaus course buddy, Alfredo. During the day, Alfredo works as a cobbler in a market and, depending on the extent to which business is a-booming, he’s usually happy to sit and talk about his current book there and then. However, Alfredo also has a minor disability and can only walk with the aid of crutches. When the south winds career through Trinidad, they provide another unwanted obstacle to getting to work.

So the last few Wednesday mornings (our agreed weekly meeting time) I’d shown up only to find a closed shop (Alfredo doesn’t have a mobile phone to contact me beforehand – very unusual in this town, where text-messaging is the paramount non-oral form of communication). The surge in temperatures over the last ten days, however, meant Alfredo could get to work this past week and we had a productive time of it on Wednesday morning as we discussed his book, which focuses on the doctrine of the Trinity.

The week has provided several such opportunities to dig deep into Scripture and uncover life-changing truths, not least in the classroom. You may remember that last year, having studied John’s gospel with my R.E. classes in the local high school, KC and I spent some time talking to individual students about their responses to some personal questions at the end of their textbook (this, again, is material from the Emmaus course); through this process, many of the young people put their trust in Jesus. This year’s book had a similar set of closing questions, and KC and I are once again sitting down with the students.

This year, we have once again had the privilege of praying with some students who have made a decision of faith – though some of them, it has transpired, had already taken that step themselves earlier in the year. However, there are, of course, a decent chunk of students in the classes who became Christians last time around, and so the last few days have given us an opportunity to assess how they’re progressing in their faith. Many come from homes where their parents are reluctant to let them come out to church (particularly for the Saturday night youth meeting – understandable given our relatively isolated location on the edge of town) and so we’ve been pointing them in the direction of good core Bible books to read, while encouraging those who are able to attend church to make the effort if they wish to grow.

Whereas many of these students had some idea of the gospel message, the majority of people in the English class were confronted with it for the first time this week. This year we are once again using the text ‘What Christians Believe’, a purpose-built guide to the basic tenets, written in a simple, short-sentence style, with English students in mind. This week’s lessons looked at why it was necessary for Jesus to die and what his death means for us. On Tuesday, for example, I put it to the students that we’re all familiar with the idea that we’ll go to heaven if we’re good people. And, of course, they had all heard of this. When I then told them that there was zero biblical basis for this belief, the majority of faces in the room performed contortions that the Cirque du Soleil’s troupe would be proud of.

One student, in fact, came to me at the end of both reading lessons this week to tell me (in as nice a way possible!) that the teaching this week had ‘messed with her head’ but that she’d be really keen to sit down and discuss these things in greater detail. Please pray for this woman, Teresa, whose two children also come to the class – Amanda knows her well as she has some hearing issues, and so she will hopefully have the opportunity to talk with her soon, it being more appropriate for a woman to meet privately with her.

In between all this, I’ve been faced with the daunting task of preparing the teaching this week at church on Philippians 2:1-11; daunting in the sense that, well, the passage itself read 20 times over would make for a far better teaching spot than anything I could say. Nevertheless, I’ve got something vaguely resembling a sermon awaiting my attention on the desktop post-Post. I’ve also been able to make some headway on a sermon on the end of the chapter (on Timothy and Epaphroditus), due in a couple of weeks’ time. By that point, Amanda’s family will be here, hence my desire to get it polished off ASAP.

Amanda has been a little under the weather this week, having been hit by a viral infection over the weekend. Recovering surely but slowly, she returned to work to find that her Audiology partner in crime, Odalys, had travelled to La Paz to address a health concern of her own, and wouldn’t be back till the end of the month. So she’s been (wo)manfully working through the Audiology caseload while doing her best to get back to full health. A tough old week.

And in her position as youth group coordinator, shared with KC, her afternoons have been dominated by preparations for the next couple of weekends, in which we will be touching on what the French surely don’t call les oiseaux et les abeilles. Yes, our focus this time around is on Sex & Relationships, a topic of great importance in any society and particularly in a culture where promiscuity and teenage pregnancies are as much a part of everyday life as the rice consumed with every last meal (even the pasta-based ones). So please pray for wisdom and discernment for all of us as we navigate these choppy waters.

