Missionary Gas

On Saturday we went through one of the longest road tunnels in Colombia. It's not far from Medellin and connects this part of the Andes with a fertile subtropical valley. It took 8 years to build, is 3 miles long and provides a better route for transporting wood, cattle, grain and the like. The tunnel typifies the problems that the western countries of South America face with their physical geography. It's a bit like establishing a country in the Alps without the resources to maintain it. Land-slides, brigands and taking 5 hours to go 50 miles have provided generations of missionaries with colourful stories and nationals with a hard life. At the other end of the tunnel lies the city of Santa Fé. As it's translated name, The Holy Faith, implies, it contains a Catholic Seminary, churches as frequent as pubs in Glasgow and those who beg in God's name. The Spaniards like their Inca predecessors knew that the Andes would provide the kind of isolation that maintains religious

Visitors are a funny lot. Recently Olwen's old school-friend, Barbara and her daughter, Lizzie, arrived for a month's stay. Those from the UK do the strangest things, like sunbathing, chittering about the rain and not stuffing their money down their bra. But Colombians are no different. At our door, in the midst of a strongly conservative religious community, arrived a friend, reeking of alcohol and saying he´d done things he shouldn't have. He'd been away from home for a couple of nights now and was too frightened to go home to his wife. In the end we drove round to his house where the rather substantial lady was her usual courteous self. I left him holding the baby, maybe as a protective strategy, and wanting to know if I couldn't stay on for an hour or two. The idea of being a human shield didn't appeal. On the same day arrived a couple of former students. They were bright, cheerful and positive about life, although after years of trying for a family Maria h

The big event in the past week has been Mother's Day. It's big in South America, maybe because of a culture that venerates the Virgin Mary above Jesus, or maybe it's to do with errant fathers, I don't know. On that day to every female you meet over teenage years, you say Felíz Día! (Happy day!). Although we were just visitors at the church on Sunday, Olwen came home with chocolates and having had lots of hugs. The sentimental poetry is enough to make you groan all year. When walking down a local street I found myself looking at the equivalent of Patience Strong verses chalked in the middle of the road by a man in his 40s, all about his mother. This custom of giving profuse thanks doesn't stop with mothers. On the students' day off this week I had to get them to turn up for an extra 3 hours of classes because of time we'd missed while in Peru. At the end of the morning, the students spontaneously gave me a round of applause. And last night Olwen and I ate our

While in Moyobamba I had the chance to repeat my daily walk to the river. I did this a couple of years ago after my stroke, so going back again made me feel a bit philosophical, reflecting on life and so on. The river is caught up in the world's global warming, decreasing in height annually and causing nasty financial problems for those who farm its fertile banks. But as a transport route it's still equivalent to the Inverness-Glasgow A9. One thing I had failed to do a couple of years ago was to go and talk to the man who makes boats. He was still there. It gave the effect of visiting a cousin of the Inca stone masons. His is a labour intensive work without saw, sandpaper or electricity, and only a machete, tar and ingenuity. One day the boat's would be owner appeared; a water engineer who worked in the villages of the river establishing a supply of clean water and noticeably cutting disease and increasing life expectancy. The ancient Romans too knew this and built 144 publ

Encouraging incidents in the past week have been: - Having my hand kissed by a 92 year old woman in Moyobamba. - Getting an old anti-virus programme to work just as my current one finished. - The tutor on my internet teaching course typing, "excelente, David" on the latest project. - Receiving a Christmas card from Brora Free Church. - For the first time since we started to work with the mission again, a paper copy of The Monthly Record arrived. The small and insignificant mean so much to us, John Calvin could never have experienced these particular things. We're thankful to be back in Colombia. On Saturday the journey from Moyobamba to Lima took 10 hours since, because of bad weather, we were first flown further inland to the jungle port of Iquitos. Arriving after midnight in Lima, it was wonderful to see Julia Smith and a student driver waiting for us. John and Andy are now settled into life with the MacPherson family in Moyobamba and work in the clinic or villages each