Episode 6: When You Were Young

Sam and Napoleon in front of one of the road-blocks.

This is a prayer meeting in our neighbourhood that arose during the strikes.

These roads are usually bumper-to-bumper traffic all day
long. At least I could do something useful during the
strike like grow a beard!

Some graffiti on the road by a supermarket.

Hauling luggage between friends' houses became a normal part of life.

10th November: Evo Morales resigns as president.

12th November: Jeanine Añez, Bible in hand, assumes the interim presidency.

Today: Tensions remain high in many areas of the country.

Here are a couple of useful articles on the fall of Evo Morales:

https://gringoinbolivia.wordpress.com/2019/11/15/why-the-bolivian-crisis-is-not-a-right-wing-racist-imperialist-violent-coup/?fbclid=IwAR0VVn7iATB6UypFBms5x1X8LJN_z40YdxzVQ2EvhZxqI7IRonRoF1yM0QQ

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/evo-morales-finally-went-too-far-bolivia/601741/?fbclid=IwAR1wO78hslhrZuiWphg7aUpkx7oI38TYNDNo7sCIYLCz5B5BfRoJ_NCst4Q

Prayer Points

• Give thanks that some semblance of justice has been done with the president's resignation.
• Give thanks that the Lord was proclaimed and honoured as God throughout the period of the protests.
• Give thanks that we were able to return to our home and re-establish something of a normal routine.
• Pray for a peaceful resolution to the current tensions in the country.
• Pray for Amanda's one-on-one training with Suzanne Potter, Latin Link's short-term coordinator. 
• Pray for our time with new short-term volunteer Andy Robertson.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig, Amanda & Sam

Saturday Post -- 31/01/15

After our enforced hibernation in the days following our arrival, this was the week when we made our first tentative steps into our ministry contexts, with participation varying between the passive and the active.

The weekend saw us toddle along to the church for our first services there, and we were encouraged by what we saw and heard. During what is normally the teaching slot, a group of four young people, who had just returned from a national youth evangelism conference in Santa Cruz, were given the floor and asked to share with their cohorts some of their experiences. So excited were they by what they had seen God do that the other youth leaders practically had to wrench the microphone from their hands just so the meeting could finish on time.

The church had paid for these young people to attend the conference because they will be joining the youth leadership team this year. The more senior youth leaders, however, had stipulated that they must seek discipleship opportunities if they wish to serve on the team. Three of this group have approached Amanda and I about this possibility, and we’re really excited to be able to meet with them on a weekly basis, hopefully beginning in the next couple of weeks.

The aftermath of the Sunday services the following morning was a chance to briefly catch up with the last few people we hadn’t yet seen, including Carlos & Carla, whom readers may recall from previous entries (Carlos is a recovering alcoholic whose life has been miraculously turned around in the last couple of years). The church was full and there was a good number of young people around; encouraging, as one of our struggles in the past has been to challenge the youth to participate in the church throughout the week, not just on Saturday nights (the adults, meanwhile, can be a little too removed from the youth work, if we’re honest).

That evening had a first-day-back-at-school feel to it, as we prepared ourselves as best we could for going back to work at the Foundation (Amanda), or going back to the Foundation to work (Craig). First thing on Monday morning, we met with the other members of the FT board to outline what we saw ourselves doing. Amanda re-stated her desire (shared here in early January) to take charge of human resources and use this as an opportunity to minister to FT’s staff, several of whom are not yet believers. I, meanwhile, explained that I would be stepping back from FT activities, for the moment at least, to concentrate on church matters. However, I would be happy to help in taking care of communications with FT’s supporters, a role I had in the past.

And so, while Amanda spent the week getting to grips with the nuances of HR, I spent most of my time writing the 2014 sponsors’ report, something that requires a little more research when written by someone who wasn’t even in the country that year.

Nevertheless, the church is definitely where I want to be working this year, and during the week I had some fruitful meetings with the pastor, Elías. After the year I have had at Cornhill, with all this time to think carefully about what we’re doing at El Jireh Church I’m inevitably brimming with new ideas and methodologies; over the past couple of months, I’ve had to continually remind myself not to land all of these on the leadership at once, so as not to frighten anyone! I also need to be accepting of those times when it will only be possible for us to meet halfway on certain issues. All that said, however, I was able to share a few thoughts with Elías over the course of the week, and he was generally receptive to what I had to say. 

