First Impressions

We find ourselves landing in an airport as dusk is breaking, a luminous display of orange and yellow greets us, sweeping across the darkened landscape - we have landed in the heart of a La Paz. We sit for a while, waiting an hour in our little plane, the second of four stopovers. As the sun breaks the horizon, sunbeams begin to stream through the windows and we are gifted a view of the scenery around. It is beautiful, the red-brick city ends more promptly than expected (night time lights can be deceiving), and from this city scene migrates the edges of high plateau plains suddenly dropping to reveal a background of snow-topped mountains gently poking their faces over the edges and towards the sky. These mountains seem to be tender giants, but as we take-off we begin see the true enormity of them. They are so high that even at the plane's cruising height it seems as if we could reach out our hands and join the clouds in brushing the tops of the mountains. Soon, these very clouds envelope us, the turbulence takes over and we pray. Eventually, we sweep out from under the clouds to reveal jungle of some description, not a thick mass of trees and foliage, but rather what remains after Bolivian civilisation has carved out its home. Here lies another city, Santa Cruz, our home for the night.

One can’t help but imagine the feelings of Jim and Elizabeth Elliot as they flew into Quito, Ecuador for the very first time. They too would have seen very similar scenery and no doubt felt inadequate in comparison to the landscape - so many people, so much to see, and so much work to be done. I can’t help but admire their faith and bravery, stepping out into an unknown land and facing an uncertain future with the certain hope that their God would provide all their needs. Tom and I have much less uncertainty involved in our trip, yet with such a landscape and all these thoughts in view its hard not to feel humbled and inadequate. Though not pioneers, we are taking little steps of faith, ready to see God at work, raring to go and excited about the next two months.