Good news! The history book has a
publisher. Wipf & Stock has accepted our manuscript, and we’re finally
looking at some light at the end of this long tunnel.
A tunnel is probably not the best
metaphor for this seven-year project, though much of it has been underground:
mining the past in the archives of nine different universities, yearly
meetings, mission headquarters, and museums; sifting through a lot of debris; bringing
the good stuff up to the top; discovering a few gold nuggets.
And then came figuring out how to
organize, analyze, and understand it all, at least enough to begin writing. I
have thousands of database items and scanned documents, all backed up and filed
away.
But a lot of the research was
carried out above ground. The field work required hundreds of interviews with
the leaders of the church and, especially, with the children and grandchildren
of past leaders. This is where our Bolivian team members were so helpful.
I must confess how joyful most of
this work has been. I’m one of those strange people who love to research and
write. Although much of this has been drudge work, I’ve been excited to make
the discoveries, to begin to see the patterns, to come to understand how God
and God’s missionary agents (both expatriate and national) co-labored to plant
and develop a community of some 200 Quaker congregations scattered about the
Bolivian highlands and tropical valleys.
And now I’m excited to be able to
share the story with others.
Our working title has us climbing
a mountain—A Long Walk, A Gradual Ascent: The Story of the Bolivian Friends
Church in its Context of Conflict. I like the mountain metaphor better than
the tunnel. It’s more accurate.
I still have to do my final
editing, including cutting down the size of the book. I hope to have the final
manuscript to the publisher by early April. Actual publication may take up to
year from that date.
Rejoice with us!