We’ve endeavoured also to spend meaningful time with others. Amanda spent Friday afternoon catching up with Grecia, with whom she is hoping to resume a weekly discipleship session. Grecia comes from a challenging family background; her father’s alcoholism and the family’s impoverished circumstances have not given her the easiest start in life. However, she and her siblings (including Elizabeth, who took over my work in Education last year) are regular attenders at El Jireh. Grecia is just out of high school and was one of the young people in attendance at the Santa Cruz conference. Amanda, naturally, is thrilled to see how she’s progressing.

I, meanwhile, had the opportunity to sit down with a male FT worker who himself used to be a mainstay at the church, but who has had some problems over the last couple of years and has a lot of faith-related questions he struggles to find answers for. I offered him the chance to meet regularly outside of work hours and he seemed open to that; please pray for him. At the prayer meeting on Tuesday evening, I spent some time praying with, and getting to know, Daniel, who is Romina’s husband. (Romina, you may remember, had studied medicine in Cuba for many years before returning to FT to work in 2013. She has also been a great help in the music ministry at El Jireh. Daniel, a Cuban native, with whom she began a relationship when studying there, was finally able to move down to Bolivia in 2014, and they were married late last year.) This was the first meaningful interaction I had enjoyed with him, and it was heartening to get alongside such a spiritually mature guy. We’re keen to encourage young couples like Daniel & Romina, whose desire to glorify the Lord in their marriage is a tremendous example to young and old in the church.

Prayer

• The young women’s Bible study group (which Amanda launched in 2011) is meeting again tomorrow evening. We’ve been delighted to see this group go from strength to strength over the past year, with the participants taking turns to lead the twice-monthly Bible study. Pray for God’s continued blessing on this group.
• Craig has several activities he’d like to develop this year, including a new men’s ministry and regular training for anyone in the church who is involved in Bible teaching. He’s also looking into the possibility of launching a training course for pastors in the Trinidad area. Pray for wisdom to know how to go about all of this, and patience while he waits for the Lord’s ‘green light’.

Praise

• For the various little signs of encouragement we’ve seen in the church over the past week.
• For further confirmation this week of God’s will for us.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 09/11/13

Craig teaching from John 21 at Samaritan's Purse on Monday morning.

First up, a huge answer to prayer.

In last week’s prayer points, I shared our frustrations over the visa for Odalys, FT’s audiologist. It was increasingly looking likely that Odalys would not get the required documents to travel to Guatemala this weekend for an audiology course that FT had put up substantial funds to send her to. Most frustrating was the fact that the visa application was sent to the Guatemalan embassy in Peru (a neighbour of Bolivia’s) via a world-renowned courier service two-and-a-half weeks ago, and by the time last week’s post had been written, some nine days later, it was in Argentina, having previously visited Miami and Montevideo. Worse still, the embassy in Lima were not answering our emails or phone calls.

Well. We received word from Lima on Tuesday that the visa was being processed and would be ready by the following day. They would send it to La Paz. We got one of our contacts in La Paz (a former FT worker) to pick it up in La Paz on Thursday and send it through to Santa Cruz. Odalys picked the visa up in Santa Cruz yesterday morning, enabling her to catch her flight at 6am this morning. Perfect timing!

There are probably a few important lessons for us as a Foundation in terms of being a little more prepared for these obstacles. But the Lord in his grace has once again proven to be our strength in our moment of weakness. Our God is an awesome God.

"Guten tag!" to Aline Sacher.

Of equal benefit to Odalys (and fellow audiologist Amanda) is a key piece of Audiology equipment donated to FT by House of Hearing in Edinburgh, and brought out here by Aline Sacher, our new volunteer from Germany. Like Ruth Young and Deborah Holmes before her, Aline has come out to Trinidad as part of the 'First Serve' programme, a joint initiative between Echoes of Service, Interlink and GLO (more information here), which allows young people to get a taste for the mission field as part of a year of training. Aline will be here till June, long after we're gone.

However, her arrival has brought about something of a neat bookending for us, particularly Amanda. Way back in the dark days of January 2010, we had barely landed when we were whisked off by KC to the police station, Interpol, the immigration headquarters and our fair share of lawyers' offices, in order to process our one-year visa (the haste is necessary in order to avoid a fine after your month's grace in the country). Well, four years later, with just over four weeks remaining in Trinidad, this time it has fallen to Amanda to do the, er, whisking. So she and whiskee Aline have spent a good chunk of the week observing the bureaucratic process at close quarters -- i.e., sitting on plastic chairs while government officials look for bits of paper they lost.

With Javier Ríos, of SP Trinidad. Eagle-eyed
readers may have noted that the sun was quite
strong that day.