You’ve made it this far? You’re made of stern stuff, my friend. Before signing off on this relative epic, we thought you might be interested to know that Amanda has made a decision as to her own course of studies next year, this being a requirement of LAM Canada for our furlough year. She will be enrolling in a distance-learning ‘Certificate in Christian Studies’ course provided by St John’s College in Nottingham. The course meets several important criteria: 1) it’s cheap; 2) it enables her to study ‘at’ a different institution to my own (something which, weirdly, she says she’d find far too stressful); 3) did I mention it’s cheap?; and 4) she can take the course at her own pace, with no time-limit, meaning she can pick it up again the next time we are on furlough.

We’re glad that we can now both, at long last, start preparing for next year’s studies and what I’m sure will be a great opportunity for growth for each of us. But there’s still some way to go here until we head for home (16 weeks, not that we’re counting) and we’d appreciate your prayers for us to keep focused on the work here in the meantime. As you can see from today’s post, it’s not as if we’re lacking in things to do.

Prayer

• This time next week, Amanda’s mother (Selene) and aunts (Cathy & Sally) will be airborne and headed for Santa Cruz. Pray for their, and our, preparations for what, if I were a boxing promoter, I would simply have to label ‘The Asian Invasion’.
• Pray for all the people with whom we have contact through evangelism (the English/R.E. classes) or discipleship (Alfredo, most of the youth group, the church) activities.
• Pray for sensitivity and clarity tonight as we discuss Sex & Relationships with the young people.

 Praise

• Give thanks for so many opportunities to share our faith with others this week.
• Give thanks for further clarity for next year, and for having the resources to be able to plan ahead with confidence.

¡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 -- 29/06/13

Before the year's end, all being well, all three missionary couples working here will be taking to the skies for furlough periods, with the Holt family leaving Trinidad for Edinburgh a week on Thursday, Maicol & KC looking to be in Seattle by Christmas, and Amanda and I having already booked our flights home for December. There was no strategy behind our simultaneous departures, just the way things worked out. It won't exactly be a complete wipeout either, a six-week period over December and January being the only time that all three families will likely be out of the country.

However, it's fair to say that our impending exits have concentrated our minds somewhat on the job of handing over the work, a task which we hope will yield benefits not only in the immediate future. For in delegating the work we do to the locals for short-term periods, our prayer is that they will gain the experience necessary to carry on that work, or to at least expand into similar territory over the coming years, decreasing missionary dependence in the process.

And nowhere is that handover more vital than in the church, where our prayer is to see the community of believers here be in a position to stand on their own two feet. We want to see a church where the thinking and drive behind what we're doing comes from Biblically-rooted Bolivians.

So we were pretty excited last Sunday evening when we, our fellow missionaries, and the rest of the church received in impromptu invitation to a San Juan celebration, the 23rd of June being Bolivia's equivalent of Guy Fawkes' night. The event was hosted by one of the families here and organised by some of the young adults in the church. It was a 'school night', but this is Bolivia, so the whole thing didn't really get going till around 10pm (an increasing problem for old fogeys like us). But, far more importantly, the church had a couple of hours to enjoy a time of genuine fellowship, during which we spent an hour or so choosing songs to sing together to the accompaniment of a lone guitar, provided that the requesters shared a favourite Bible verse. 

As church events go, this was hardly on the scale of, say, our big annual Christmas extravaganza. But how exciting, nonetheless, to see the locals get a vision for church unity, taking the initiative and delivering with such aplomb.

The working week has been fairly routine, but in amongst things, we've been getting to know our visitor, Joe Sturman, a little better. Joe has brought a thoroughly professional attitude to his work here, taking advantage of every opportunity given him to increase his medical awareness. Furthermore, we have seen a real prayer warrior at work, taking the time to commit the particular situations and needs he sees each day to the Lord. Now and again, when you're bogged down in the day-to-day grind, God gives you an outsider to remind you of what's important in missions, and Joe has certainly been a gift in that respect.

The Tabernacle replica set: batteries/pillar of fire not included.

I also began a series of Bible studies on the Tabernacle this week, as part of our bigger study of Exodus. In contrast with my dear wife's rigorous ecclesiacademic training in her formative years, I didn't get the chance as a boy in Sunday school to learn about, say, the meaning of the shewbread or who gets to sit on a mercy seat. So I've relished digging deeper into these passages over the last couple of weeks and enjoyed sharing these fruits with the church on Thursday evening. And the Holt family have the pleasure of bookending this week's post; 'twas Kenny who very kindly lent me the family's toy Tabernacle -- for illustrative purposes only, I stress.

