One flew away.....

Ten days ago I returned from a week in Costa Rica, having flown down to accompany our youngest daughter Rachel in her move to that country. Rachel will be serving there with one or more local missions in outreach to the poorer people in the slums around San Jose. She doesn’t plan to return in the foreseeable future.

This move has been a long time coming. When she was a child, Rachel gravitated to the missionary stories in the church library; she had no notion of becoming one herself, but such books drew her in a way she couldn’t explain. It was not until she went with her church youth group to inner-city L.A. on a short term mission trip that Rachel began to get the idea that such service might be for her.

In her high school junior year Rachel asked us for permission to go to Latin America on a student exchange. We put her off until graduation, but when she finished school she hadn’t forgotten. Rachel worked a year, and then with her savings and a newly arranged line of credit she launched out and went to Costa Rica to study Spanish in a home stay program for nine months.

Upon her return from Costa Rica, Rachel worked for another year and then enrolled in the Calvary Chapel Bible College in Lima, Peru. During this time Rachel felt a growing, newly definite sense that God was calling her into missions. It was not so much an aspiration or an ambition so much as an imperative, an undeniable sense that this is something that she must do in obedience to God’s Spirit.

In reponse to this, Rachel began working singlemindedly to pay off her debts upon her return from Peru last April. Her goal was to become free to go back to serve in Costa Rica on a full time, permanent basis. She largely succeeded in reaching her goal and now she has followed through.

In doing so she is going against the grain of conventional thinking. Rachel has no training other than the year in bible school, no sending mission (she is being supported directly by family and friends) and no firm arrangements at the other end. She also has had to come to terms with the knowledge that any marriage hopes she might have (and she is a normal young woman in this respect) must take second place to God’s call for her.

Rachel also has been discouraged at times by the voices of our comfortable Christian culture: “What are your qualifications?”; “Why do you need to go away? There is so much to do here”; “What about a career? You need to think about your future” and perhaps most insidiously, “The era of Western missions is over; don't go, just send money”. (Rachel says that when she first encountered this thesis in K.P. Yohannan’s Revolution in World Missions she became so angry that she threw the book across the room.)

But what Rachel does have is our wholehearted support. We are very proud of her decision to put God first in her life, we trust her ability to discern His call and we know that whether or not she is specifically supposed to serve in San Jose, she is walking God’s way and He will steer her right.

Still, it’s not easy to see Rachel go. As our youngest she is the one we feel most protective toward even at the age of 23. And she is a young 23, dewy-eyed and innocent looking. No one would know to look at her that at 19 she traveled alone in a dodgy part of Nicaragua, or that she made her way at age 21 through bandit-infested jungle to visit the Peruvian headwaters of the Amazon.

As the time approached for her departure, I became more and more aware that in the busyness of our arrangements we would have very little quality time together. I therefore asked Rachel if she would mind if I flew down with her. “Since this is to be your future”, I said, “I want to be the one who walks you down the aisle into your new life.” And she agreed.

We flew out on a red-eye flight March 30, arriving in San Jose about noon. We rented a small third world style SUV called a Terios and spent the next four days at Manuel Antonio beach on the Pacific coast and driving around the interior before ending up in the Orosí valley near Cartago Thursday. During these days Rachel and I walked and explored and prayed together. We talked perhaps more than we ever had- about her dreams and her feelings and how God had brought her to this point. It was a precious time and passed all too quickly.

On Friday we spent an hour wandering around Desamparados looking for the place where Rachel would be staying. Our job was made especially difficult by the fact that Costa Rica has very few street signs or numeric addresses. All we had to go on was the vague description “700 metres south of the playing field close to Dos Cercas.” We spent all of our time looking without success for these two landmarks, until in our random driving we stumbled on the condo complex itself. Only then could we backtrack on the directions to find the playing field and fix its location so that we could find the home again the next day.

That night I treated Rachel to a fairly sumptuous meal at the Outback steak house in Escazú. We were both aware of the irony that the price of this feast was a quarter of what would be her monthly budget for living expenses (Rachel is adamant that she will live according to local standards). Say farewell to North American affluence!