Aline arrived on Sunday afternoon and she and Amanda were already knuckling down to the paper-chase first thing on Monday morning, so important is it to get a head start on these things. Meanwhile, across town, I was giving a talk on John 21 to the staff of Samaritan's Purse here in Trinidad. On the first Monday of each month, the staff lock themselves in to their compound and have a day of prayer and fasting. One of our church attenders, Javier (see picture), was in charge of putting together a programme last Monday, and asked me if I'd come and speak on missions. It was a pleasure to be able to be an encouragement to our fellow ministers.

I was also backed up by Alex Wann, from Wyoming, who led a time of singing on the guitar. Alex (who followed this blog for some time before his arrival in Trinidad) began a two-year posting with Samaritan's Purse a couple of months ago and has been a great source of encouragement to me. I have mentioned here previously that Bolivian males in particular are extremely reluctant to let their brothers in Christ scratch beneath the surface and ask the important questions, to the extent that my most meaningful Christian relationship here has been with my fellow missionary, Kenny. Kenny's absence since July, therefore, left something of a void in that regard. So I firmly believe that God placed Alex -- a guy who wastes no time whatsoever in getting down to the important subjects -- here with my own needs in mind, just as much as those of Samaritan's Purse. I'm actually writing this after having a time of sharing and prayer over breakfast, something we hope to do regularly in the short time before we leave.

Not next weekend, though! For we will both be part of the leadership team at our church's first ever campamento, now just seven days away. In our church's short existence, this is proving to be easily the biggest single logistical endeavour we've engaged in. We get exhausted just thinking about it. But we're really excited to see what the Lord has in store in a week's time. Blogging will be out of the question, but a full report will be included in the  23rd of November's Saturday Post.

Prayer

• Camp is by far the biggest prayer point this week. Pray particularly for the Lord's anointing on Jerry, who will be speaking throughout the weekend on the topic of family. Pray for Amanda and Mariana, who still have a lot of administration to wade through before the weekend, not least in collecting payments from the members of the youth group. Pray for energy for all us leaders. Pray for the 30 or so young people in attendance, particularly those who haven't yet made a confession of faith. And pray for the church, that the whole event would continue to bind us together; though it's really a youth camp, most of the adults from the church will be in attendance in a leadership capacity, and the church is invited to join us on the Sunday for a special service.
• Pray for Craig, who is doing the final teaching slot on Esther tonight at youth group.
• Tomorrow is a church leaders' meeting. Prayer always appreciated for wisdom for Craig, Elías and Jerry.
• Pray for Amanda and Aline as they continue to plough away in the visa application process.
• You've made it this far? One more then. Craig is looking to get some English-language sermons under his belt for the UK and Canada before we leave, so as not to be spending Christmas in front of MS Word. Pray that God would reveal to Craig the right topics and the right approach, preaching in the West being a very different kettle of fish to preaching in the developing world.

Praise

• Give thanks for Aline's safe arrival.
• Give thanks for opportunities for Craig to encourage (at Samaritan's Purse) and to be encouraged (by Alex).
• Give thanks for the Lord's perfect timing in the Guatemalan visa situation. Now that is what I call a lesson in faith.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 22/06/13

This week, a saga twistier than a Swiss mountain road finally came to an end. Coronation Street itself can hardly have seen many more catastrophes, confrontations and cliffhangers (and they've had a 50-year head-start on us -- our soap opera lasted a mere three).

But, sure enough, on Thursday morning, we shook hands on the sale of the two plots of land we had bought back in June of 2010, upon which we never ended up building due to the previous owner's inability to supply us with the correct documentation (that particular episode taking up twelve months in itself). Just click on the 'housing' tab at the foot of this post if you have a spare weekend to read the full story.

Pretty much by necessity, there were some last-minute hurdles to clear. We had reached a verbal agreement with the prospective buyers over a month ago on the sale price. However, in the past couple of weeks, we had been contacted on a number of occasions to see if we would be willing to lower the stated sale-price on the documents transferring the ownership. The reason for this is that when you buy land in Bolivia you are legally required to pay a tax of 3% of the sale price to the council. Indeed, so terrified are people of this charge that telling fibs on the documents is pretty much par for the course. For us, however, as believers -- and, moreover, as missionaries with a testimony to protect -- we couldn't budge on this. Nonetheless, to help the buyers, we reduced the sale price slightly, effectively saving them the money they would need for the taxes.

I was called, then, at the crack of dawn on Thursday morning (the buyers having arrived on the overnight bus from Santa Cruz) and summoned to their bank in the centre of Trinidad, where I, er, collected my winnings (a hefty charge is applied to transfers here, so the best option is to carry your cash between banks!). But in the process, and despite our gesture of good faith, I was asked, yet again, to consider lowering the stated sale price. At this point I took out my mobile phone calculator and showed them what 3% came to, in US dollars. They seemed OK after that, and I was free to go to our own bank and deposit the proceeds, stuffed brown envelope under my jacket -- never before have I felt more like a Russian gangster. During this time, they headed to their lawyer's office to begin the paperwork.

There we met half an hour later, where the welcoming party was not in the best of moods. Our buyers had had a discourse with the lawyer's secretary, who explained to them in some detail the various fees which would be required in offices around Trinidad in order to complete the transfer (figures which we, like any other buyer, had been required to stump up ourselves, not to mention the lawyer's charges which mounted up for us as a result of the shoddy paperwork). But the real salt in the wound was my apparent coldness of heart over the stated price. Mental arithmetic not being a strong point in this society, it turned out that they hadn't fully grasped that the likely tax bill I'd showed them earlier was in US dollars and not Bolivianos (right now, you'll get nearly 7 Bolivianos for your dollar). 

For the next hour, then, I came under pressure from both the couple -- with whom we had had close ties when they lived in Trinidad -- and the lawyer himself to tell porkies on the transfer document. It was a bona fide 1 Samuel 2:30 situation. At one point they even tried to appeal to my faith, arguing that the Christian thing to do would be to help my neighbour by lying! What I was doing, in Bolivian terms, was positively barmy, but wholly necessary to protect our testimony -- and our buyers could hardly argue they hadn't been warned.

I held the line sufficiently to convince my interrogators that we were not for turning and, in spite of it all, our buyers agreed to go ahead with the documentation, warts and all. By noon, we had ourselves a land transfer. And happily, for all the morning's histrionics, we were able to invite the couple over for lunch, where the matter was quickly forgotten about. 

This was not the only encouraging development these past seven days. I'm pleased to be able to share that I have been accepted on to the Cornhill Scotland course next year. The Cornhill course, whose prime focus is on sound Bible teaching, was founded by the venerable Dick Lucas in London in 1991. Its Scottish sister course began a few years ago out of its base at The Tron church in Glasgow and has since become something of a production line for faithful ministers of the word. 

The full-time course is one year in duration and the administrators there have been kind enough to allow me to study from January till December, rather than follow the usual September till June timetable. This allows us to proceed with our furlough year plans, while meeting LAM Canada's requirement for us to enrol in formal theological training. It should also give me some invaluable input as I become increasingly involved with the church side of things here in Bolivia. Amanda is still looking into a few possibilities herself, and we'll let you know when a decision has been made on that front.

Prayer

• For Amanda as we continue to seek God's will for her next year.
• For Craig as he begins a new Bible study series this week on the Tabernacle.
• For Amanda as she is involved in complicated audiology testing this week.

Praise

• For the land sale, which will go a long way to helping us pay off our building costs, and for the strength to keep honouring God to the bitter end.
• For the good news re. Craig's studies next year.
• For the arrival of Joe (see last week's post), who has been a great guest so far and is already putting his skills to good use as a health volunteer. He's a really mature young lad and we're enjoying getting to know him.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Saturday Post -- 02/03/13

Craig and I have switched Saturday morning duties this week… and we’re both quite chuffed about it. Instead of having to do all the grocery shopping at various locations all over town, I am still in bed in my pyjamas typing an interesting and enthused blog post… at least I hope it’s interesting and enthused. Craig is currently running all over town…and he has also intentionally added other jobs on top of the normal groceries that he is going to do as well. I think he is mostly excited because he gets an extended period of time to listen to his podcasts without my disapproving glares. I don’t have a problem with podcasts in general – I have a problem with him listening to them in the house where I have to shout at the top of my lungs for him to hear me when I want his attention. He responds, “Its not the podcasts’ fault, Amanda, the headphones are just that good.” But as it has just started to rain, I still think I am getting the most out of this deal.

This week has been a bit stressful in terms of the house. It’s so close to being finished, yet so far away. We really wanted to move in this weekend, but that is not going to happen. Now we have our eyes set on Wednesday, but it depends on so much. We think the main problem is that the site manager does not quite understand the urgency with which we’ve set the deadline (which is now three months past the promised completion date – the culture here is very laid back) and on the whole we were fine to go along with that, but as Shona is going to be here in seven days, well, we have no time to be relaxed any more. Craig feels like he’s turning into an old woman with all his nagging and part of me just can’t get upset about it, because I don’t really believe that there is a chance it is going to be ready in time. The balcony railings were put in yesterday and I think still need to be painted, there are still some glass panels missing, the mosquito netting still needs to get installed, but most importantly, the house is not electrically live. The house is completely wired, but it has not been hooked up to the city grid yet and without electricity we don’t have water and without water I am not moving. I can live without the kitchen cabinets (which haven’t even arrived from Santa Cruz yet), but I need water.

On the other hand, there has been a lot of progress this week. The inside of the house is all painted (and the pink looks great!), all the curtain rods have been hung, the outside is almost painted, the balcony railings actually arrived and the big mound of earth in front of house has been distributed all over the land. Whatever happens, we just have to be flexible, be ready to drop everything and move if we have to, or arrange for a bed for Shona in the apartment downstairs. Don’t worry, Shona, we won’t make you sleep on the floor.

But I am really getting excited about Shona’s visit; obviously on a personal level, as we haven’t seen each other since August 2011, but also on a professional one. Shona is coming down to run speech therapy training sessions with my colleague Odalys and myself. We offer speech therapy at the Foundation, which Odalys oversees, but she feels really under-qualified and would rather not be doing it. To be fair, in a city where no one else is offering such services, the little training Odalys has is better than nothing, but to encourage Odalys and to better equip her, Shona kindly agreed to spend her March Break with us, demonstrating techniques and constructing treatment plans for specific patients. The patients themselves are really excited because we’re really hyping it up to try and impress the importance of actually turning up for their appointments; and also because we’re not charging. As the therapy sessions are being coupled with staff training we felt it would be better to not charge for these initial evaluations and treatment plans. Who does not love free medical care from an overseas specialist?!?! If only I were so lucky with my medical woes...

I also spent a lot of time this week preparing a professional development course on patient interaction and inter-staff relationships. I have been working in health care for almost six years, both in admin and as a heath professional, with another three years of studying health care and their systems, and thinking about that made me feel old. But then I realised I was still under 30 and felt better about myself.

Customer service in Bolivia is relatively non-existent. Craig once found hair in his food at a restaurant and asked me what he should do about it. I said if he was hungry he should just eat it, because he is not getting replacement food or a refund. He mentioned it to the guy as he was paying and the guy shouted into the kitchen, “And we all know whose hair that was!” and laughed it off. Ya, no refund.  Unfortunately, this attitude can make its way into health care as well and this is not the type of atmosphere we’re trying to cultivate at the Foundation where we’re trying to show the love of Christ to everyone we meet. Also, as is quite common in many health systems, an atmosphere of competition or blame can develop between the admin and health staff, so we’re trying to develop a complete team attitude. I enjoyed putting the course together and I would like to give a big shout out to Westmuir Medical Centre, Parkhead, Glasgow, Scotland for teaching me the majority of what I know about patient interaction!!!!

The board of directors approved the course this past Thursday morning and the course is planned for this coming Friday afternoon…

Today is a big day… the Club de Exploradores de la Biblia (Bible Explorers Club) starts again today. KC and I will be leading the same class as last year, i.e., girls of twelve years and older. Today we’re starting with some games and Bible trivia to start nice and easy before we push the girls to work really hard. Seriously, last year, when no one was volunteering answers, KC made the girls do exercises to wake their brains up (sometimes the exercises were laps). I was so glad that I was a leader and not a participant, although I would possibly be thinner than I am now if I had to participate. When I refer to working hard, I really mean thinking outside the box; forcing them to think about what they are reading and trying to understand it. Sometimes I think we must come across as mean people because of how hard we push them to think comprehensively and critically, but they keep coming back, so maybe they know that the tough love is really full of genuine love.

I will leave it there… and I (if Craig does the grocery shopping again next week), or Craig will fill you in on the housing developments over the next week.

Prayer

• That we would be able to move into our new house this week, so Shona can stay with us in it.
• Shona as she travels down here in one week’s time and for the speech therapy training sessions that are being organised.
• The beginning of a new year of many activities in the church and the Foundation – that God would be working through these activities to reach many people. 

Praise

• Craig’s stellar talk to the youth group last Saturday on the Prodigal Son – it was very clear and very fun as well (they got to play Who Wants to be a Millionaire to illustrate the concept of walking away with what you have instead waiting until the game is over – kind of like the prodigal son, get it?).
• Productivity on this professional development course that I was able to prepare this week – it really was a blessing to me to work on it. 

       ¡Que Dios les bendiga!

       Craig & Amanda

      PS Craig here, got some pictures of the work in the house, taken today. Hopefully these will be the last such images we post here before moving in.