[The Door] Transformation is a theme which runs through the life of Ian Hutchinson Cervantes. Born in Washington of a New Zealand father and a Guatemalan mother, he has lived in a number of countries and has been transformed in some way by each of them. His close family life, his faith and his Church have given him a firm centre of gravity. So too has the Oxford Diocese who, acknowledging his commitment to the transforming work of mission, sent him as a missionary to Latin America He now acts as a bridge for the Latin American and Caribbean Churches at USPG headquarters in London. My story begins with the meeting of my parents in Washington - two cultures, two denominations, two very different people. My father, a New Zealander, was from an Anglican family which goes right back to the English Reformation. My mother's Guatemalan family has an equally strong Roman Catholic legacy. How do you make sense of that and what is the centre of gravity? To discern that that has been a life long struggle.

My mother was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church for marrying an Anglican and my parents had to work through that. If anything they became more committed and made sure that we had a strong Christian upbringing in the Anglican Church. Yet we had a very rich mix of things at home. My grandmother, a staunch Roman Catholic, lived with us for a time and images come to mind of her lighting votive candles, her love of the Saints and bringing out her rosary. I realise all of that held the family together and allowed the other task of sorting out identity to take place.

But my real awakening took place at university, when I really went through a crisis of identity. I had left Latin America and I hated being in New Zealand. I was shocked for example that many of my contemporaries there expected to leave home after finishing school at 18. To me that was shocking, terrifying because it was being cast out instead of linking your identity to a family 'I am because we are'.

At that stage I had taken leave of the Church because it wasn't answering questions. But then I had a very curious experience. One Sunday in New Zealand I ended up going to St Luke's, an Anglo Catholic church which my parents had frequented. As I walked in there was a strange mixture of incense and tobacco smoke. There were five men clustered around the doorway puffing away like mad and looking troubled. I asked the priest about them. 'Ah yes' he said 'those are people from the local psychiatric hospital. We are the only parish in the city to which the hospital recommends its schizophrenic patients because they know that they will be never turned away.' And I thought hells teeth if people with really serious problems can find a home there maybe I can too. I was suddenly given a vision of the Church that was for everybody - a gathering of God's broken people and that memory has been with me ever since.

I was destined, so I thought, to follow in my father and grandfather's footsteps and to be a forester but people began to say 'have you thought of the priesthood?'. I remember the day when I woke up and thought: 'If it's meant to be it's meant to be but I don't know how to receive it. I'll have to hand it over.' And an extraordinary peace and joy came at that point. I had been granted a vision of the Church and now I was being asked to respond. I had found my centre of gravity.

One of the themes in my life is the Divine sense of humour - the unexpected. I came to Britain to do some more studies in the area of development with a view to returning to Honduras. My first Sunday I got up at 6am and walked the streets of Reading looking for a parish church. I found myself at St Giles a little before ten and smelt incense. Canon Tony Boult, the parish priest came out, and I said 'I can smell incense. Is mass over?' And he said 'My dear that's from last week' and I thought 'I've arrived!'. He was a deeply spiritual parish priest and when I spoke to him about that uncomfortable feeling of being called and asked to respond, he understood and before I knew it I was being lined up for an ACCM and at the beginning of 1986 found myself at Westcott House Cambridge.

When I finished at Westcott, I said to Martin Peirce, the Oxford Diocesan Director of Ordinands, I would love to give something back because the Oxford Diocese had taken a risk and paid for my training. So the offer of a curacy at Iffley was made and what a blessing that was. But it was always my intention to go into missionary work.

I met Raffaella in Oxford at a day of prayer and fasting in solidarity with the people of Peru and six weeks later proposed. We were married a year later. A short time after that we went to the College of the Ascension in Birmingham and then came back for our commissioning at Dorchester Abbey. USPG doesn't send missionaries, it facilitates the sending. It is unique in that sense. The whole idea was that we were sent out from the Oxford Diocese and all the time we were in Central and South America, it was so good to receive letters from Iffley and the number of parishes in the Oxford Diocese who also supported us. It gave us a sense of belonging and it meant a lot especially when we were in Venezuela and it became clear that it wasn't going to work out there. In theory I was heading up a theological training programme and Raffy was working with street children. But for the first time we encountered corruption in the Church in a blatant way. However the way God kept grace and love flowing despite that was an important discovery.

We ended up in Belize in the Province of the West Indies. When the USPG job in London came up I went to see the Bishop of Belize, and asked him what he thought. He said 'I would hate to lose you but my frank view is that you would be more use there making our voice heard.' It happened at just the moment when USPG was embarking on a transformation in its way of relating to the overseas Churches. There was a real sense of wanting to hear their voice. The Society had already committed itself to the process of regional consultations. The next stage was to have staff members who knew the regions of the world intimately. That for me was the clincher. I wasn't interested in pushing paper. I was interested in making known the experiences of the Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean and facilitating the living out of their response to God. Funnily enough I am now in a position where I am still able to be truly a priest. I have a pastoral role with missionaries and I am able to link three different parts of the world to each other and to be a small part in their mutual transformation.

When the late Bishop John Taylor spoke at the Swanwick conference for the Oxford clergy some years ago, he took the story of the encounter between Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman at the well. It was on a hill and Jesus could see the coastline and the lands beyond. That was the moment when Jesus realised that the Father's mission for him was for the world and not just for the people of Israel. That encounter was one of mutual transformation which for me is at the heart of mission. It is I suppose about a journey towards completion, a oneness, a communion.

[From the "God in the life of" series of The Door, Diocese of Oxford Reporter]