Looking after camels

It´s been the strangest month of my life. Three advisore told me I had different medical crises including an instant death warning, there was a lump on my skin and then I was left on my own. It felt like I was a wannabe Job but without the camels

There are two things which kept me sane. One was observing nature carefully. For instance watching a full moon appear between darkened clouds or noting the 12 different colour tones in street-side flowers or picking out the variety of bird songs. All drew my mind to the One who is their Maker and my peace-maker.

And the other was reading the poetry of a man who went through a comparable emotional crisis, and survived. I memorized David's Psalms and repeated their wordsd in the night stillness.

Of course, it really worked out well for Job in the end. And my advisors too have all proved wrong, the skin's healded and Olwen's at my side. Just missing the six thousand camels.

Photo: Last weekend's Fruit and Flower Festival: and a pointer to the God of nature

Staircase surprise

Missionary wives are a funny lot. Last weekend was a Bank Holiday one, and we decided to go and stay in a fairly luxurious hotel on the other side of town. My recent health scare made us want to spend some time thinking things over.

Maybe it’s my pagan background, but I don´t have a problem with luxury, however Olwen’s Northern Ireland pietism makes it touch her conscience. And especially before leaving the Seminary when the sewing ladies were asking where she was going for the weekend. She didn´t have the bottle to say the InterContinental Hotel nor could she lie. Speechless? Never, but fudging, not half.

However it all changed on Sunday night, when on the hotel’s shinny brass staircase we encountered colleagues from the Seminary: old, revered and eminently spiritual ones. The two wives fell over themselves to explain how they didn’t normally come and stay here. Jack and I just smiled, happy with life.

Today in the history class we read John Calvin’s famous opening statement: our wisdom consists in knowing God and knowing ourselves. The Bank Holiday weekend nudged us on a bit in both areas.

Photo: Not just luxurious inside the hotel: outside too

Good Samaritans

My five nights of journeying from Scotland to the Seminary extracted their cost on my heart, and on Tuesday I knew I needed medical help. What comforted me was reading the Parable of the Good Samaritan: a half dead traveller cared for and cured by a Samaritan.

Dr Luis Horacio’s surgery next door to the Seminary is a kind of all-in-one basic health post that achieves wonders in the barrio but would give an NHS doctor enough cocktail party stories for a lifetime.

The crucifix was behind the doctor’s desk, a rosary hung on the wall, and he carefully examined me, stopped the palpitations and he sent me on my way to hospital for an ECG.

Unfortunately they had finished for the day, however a nurse coming off duty turned round, opened up the ECG room and ran the test: she was a nun.

And now a friend of Manuel’s has kindly arranged for me to queue jump in order to see a top cardio man.

It’s going to be amazing to meet the Good Samaritans in heaven. Thank you Lord for such people. I was jogging up the Volador today.

Photo: Dr Luis Horacio's surgery beside the Seminary

Pirates and Paul

A crumb of comparison between ourselves and the apostle Paul, is the uncertainty of travel. I've just spent a couple of weeks in the UK, and journeying back to Colombia I missed the London-Miami connection, so had an unexpected overnight at Heathrow, and arrived a day late minus a case with clothes and students' essays.

Landing in Medellín airport in an evening means you risk encountering the urban equivalent of pirates: gangs of high speed motorcyclists specialising in international arrivees. So I stayed at its airport hotel in order to travel into the city in daylight.

To rectify my clothing shortage I bought a T shirt, which has a bull's head on and written underneath in red, yellow and blue: "Colombia" - not sure if Olwen will take to it, but she won't be back for 2 weeks. Over breakfast I read the day's El Colombiano and in it there was an article on our part of the city. Not about its 59 gangs but about the main road at the bottom of the street. It's called Via al Mar or "Route to the coast", which is a bit optimistic as that's 12 hours away. But this route is evidently a strategic corridor for the movement of illegal guns and drugs in and out of the city. And its lightly policed, who are usually corruptible anyway.

Medellín may not be too different from violent and corrupt ancient Rome. How Paul managed to achieve so much in such a world is incredible. El Colombiano also had an editorial on Jesus' teaching about faith like a grain of mustard seed: I'm still working at that, and maybe progressing, the case arrived the next day.

Unable to find help elsewhere: roadside prayer near Via al Mar