First Week In Cuenca

I've been in Cuenca almost a week now and I apologize for no updates and for this one being so brief. The reason for this is that I've been working with a volunteer team from the second I got here and have hardly had time to do anything but work and sleep. Most of what we've been doing this week is going around to the churches and encouraging, exhorting, and prayer walking. I've gotten to see the different areas where work is going on and where new work is starting. I've been able to meet so many new people and most of the pastors we work with. I could tell lots of stories if only there was time...but instead I'll just show a few pictures and a short story behind each one that you can be praying for.




This is me and another of the volunteers with a Cichua family about an hour and a half north of Cuenca. The two women in the picture are sisters. They listened to a Christian radio station for about a year and decided to make a decision to accept Christ. They have encountered strong hostility from the Catholic church. Pray that they would not long remain the only Christians in their community. Pray that they would be strong in the face of the persecution.




This is the site of a future church building. The church currently rotates between houses and has between 30 to 70 people attending. They are slowly but surely making progress on an actual church building. They want to do it slowly so they will not fall into debt. Pray that God will provide the funds in their timing and continue to show them how to rely on Him and not missionaries or other churches.










The church in the previous picture is trying to plant a new one in this community. This site overlooks the communities in the second picture. On top is where we prayed for open doors and below is the valley between the two ridges of the Andes where we're hoping to plant new churches. Pray for open doors here as there are currently no Christians that we know of.


Thanks so much for your prayers. I'm just getting set up here in Cuenca and this week has been a complete blur. Keep praying as I start to form relationships with the people I'll be working with for the next couple of years.

Bureacracy in South America

So there's not been a whole lot going on since I got here in Ecuador. Mostly just taking care of boring government stuff. Yesterday we went to get our "censos" which are our Ecuadorian ID's. I won't go into details but mainly this will keep us out of trouble with the cops without having to carry around our passport everywhere. It was quite a fiasco to get this done. I'll start at the beginning. We (us 5 missionaries and an Ecuadorian who works for the IMB and does this stuff all the time) get out the cab at the migration office. First we went next door to get little photos taken. I don't know what for, as they're smaller than passport size (which we already had) and we never actually used them. But hey, there's Latin American bureacracy for you already...you never know what they'll want you to have with you. Then we go next door into the migration office and take a number and sit in the waiting room. After a bit it's our turn and I go up to the desk and hand him my papers. It all seems to be going well and unexpectedly smoothly until we notice that he's only giving me my censo validity for one year. Which makes no sense because our visas are valid for two years. He explains that our visas were only registered at the Ecuadorian embassy for one year and so there's nothing he can do. I don't really know what that meant since someone else took our visas to be registered when we arrived in-country, but apparently he wasn't going to budge. So we all got up and took a cab over to the other migration office. Our Ecuadorian friend exlained that we would have to re-register our visas, this time for two years, and apply for the censos again. However the good news was that we could do both at this one office. So...we took a number and sat in the waiting room again. Our friend got our visas registered correctly and then waited in line a very long time only to find out that they would not process our censos at this office. So...we left and took a cab back to the first office. We took a number and sat in the waiting room. Finally it was our turn again...back at the exact same person as an hour and a half before...and this time it worked. A proccess that was very easy and should have taken approximately thirty minutes took about three hours. So there's a taste of what simple government issues are like here in Ecuador. And from what I hear that was pretty mild...

Arrival in Ecuador

Last night I arrived here in Quito, Ecuador at around 10:30pm. We were met at the airport by some of the missionaries that live in the city. We piled up our luggage and were dropped off at different apartments where we will be living for the next week or so. This week or so will be partly orientation to our jobs and partly a time to take care of paperwork. We will have to verify our visas, obtain our censos (national ID's), and take the driver's test. Once that is through we'll be able to move down to where we'll actually be living and working. So hopefully the time of living out of a suitcase will soon come to an end. You can pray that all these things get taken care of smoothly and easily. Mainly the driver's test as it's, of course, all in Spanish....and the study guide is quite long at 367 questions. I find that very ironic as very few of the driving laws are obeyed here and the cops don't seem to care. Thanks for everyone who was praying as I went through language school...that stage is now done and I'm about to embark on the real work!

Late video tour...

OK. So a couple of days ago I started to think about packing and was going through my suitcases to get ready. Guess what I found? My small digital point-and-shoot was hiding for 3 months. I thought I had left it at home. Since it can take videos I can now give yall a video tour of my home for the past 3 months in Guatemala. Which is rather ironic since I left today for the capital to fly out next week. Well...better late than never right?