The next morning I brought Rachel back to her new home at which we met the woman whose apartment she would be sharing. Yahaira (sounds like Elvira) is quite friendly and invited us in to chat for a little while. When she asked Rachel in Spanish if our family was Christian I found myself giving her an impromptu testimony of faith.

Our introduction stretched to include the serving of a crepa and coffee and the review of Yahaira’s family pictures (one can’t decently rush these things in Latin America, even with a plane to catch), but the moment came when I could delay no longer. I gave Rachel a hug and a kiss and that was that. Our little girl was on her own.

Primeval Sin

On my flight back to Calgary early Sunday morning I sat beside a businessman who was flying in to to see his sales rep in the city. As we landed he said "My salesman will be here to pick me up".

Since it was 1:30 am and there were plenty of taxis at the curb, I thought that was a little over the top on the salesman's part and commented "Wow, that's dedication".

"Well, he knows what to do to keep his job in a recession."

My neighbour must have read my mind, because after a pause he continued in an attempt to justify himself: "In these economic times things get a little more primeval."

I'm not sure what the man meant by "primeval" but in the context I gathered he was describing a Darwinian order of relationships based on raw power: dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, etc. In other words, he was pulling his employee out of bed at an ungodly hour rather than pay a $25 cab fare - just because he could do so.

I could only shake my head at how foolish and shortsighted this fellow was. Did he really think that his employee could not make him pay for this in some other, more significant way? Many employers really do not understand how often their people go the second mile for them unasked, and how poorly the business can operate when they stop doing so. And they forget that grinding the peons will only make the good ones flee at the first opportunity. But sin is like that. It's not only wrong in itself, but it's self-defeating as well.

I retrieved my luggage and walked outside to catch a taxi. I was going to stay at my son and daughter-in-law's for the night, but since I could get my own ride I didn't wish to disturb their sleep.

Jesus believes in you

The lyrics below were written by our son a few years ago. The title may raise a few doctrinal eyebrows, but if you read it through you will see how it makes perfect sense. The song encourages us not to have faith in ourselves, but to have faith in God's purpose for us and in the sufficiency of His Son's life in us.

Jesus Believes in You

He kneels down to wash their feet,
They know not what he sees
The night before He dies,
The next day to be crucified
And they wonder why
As He looks up at these men,
They are broken, imperfect reflections
But He doesn’t just see them as they are
He looks on past the scars
Sees who they can be,
When He dies and sets them free

Jesus believes in you,
Jesus can see right through,
He sees past the pain
Past the guilt and shame
Jesus believes in you

After the deed is done,
After Satan thinks he’s won
The disciples run away,
Hide in fear and shame
Peter was one of them
Back to the nets he went.
What kind of man was he?
Denying his Lord times three

Jesus believed in him
Called him to feed his sheep
He looked beyond his pain
Past his guilt and shame

Jesus believed in him
Saw who he could be
That in His name
Peter could set men free
Jesus believed in him

So what are you going to do?
When you screw up, without a clue?
Will you turn your back and run?
Or will you stop and face the Son?
Will you dwell on your shame?
Or will you find hope in Jesus’ name?
Look and see the truth
Jesus sees life and Him in you
Jesus believes in you

- Carl Garber, 2006

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant...

II Cor. 3:5,6

The Innocents and the timeshare (I)

Two years ago we went down to Puerta Vallarta on one of those all-inclusive packages which allow you to fly in and stay for a week at a three star hotel for about the normal cost of the airfare. When we landed we somehow got signed up for a timeshare presentation in exchange for a handful of free activities. It seemed like a no-brainer. Three hundred dollars worth in excursions in return for a few hours of our time. What could we lose?

As it happened, we almost lost the price of a timeshare. Until I experienced it, I never would have given that much credit to the ability of an accomplished sales team to finesse me into buying something I didn't really want. In the end, my wife saved me. She usually defers to my judgment in matters financial, but as we moved through the steps of the purchase, I noticed that she looked more and more uneasy.

