Update 2011

I'm back again after a great Christmas at home in Greenville. It was so good to see many of you again after so long. I'm now on the last leg of my term with only 6 months left until I come back to stay. In the meantime, here's some things you can be in prayer for this next week. Tomorrow a team from Alabama will be coming into Cuenca to work with us. They will be working in the community of Nabon. If you recall, it is just outside of this community, in the much smaller community of Ayaloma, where we have irregularly held house church with a family for over a year now. In recent months we have made contact with other believers all over the area and have begun working with them closely. This is the first time we have brought a team to work in this community exclusively and our first time working with this team. There will be a lot of unknowns since we have never tried this before. Our plan is to work primarily in and around the schools in the mornings and with kids doing VBS in the afternoons. We hope this will generate plenty of opportunities for the local believers to take advantage of after the team leaves. Pray that the team would be flexible in the face of ever changing plans and that the schools would allow us in. Pray for the kids the team will work with over the week and their parents especially. Pray for safety as we will be driving the team an hour and a half to and from Nabon each day. Thank you very much for your prayers and I will update again after the team is gone!

Update 11/9/10

Time for another update and probably the last one before the new year. First, the results of the Wellford team last month. The trip, while a good one, veered very far off from our plans (as God often does). The first community of the trip was Zhud. We were told that most of our plans for this community would have to be altered due to the wake and funeral of a 2 yr old boy who had drowned. In Quichua culture the entire community is involved in a funeral. We went to the wake and worked with the kids so the adults could have the service uninterrupted. We also went to the burial the next day. Between the wake/funeral and some bad weather we weren't able to work with the kids in the community as we had on previous occasions. However we were able to make some house visits instead. Overall, I think our mere presence at the wake/funeral showed God's love in a very trying time before many unbelievers. In the community of Gonsol our plans were changed as well. We had been invited into the school for two days to teach English and whatever else we wanted to do. However, this week happened to be the week that the government was taking the census of the country and so school was not in session. Instead we were able to teach to a small group of kids that the director was able to round up on short notice. We also worked with the kindergarten and donated some supplies and made house visits where several people made decisions to follow Christ. Continue to pray for both of these communities as the next trip will probably be around February of the coming year. Pray that these repeated visits would continue to allow the local believers to make the most of open doors. There has been a very noticeable difference in each of these communities over the past year. This will probably be the last post before the new year. With Thanksgiving holidays coming soon I will only have a few weeks before heading back to SC for a few this Christmas. Thanks once again for your many prayers!

Just a quick update here...the above pictures are from the house church we do every other week in a small community outside of the town of Nabón, called Ayaloma. We had been doing this regularly since the beginning of this year but were unable to continue over the summer. Recently we started again and have had many more children coming because it's now scheduled for Friday nights. So far we've had 15-20 kids attending. Please pray for the kids that come as well as the adults that have their separate Bible study. I'm pretty sure there's more information about this family in some older posts. The good news is that a church from the States recently decided to adopt the community of Nabón, where there is only one small and struggling traditional church. Both the traditional church and the house church will benefit greatly from this partnership.
Also, the Wellford, SC team will be returning this Sunday. We will be spending about four days with the two communities they have adopted, Zhud and Gonsol. In Zhud we anticipate working with the kids as well as making house visits. In Gonsol, the principal of the schools has allowed us to spend as much time as we want so we anticipate teaching some English lessons and possibly a Bible study with the teachers. We will also visit the kindergarten and donate much-needed supplies and work with the younger children there. Please pray for this team and these communities. Ministry days will be from Sunday 17th - Thursday 23rd.
Finally, I'd like to thank everyone for your prayers during the political unrest here and give a brief summary and update for those who didn't know or understand what exactly went on. On the morning of Thursday, Sept 30 the civil police force initiated protests due to the passing of a new law which would cut bonuses and promotions. The police managed to occupy the Congressional building as well as occupy and shut down the Quito airport. In the meantime, the lack of any type of civil authority in major cities such as Quito, Guayaquil, and Cuenca led to rampant robbery and looting. The president, Rafael Correa, went down to the police barracks to speak to the protesters. He was assaulted with thrown objects as well as tear gas. In his escape from the scene he was mildly injured due to a recent knee surgery and taken to a nearby hospital. The police quickly reached, surrounded, and occupied the hospital. Although negotiations initially took place between the president and the police, they quickly fell apart and the president became a hostage by the afternoon. That night the military assaulted the hospital and despite suffering casualties was able to extricate the president and everything seems to have calmed down now. That may seem straightforward enough but the political situation here is quite complicated. The president is on the Chavez-Iran-anyone-hostile-to-the-U.S. axis and has been progressively moving the country down a socialist and less democratic path. Several years ago he rewrote the constitution so that, amongst many other fine print changes, it now allows him at the approval of the courts to disband Congress and rule by decree anytime he chooses. He has yet to do this but he threatened on the day of the protest/coup attempt and continues to hold the threat over the head of legislators in case they decide to disagree with him and block his pet projects. He has progressively gained control over all major media outlets as well as major natural resources such as oil, water, and mining. Therefore, it is very difficult to know what is really happening in the country. The news can only print/televise stories that are gov't-approved. During the protests there was and still is widespread confusion about what really happened and who initiated it and to what end. The current consensus is that whoever actually initiated the protests and for whatever purpose, the president will now use it as an excuse to politically hang any and all opposition within the gov't, military, police, etc. The most surprising aspect of all this is that the military has, for the first time in a long history of coups in this country, sided with the president. No president in the past three decades until Correa has ever made it to a second term due in large part to military coups. This means Correa may be able to turn Ecuador further towards the Venezuela/Chavez model. Martial law was declared for five days on the day of the protests and then extended for several more. Since then it has been extended indefinitely in Quito but lifted everywhere else int he country. Although all is calm for now please continue to pray as everyone knows this isn't finished. Pray that when conflict surfaces again it will be as in the past with a minimum of interruption for the people of Ecuador...and hopefully with Correa on a plane headed to exile in Panama with the rest of the ex-presidents of Ecuador. Most of all, pray for stability in this country as endemic instability has plagued this country and robbed ordinary people of many opportunities.

The trip to the jungle several weeks ago went very well. It was short but I feel that some important beginning steps were taken. I left Cuenca on a Sunday and drove the 6 hrs down to Zamora where the the missionary couple and my Journeyman friend live. We stayed with them that night and then we all headed out for the jungle the next morning. We traveled about 2 1/2 hrs until we reached the cabins where we would be staying that night. We then had to either cross the Nangaritza river in the truck on a barge or leave the truck and go upriver by boat. That day we chose to continue in the truck because the river was quite low and we had a long ways to go before reaching the communities (we planned to visit two). Just to explain the situation a little...in order to reach these communities by boat we would be going upriver...meaning fighting against the current for several hours. Add to that the fact that the river was low and we would have to get out and push many times when the water was too low to use the motor. And so once we crossed the river on the barge we kept driving several hours until the road ended. At this point we crossed in a canoe to reach the first community we were visiting, called Neuvo Paraiso (New Paradise in english).





Our way into the communities were pictures of the kids that had been taken when a medical team was there several months ago. They were now printed and framed to be given back. So we gave back the pictures and spent time with the kids and then moved on by foot to the second community, called Yayuh (which I'm sure means something in the Shuar language which I don't speak). It took 45 mins of walking and wading across the river up to our waists to make it. On the way we met a man who recognized the missionaries from when the medical team had been to his community. We gave him a Bible and my Journeyman friend spent some time talking to him. We discovered that he lived in Nuevo Paraiso and was open to my friend living with him for several weeks and teaching his kids about the Bible. Once we reached Yayuh we also passed out pictures of the kids and then went to see a foot bridge they used for river crossing at the edge of the village. One of the Ecuadorians we brought along was a friend of mine and an architect. As this village was already wanting to construct a better and safer bridge, he took measurements to aid them with this in the future. Finally we started the long trip back to the cabins. The next day we made a trip to one community in the morning. Because this community, Shaimi, was only about 1 1/2 hr upriver, we went by boat.




In the community of Shaimi prayerwalked for about 30 mins and then returned to the cabins to pack up. Although the trip was short I feel like a lot was accomplished. This was only intended as a vision trip anyway. We made some important connections with people in all the communities and showed them that we are serious about returning. Most importantly, we found my friend a home and family which he can stay with to start building relationships in these very closed communities. Please continue to pray for him (his name is Corey) and the couple (Rocky and Dorothy). It is a very difficult area to work in as it is very remote and very difficult to earn the respect of the people who live there. Please also pray as I try to find ways to get Ecuadorians from here in Cuenca involved with ministry in Zamora. I am currently praying about and working to get the youth group from First Baptist of Cuenca involved. I anticipate them doing a VBS for several days in some of these communities. Pray as I try to move into actual planning such as dates and the details of setting up the trip. Thanks again for your prayers...as you can see they make a difference!

This is a beautiful view of the Nangaritza river at sunset. Everything as far as the eye can see is jungle.

Update 8/9/10

1. It's been a few weeks now since the VBS I spoke of in my last update. Thank you so much for the prayers as it went very well. We started the first day with about 60 kids but had around 100 every day after that. The kids come mainly for a 4 block radius around the church and look forward to this every year. Some of them have been coming for 2 or 3 years now. Thanks again for the prayers as I know this week meant so much to these kids.

2. Next week I will be taking a few days for a trip down to the jungle. There is a missionary couple and a journeyman that I'm good friends with who work with the Shuar people that live in this area. The Shuar, like the Quichua that I work with, are an indigenous group. However, unlike the Quichua, the Shuar are not nearly as integrated into mainstream society and are still very cold and closed towards strangers. There are no more than 15-20 believers in this area and no churches. I am bringing down 3 Ecuadorians (2 of which are Quichua) for this trip. Two are pastors/missionaries that will share testimony and hopefully open doors to the Shuar. The other is a young man who is an architect and is going to design a bridge for the Shuar in an area that needs it badly. Our goal in bringing Quichua with us on this trip is that the Shuar might see that the message the white people are preaching comes not just from foreigners but from their own people. We hope this effort, along with the goodwill of designing the bridge, will open doors for future ministry. Please remember us in prayer starting Sunday the 15th and the the next several days. Also pray for good weather as rain is very frequent in the jungle and the roads are quite bad.

