Want a Rolex watch?


The Santa Marta beaches are plagued every day with those offering coral necklaces, body massages and £2.50 Rolex watches. After a few days you get to know these repetitive sales people and Olwen gave a Christian booklet to one watch seller. He was all excited because he had just started attending church with another watch seller. This brought both of them along daily looking for New Testaments. Later that week in a market I saw a girl reading a Bible, she told me she was studying Romans 7 and working out about the spiritual battle. On our last day Olwen led me down a street full of clothing material shops; the boredom almost drove me to tears as we looked for hammock material for the sewing room. Eventually we found metres of the stuff, and the woman who served us was a dedicated Christian lady.

Being a Christian in South America is not something you're expected to keep quiet about. That is just the way it is. It makes a "Tell Scotland" kind of evangelistic campaign seem a bit weird. But I suspect it's more like the church of Jesus' time - without the £2.50 Rolex watches.

Seminary classes have now restarted Next Friday Olwen travels by plane to Ibagué to speak at a weekend teacher's conference, and on Sunday I'm to preach in our local church.


Photo: It's not easy leaving the Santa Marta beach

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