If I have learned nothing else in our married life, it is to respect Diane's gut instinct, so I woke up and dug in my heels. It took a hour and several sessions of the rack and thumbscrews to get the staff to unwind a deal which we had already signed, but in the end we left free and unencumbered by both a property we didn't need and a debt we couldn't really afford.

Later in the week, we were approached in downtown Puerta Vallarta by a hawker who offered us $300 cash to go to yet another timeshare presentation. When I respectfully declined, he asked why.

"I've already done that. Too much pressure."
"Where did you go, Señor?"
"To Grand Mayan."
"Oh, Señor, they are the hardest sales team. They have a saying: 'Make the prospect buy or cry.' If you can resist them, you can handle my timeshare people, no problem."

So we moved on, having learned two valuable lessons. One, that if we ever ended up broke and stranded there, we could survive by taking money off Mexican timeshare hawkers; and secondly, that we were now well and truly immune to such sales tactics....

.....until we went to Hawaii last month, that is. And then somehow we did it again!

It started the same way as in Mexico. When we went to book the standard activities - the luau, the snorkelling, the trip up the volcano, we found that cost was much cheaper if we would only agree to attend a timeshare presentation up in Kahana. Diane was reluctant but I was confident that we would be in and out in 90 minutes, no problem. After all, we had survived the Grand Mayan!

As it happened, the affair lasted 4 hours, and once again we signed on the dotted line. I won't go into our mental processes, but I'm sure it would the subject of a fascinating psychological study. If scientists can figure out why we purchased a timeshare after walking in determined not to buy anything, then perhaps we would be able to understand why Adam and Eve bought the serpent's bill of goods.

The one thing I will say in our favour is that we signed knowing that under Hawaiian law we had seven days to rescind the deal without penalty. That was almost precisely the time we had left in Maui, so we had time to think things over before leaving the island.

The deal had two basic elements: the use of the timeshare and membership in a timeshare exchange program. Each element had an attractive aspect as we understood the sales presentation: (1) should we wish not to use it, we could rent out the studio unit we had bought into without restrictions for upwards of $200 per night, allowing us to net $700 after maintenance fees for our annual week; and (2) the property would be rated as a 5-star one bedroom suite in the exchange program, allowing us to change out our week in Maui for a week in a high-end resort anywhere else in the world. As a bonus, we would able to book additional weeks in similar properties elsewhere for only $400.

However, before finalizing the deal we had to check those understandings against reality, so on Day 5 I sat down with my laptop in the Maui Lu lobby and did some online research. I was unable to assess the quality of the exchange program because we had not yet received a user id for their website, so I looked at timeshare itself. As I did, I found that our understanding was false in two respects:

1) The unit we had bought into rented on VRBO for only $130-140 per night in high season. Since our maintenance fee was $656 per week, that meant that the incremental benefit of ownership over renting was only $300 per week. This little bit of information fundamentally changed our perception of the deal.

On these terms payback on the purchase price of USD 13,500 would take 45 years - without taking into account the time value of money (please forgive me if I turn a little geeky here; this sort of thing is what I do). If I assumed a fairly modest annual discount rate of 5%, the value of the cash flow in perpetuity was still only $6,000. (This was confirmed by further research after we returned to Canada; the identical unit was listed online for as low as USD 6,500.)

2) So maybe the timeshare itself wasn't a great deal, but perhaps the exchange program would make up for it? However, the same vacation rental sites we referred to also described the property that our unit was in as a 3-star.

This planted doubts in our mind as to the validity of the benefits promised in the program. If we could change out out our 3-star studio for a 5-star one bedroom elsewhere, someone was getting scammed. Or would we be receiving tarted up 3-star accommodations in exchange ourselves? Regardless of the answer to that last question, the trust factor was gone, and without trust there is no transaction. We decided to revoke our purchase.

