Missionary Gas

The car journey from Tarapoto to Moyobamba takes two hours and is an unknown quantity. From the airport you take a motorbike taxi up to one of two garages and then wait. When there are four passengers for the journey, the car goes. I once had to spend an entire afternoon hoping that the extra passengers would appear, they didn't. As there were four of us with John and his friend Andy, I phoned one of the garages before we left Lima to see if they would pick us up at the airport. Being keen for the business they readily agreed to do so. We were surprised to find that the driver who met us said he could remember my name from years ago and recognised Olwen. It was from when he was a teenager living in the distant town of Celendín, where we had worked in the 80s. I vaguely remembered Silverio. He´d never been involved much in the church, and there had been an unresolved discipline case with his father. But now I found him to be a keen christian, with a like minded wife an

I write this from the students' computing room at the Lima Seminary. It isn't the easiest place to work in; a student starts singing out loud while he types (a Christian song that just seems to have one line), the handyman waves at me through the window and someone comes in and hugs me. Tonight my talks on the parables start. There have just been two days of conferences in the Seminary with an excellent speaker from Feed the Hungry talking about different views of the world. So it won't be easy to follow that with three nights of conferences on something that doesn't seem relevant to the needs of Peru, but I've got lots of free hand-outs, so feel hopeful. Yesterday I took part in a radio programme the Seminary produces each week on a Christian radio station. My interviewer emphasized that my talks were on Jesus' parables for the contemporary world, so maybe I'm underestimating their drawing power. Olwen´s off with John and his friend Andy to Cole

I suppose I must start by recounting a prayer Olwen made last Thursday. Easter is Colombia's major religious occasion and also when families gather. And being separated form hers, Olwen felt down and, unknown to me, prayed that God would show his power. Later I arrived and decided that it was the occasion for me to have a once-in-every-30-years confession time with her. After that a married couple with 4 of their daughters came for tea, and surprised us by announcing that they wanted us to remarry them. They'd bought rings, and so we did our best despite the lack of information in the Blue Book. If anyone's interested in a possible aphrodisiac, try pasta and banoffee pie. The following day we went on a 17 hour trip in a crowded van to a coffee farm where I preached on the lost sheep, we swam in an outdoor pool and saw something that seemed to be from the plagues at Pharaoh's time, a frog the almost the size of a man's boot. Coming home we were involved in an acciden

It's been a week of special events. A man looking like an extra-terrestrial came and fumigated our flat for cockroaches. These large beasties both fly and crawl, go crunch under your feet when you stand on them and hide in the loo to scare you at night, so I have no qualms about their genocide. The Seminary was also invaded, but by people who must be kept alive: financiers. The occasion was a conference organized by the US funding body, Overseas Council International. This is a Christian charity which provides student grants, capital for buildings and managerial advice. Such events bring out the desperate-to-impress side in our own institution as a concrete garden with fancy lighting suddenly appeared, skirts replaced jeans and we all sang a Moody and Sankey hymn. I don´t think these hard headed American business men will be taken in, but thankfully Overseas Council remains God's mean of keeping the Seminary going and the generosity of US Christians is almost incomparable. I sa