Prayer

• Craig is leading Bible studies and preaching pretty much throughout this coming month. Please pray for wisdom and openness to the Lord's leading as he prepares for these various duties.
• Pray also for Craig tomorrow morning, when he will once again be promoting the Emmaus course at a new church in Trinidad.
• Pray for rest over this weekend -- the dogs gave us a few headaches last week, pretty much eliminating any chance of rest. On which note, old Poppy is heavily pregnant and due any day now -- pray for a safe delivery of her puppies!

Praise

• Give thanks for the encouraging signs of initiative and independence from our brothers and sisters in the church this week.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 15/06/13

Involved as we are in a great variety of programmes, activities and services (ecclesiastical and otherwise), it can be easy to lose sight of the key commodity in missionary outreach: people.

Fortunately, one of the areas I’m involved in here in Bolivia gives us a great chance to touch base with individuals and develop Christ-centred relationships in the process.

FT, as I’ve probably mentioned before, is the official centre in the Beni region for the Emmaus correspondence course, in which students study the Bible, with the aid of course texts, and submit exams at their own pace. The whole course consists of around 40 texts, which go progressively deeper into Scripture. For example, the first two or three texts are steadfastly gospel-centred, communicating the Good News in simple language. But later texts focus on particular themes such as Baptism and Communion, particular books of the Bible, such as Galatians or John’s epistles. The texts are of particular use here, where daily Bible reading aids are sorely lacking; many students find themselves doing ‘a bit a day’ of their books.

Once completed, and the accompanying exams are submitted, it is over to KC (who oversees the programme), Elías and me to correct these – a fairly simple task, as they tend to be predominantly made up of true/false questions. However, most of the exams close with a series of open-ended questions, which usually apply the theory of the text to the individual. These questions, naturally, can throw up a whole variety of answers (some of which, occasionally, suggest a lack of real understanding of the text as a whole), and so our policy is to meet with each individual student when we return their exam.

On this basis, I’ve been meeting with a young man called Alfredo over the past few weeks. Well, not exactly. Alfredo, a cobbler in one of the markets here, is unable to walk without support and, naturally, struggles to get around. So instead of coming to us, we have been going to him – KC was visiting him until motherhood kicked in and asked me if I could take over this duty. It was hard to find a time that suited both of us, but recently we’ve been able to find a time every week that we can meet. This doesn’t give him nearly enough time to finish a text. However, it gives him regular contact with another Christian male and the chance to discuss what he’s been studying with someone who knows their Bible.

I’ve been greatly encouraged to meet with Alfredo and get to know him better. Despite having no support from family or friends, he has a real passion for his Bible and has spent a lot of time thinking about his faith – a rare commodity in this culture. His condition makes it hard for him to get to church. In our own church, which meets in an upper room (purely coincidentally, I might add) we are about to install a bannister (like so much in this culture, this depends on the guy who said he’d do it turning up when he says he will!) and I’m really hoping that once we have this in place, that we can bring Alfredo along to our congregation on Sundays where, God-willing, he can benefit from more support than he currently receives.

As Amanda mentioned last week, I made my own visit to a church on the other side of town to promote the Emmaus materials. Many of those who attend our church are ‘doing’ the course (though submission of texts tends to be somewhat infrequent) and so we’re keen to push the course, which is a terrific resource in evangelism and discipleship, into other faith communities in Trinidad.

This weekend is a relatively quiet one – for me, at least. Amanda is knee-deep in a weekend-long training course for the Kids’ Games programme at FT (which we ran last year between September and November – see posts from that time for more details), which is being supported by some visitors who have come all the way from Cochabamba to facilitate the training. So once this is posted, I must do for others as I so often have them do for me, and embark on the mother of all shopping trips. Nothing quite like Trinidad on a Saturday morning.

Which is itself complicated by the fact that we will soon have an extra mouth to feed. On Wednesday afternoon, our latest volunteer, Joe Sturman, arrives from the UK. Joe has just finished his second year of medical training at Birmingham and will be staying in our home during his month of volunteer work at FT. We’re looking forward to getting to know Joe over the next few weeks and, in particular, receiving his tribute of Dairy Milk bars. Godspeed, my friend!

Prayer

• For all those who have recently enrolled in the Emmaus course, that they would complete their texts promptly and would grow in Christ in the process.
• For Amanda and her fellow participants in the training course this weekend.
• For safety for Joe as he travels here on Tuesday and Wednesday.
• For Alfredo as he seeks to grow in his faith in challenging circumstances.

Praise

• For so many opportunities to get alongside people and share Christ with them, which the Emmaus course affords us.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda