In the mouth of two or three witnesses...
I did get a chance to post yesterday, but I didn't explain the long silence preceding that posting. There is always the excuse about how busy we get this time of year, and for us, that means more practices for the Christmas cantata, which our small choir will sing on Christmas Eve. The consular work has not been extra heavy, although there was a round of official visits to government and military figures this week. What did tie me down, though, was an unexpectedly large translation job, that turned into working 85-hours in less than 6 days to be able to meet the deadline. The client must have been satisfied with the work... a week later there was more of the same, but about a third of the amount of work, and I knew to ask for a longer time to do it in, so the stress was less.
Birthday... somewhere in that period of time, I had to make time to get older. Now, I can truthfully rebut any charge of being 60. Got past that one. There were birthday wishes from those we would expect to remember...one of the first coming in an e-mail from Mom. (She would be the person who's known me the longest, wouldn't she?) And a couple of surprise wishes, a phone call from a pastor in Providence, R.I., and an e-mail from Andriy, the Ukrainian doctor who lived and worked here for 4 years or so. He went back to Ukraine 3 years ago and we visited him when we went there in 2005. Then we lost contact...until my birthday. What a joy, and a surprise, as we learned his family had grown by one in the meantime, and he's started building his own house. News from Andriy was a priceless gift on my birthday.
The work on the house has gone slowly, Andriy says, because he has had to redo a lot of work himself. "All the good workmen left Ukraine to work in other countries." So for the past 6 months, he has done all the work himself after he does his regular job at the nuclear power plant.
And where was I going with the title to this posting? Oh, yes. Someone who had been talking to some of the people we first knew and contacted in the mission work 25-30 years ago was told that the word went around in the early years that I was a CIA agent who had come to spy on Madeira. No wonder it took a while to get anything going! Looking back, it's not surprising some would think that. We came when the communist forces were still very vocal in Portugal, following the 1974 overthrow of the fascist regime. The strict rules of the fascist regime had given way, not just to liberty, but to a libertine society. The sidewalks were filled with two main types of makeshift bookstalls: they were either selling hardcore pornography or communist propaganda.
Last Dec. 3 marked the 31st anniversary of our arrival to an island we knew nothing about and where we didn't even have reservations for the night. We landed at 8:30 p.m, and a man at the airport suggested a boarding house in the nearest village, Santa Cruz. The next morning, as we surveyed our new surroundings, we noticed a red booth with yellow lettering all over it. The letters "MRPP" meant nothing to us, but the hammer-and-sickle symbol was a clear indication of communist influence. We came to find out that the brother of the lady who ran the boarding house was the head of the Maoist communist party in Portugal, who had just been involved in the first autonomous regional elections after the 1974 revolution. Now who says God doesn't have a sense of humor? Of all the places to stay the first two months of our life on Madeira!
The curious thing is that this is the second time in the past few months that word has gotten back to us about our supposed "CIA connection". We got the same story from a completely different source, but from one who knew us and who knew others who knew us in the late '70s and early '80s. In the mouth of two or three witnesses, said the law, let every word be confirmed. That might explain why some of those we tried to minister to suddenly "lost interest" in the church and the gospel. So add "CIA" to the list of labels attached to us, that were intended to drive people away... we were accused of bringing "a religion of the devil" and of being "calvinists"---but that last one is another story for another time.
Birthday... somewhere in that period of time, I had to make time to get older. Now, I can truthfully rebut any charge of being 60. Got past that one. There were birthday wishes from those we would expect to remember...one of the first coming in an e-mail from Mom. (She would be the person who's known me the longest, wouldn't she?) And a couple of surprise wishes, a phone call from a pastor in Providence, R.I., and an e-mail from Andriy, the Ukrainian doctor who lived and worked here for 4 years or so. He went back to Ukraine 3 years ago and we visited him when we went there in 2005. Then we lost contact...until my birthday. What a joy, and a surprise, as we learned his family had grown by one in the meantime, and he's started building his own house. News from Andriy was a priceless gift on my birthday.
Andriy holding Anushka, the newest addition to the family. Of course, Bogdan and Iulianka have grown since we last saw them.
The work on the house has gone slowly, Andriy says, because he has had to redo a lot of work himself. "All the good workmen left Ukraine to work in other countries." So for the past 6 months, he has done all the work himself after he does his regular job at the nuclear power plant.And where was I going with the title to this posting? Oh, yes. Someone who had been talking to some of the people we first knew and contacted in the mission work 25-30 years ago was told that the word went around in the early years that I was a CIA agent who had come to spy on Madeira. No wonder it took a while to get anything going! Looking back, it's not surprising some would think that. We came when the communist forces were still very vocal in Portugal, following the 1974 overthrow of the fascist regime. The strict rules of the fascist regime had given way, not just to liberty, but to a libertine society. The sidewalks were filled with two main types of makeshift bookstalls: they were either selling hardcore pornography or communist propaganda.
Last Dec. 3 marked the 31st anniversary of our arrival to an island we knew nothing about and where we didn't even have reservations for the night. We landed at 8:30 p.m, and a man at the airport suggested a boarding house in the nearest village, Santa Cruz. The next morning, as we surveyed our new surroundings, we noticed a red booth with yellow lettering all over it. The letters "MRPP" meant nothing to us, but the hammer-and-sickle symbol was a clear indication of communist influence. We came to find out that the brother of the lady who ran the boarding house was the head of the Maoist communist party in Portugal, who had just been involved in the first autonomous regional elections after the 1974 revolution. Now who says God doesn't have a sense of humor? Of all the places to stay the first two months of our life on Madeira!
The curious thing is that this is the second time in the past few months that word has gotten back to us about our supposed "CIA connection". We got the same story from a completely different source, but from one who knew us and who knew others who knew us in the late '70s and early '80s. In the mouth of two or three witnesses, said the law, let every word be confirmed. That might explain why some of those we tried to minister to suddenly "lost interest" in the church and the gospel. So add "CIA" to the list of labels attached to us, that were intended to drive people away... we were accused of bringing "a religion of the devil" and of being "calvinists"---but that last one is another story for another time.
posted by EP | 5:54 PM | Permalink
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