At first I was annoyed at the salesman's bald misrepresentations, but as I reflected I realized that I was the victim of something much more subtle. The salesman's sin was one of omission, not misrepresentation. The information he had given us was in fact correct - for the property in which the initial sales presentation took place. But somewhere along the line we had been moved over to an adjoining building where the unit we eventually bought was located, without being advised of the difference between the 2 locations. It was a variation of the old bait and switch.

On Day 7 we returned to the timeshare sales office with the completed rescission form in hand....

To be continued.....

The Innocents Abroad

We are back from 2 weeks in Maui and Oahu.

Our stay there was a very good time, undisturbed by the distractions of daily life. My business partner called once to get my input regarding a situation in the office, but then he stopped himself, apologized, saying "Never mind, it's your holidays, it can wait till you get back."

Not that our trip was without its hitches. There were no unreserved rental cars available on the island, so we rented a motorcycle for the duration of our stay on Maui. Since it was Hawaii, I tried riding in shorts and promptly got a nasty burn on my calf which kept me out of the water for the duration of our stay. As a result we spent 10 days bombing around Maui variously riding a Harley Dynaglide, a Buell and finally a Vulcan.


It was a lot of fun and brought me back to an earlier time when I pretty much lived on a bike for several years. We rode helmetless...I just because I could and Diane because no helmet could be found small enough to fit her head properly (and a loose helmet is worse than none at all). Diane learned to be comfortable on the back once she acquired the skills of a motorcycle passenger (don't try to lean, just be the bike).

There is a surprising amount of island to cover on Maui and we didn't get through it all, but we were able to circumnavigate Haleakala. It's a nice run. The road runs more or less straight to Paia and then winds the remaining 30 miles to Hana around 600+ curves, passing through groves of bamboo and under the mist of waterfalls.

Coming around the backside of the volcano, we passed through miles of range land before coming out in the uplands on its western slope. If I ignored the ocean I might almost have thought myself in Alberta.

In between the riding we found the time to bicycle down Haleakala, do the luau thing, go on a sunset cruise and almost buy a timeshare (more on that later).

We hopped around beween accommodations but enjoyed most of all the 3 days during which we shared a tourist bungalow with a 60ish missionary couple on their honeymoon and a doctor. We would all go out separately during the day and then end up hanging around together in the late evening sharing food, wine and stories. Lots of stories - we had almost 3 centuries of combined life experience including travel and cross-cultural involvement.

The doctor is not a believer, but I got a chance to share our faith with him when on our final evening there he leaned across the table and asked "Tell me, what would you say is Christianity's greatest contribution to the world?"

"Love", I said.
"What do you mean?
"Love, not as an ethical system, but as something you receive from God so that it overflows in a natural way to others...."

And so it went for 2 hours. It was a blessing to know that God was using us, that even in the pursuit of pleasure we and the other couple were able to keep a divine appointment for the sake of God's grace in this man's life.

The last 3 days of our holiday we hopped over to Oahu and stayed in Waikiki. I had learned from my experience and reserved a mid-sized car, which the agency upgraded to a Cadillac for no extra charge. We explored the island, did some hiking, sailed on a catamaran off Waikiki beach and sampled the island's cuisine. Not much food though that was identifiably Hawaiian. There were sushi bars and Chinese restaurants everywhere, and even in the small towns it seems Korean fare is offered at every lunch counter.



Oahu has a very different feel from Maui. The Pearl City/Honolulu/Waikiki conurbation dominates the island making it more urban vs. Maui's rural. The city especially is very Asian, or should I say Eurasian; Waikiki is full of Japanese and many of the inhabitants seem an indeterminate mixture of Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, white and Filipino. The process of racial fusion seems far advanced here - much more than at home, which is still pretty much a mosaic of cultures. I wondered if we were looking at Canada's future.

The holiday was a sweet time for us. I so much enjoyed riding around together, feeling Diane holding on to me behind and speaking together as we rode. The experience took me back and it felt as though Diane were my girlfriend again rather than my wife of 31 years. And through it all like a thread was the pain and care of my wound which drained steadily and later required treatment for infection (it is still not healed). But somehow that only added to the piquancy of the experience in a way I can't explain.

On February 24 we flew out on a red eye flight, arriving in Calgary at noon the next day thoroughly exhausted but content. This holiday was easily the most expensive one we have ever taken, but it it was well worth it.

I'll fly away

I am invoicing to the music of Danilo Montero: Te Alabaré Mi Buen Jesús. It is the Lord's Day, but I know that God will forgive me because I am about to take a two week sabbath, which is why I'm in the office on Sunday morning trying to get through a slug of paperwork. On Monday evening Diane and I will fly away to Maui, returning from Honolulu on February 25.

I will bring my laptop, but due to the nature of our vacations I expect to post only irregularly, if at all. On our agenda is a bike ride down down Haleakala, parasailing and perhaps for myself (I'm toying with this one, thinking how to get Diane comfortable with the idea) getting started on my "A" License in skydiving. We each jumped tandem in Mexico a few years ago, so I know I can get out of the plane; it's just getting down on my own that I would like to learn now.

I wish anyone who drops in here God's blessing in the meantime.

The Shack and the passion of God

We've just gotten through the chapter entitled A Piece of Pi in our study group and I am realizing more and more how much the book owes to the gospel of John. In fact, this chapter is more or less a fictional exposition of the relations within the Trinity as revealed to us in John.

Overlooking the elements in the book which I personally find irritating - like the anti-authoritarianism and disdain for the organized church - overlooking all that, Paul Young is on to something very important here in his emphasis on God's relational, empathic nature.

We see this first of all when Mack meets the Father and sees the nail holes in His (sorry, I just can't say Her) hand. Elousia goes on to explain that this was because He was with Jesus on the cross, that He had never actually abandoned His Son even though Jesus felt like it at the time.

Paul Young has been accused by some on account of this of the ancient heresy of Patripassianism, which I (and I suspect Young as well) had never heard of before this, but I don't think the charge will stick. The image of the Father bearing the stigmata of His Son's sufferings seems to me a very fair representation of the intimate nature of their relationship as described throughout John:

"For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does..." "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me." "...the Father abiding in Me does His works."

Jesus' suffering on the cross was pre-eminently a work of the Father ("God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself"); are we not to believe that His Father was abiding in Him at that time as well?

The significance of the stigmata in the book is that because of the closeness of their union within the Trinity, the Father felt through His Son the suffering of the penalties of sin just as much as Jesus did. This may be theologically unprovable but it is emotionally authentic to the description Jesus gives of His Father, and for a work of fiction, that's good enough.

So kudos to Paul Young for bringing out this neglected truth of God's love. And it is neglected. Why do we go on about the great love that God showed in sending His Son and yet at the same time believe in our hearts that the God Who is Love somehow loves less deeply than we do ourselves? We so often make of His love a hieratic, dispassionate thing rather than something that is tender, empathic and passionate. No wonder many Christians are emotionally starved and burned out.

In the group we looked at Jesus' encounter with Mary and Martha at Lazarus' tomb for an example of this empathy. Why did Jesus weep? Not for Lazarus - He was about to raise him. Not for the sisters - He was about to fill them with joy. Rather, He wept for the pain they were feeling then and there; because He loved them, He felt their pain as they did, just as we do ourselves when someone we love is suffering.

We discussed how this knowledge applies to our daily walk. We accept that God brings us through hard experiences to perfect His nature in us. But he is not just the surgeon, steady and detached, who is bringing us through sufferings that He Himself has no sense of. Because He is in us, He is in a way on the table with us and suffers along with us. Just knowing that can help us trust in His grace that much more in our trials.

In other words, because of the nature of love, "Abide in Me, and I in you" must be a two way street experientially. It is not just me partaking of Jesus' life and grace, but it is Him receiving and experiencing something through me as well. The implications of this are very deep and I'm not sure I've got to the bottom of it.

And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (I John 4:16)