Thanks everyone for the prayers!

Update

1. It's been two weeks since the team from Wellford was here and a lot was accomplished. Over the course of 3 days we stopped in 4 communities. The focus has been on working in the schools by bringing materials and supplies. In the community of Zhud, where previously the school had been open to us, it was now unwilling to allow us in. Instead, we played sports and games with the kids of the community. However, in Gonzol we were welcomed more enthusiastically than ever and the director of the school invited us to spend several days there the next time the team comes through. God is certainly opening doors there. In Huigra we were able to do activities with the children from the church there. This community is one of the poorest in the area. The pastor, Francisco, has no home or land and relies solely on the provision of God through his congregation and on teams that we bring through. Please pray for each of these communities that the local churches would take advantage of the doors that have been opened and be faithful to follow up on that.

2. Today, tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday (July 14-17) a youth retreat is being held outside of Cuenca. An estimated 40 youth will be attending from all around the Azuay province. The topic is "Breaking the chains". Please pray that the speakers and topic would be relevant to the lives of these youth and that they would be ready to hear what God has to say to them.

3. Next week (July, Mon 19- Fri 23, 2pm-5pm) the church I work with in Cuenca (C.A.S.A. Ministries) is holding a VBS. The neighborhood where the church is located is very rough and most of the kids will be children of prostitutes, alcoholics, drug addicts/dealers, etc. Please pray for those of that that will be involved and for the church that they would follow up on this opportunity appropriately.

Thanks so much for the prayers!

Update

Tomorrow morning a volunteer team from Wellford, SC will be arriving here in Cuenca. They have adopted two communities, Zhud and Gonsol. Sunday morning we will be driving out to work in these communities and a few others on the way to driving up to Quito. We will be spending the night in a few places along the way and finish Thursday by driving the rest of the 5-6 hours up to Quito. Pray for open doors and hearts so that God's work would be done in these communities. Pray that after the team leaves, these communties would be open to more evangelistic work being done there in the future. Pray for safety as I will be driving every day. I will provide another update after the team leaves and thanks for the prayers!

Praise

In the past several posts I've been giving updates about the house church we have here in our apartment building every Monday that started with Douglas. This week Douglas celebrated two big events with us: his 22nd birthday and his baptism. He was very excited about both and we baptized him in the bathtub.

You can also be praying for me as I begin to organize a ESL class that I want to teach once a week. There are enough people here who have asked me about this that I think it would be beneficial. I intend to ask all the Christians who participate to bring a non-Christian friend whenever possible. I already know of one couple who aren't believers that are interested. Please pray that the logistics of it all would work out so the right people will come and we can use this as an opportunity to connect them to a house church. Please also pray for me as I learn how to teach English, as at this point, ironically, I am much better at teaching Spanish.

Thank you everyone for your prayers!

More updates

Please pray for the youth from the church in Cuenca in the above picture. Last weekend I had about a dozen of them over to my apartment for a BBQ. My goal with them is to get them to move beyond one hour a week Bible studies and social events to real ministry. One option I'm praying about and close to implementing is ESL lessons. Many people in the church we work with in Cuenca, including the youth, have not yet grasped that lost people must be reached and loved from outside of the church. They must take ministry and love to the places where lost people are, which is generally not in a church building or even a house church on Sunday morning. I would like to use ESL lessons one day a week as an opportunity for the youth to bring their lost friends to someplace where they can hear about the Bible and Christ in a very open and inviting way. Pray that if this is something God truly wants to happen that the scheduling would work out and the youth would commit to their involvement.

Continue to pray for the house church we have here every Monday. Douglas and Diana are still very consistent and passionate in following the Lord. However, Washington, Diana's cousin and also friend and co-worker of Douglas, has fallen away and back into some of his old habits. He knows he is living in sin and needs help so pray that love and faithful friendship on the part of Douglas and Diana will bring him back around.

Pray for the community of Guangra. I mentioned this previously as a community we were planning to hike to so that we could make arrangements for a medical team in November. Several times our plans have been cancelled but we recently made progress. A few weeks ago we met the villagers from Guangra at a small town in the mountains that they hike to once a week for supplies at the market. We gave them the letters they need to fill out so we can have a approval from the government and they will also be presenting our request to the entire community. In the meantime we are going to be in contact with them so that we can arrange a date to meet again. They will bring horses and we'll ride in with them and have a look at the community and be introduced. Pray that all these arrangements work out and that we would experience good weather when the time comes to go in as we are in the middle of the rainy season now. I will update when I know for sure when we'll make that trip.

Finally, pray for our efforts in pastoral and leadership training/discipleship in the area of Chunchi. I previously mentioned that there are about 5 communities sending their pastors/leaders to train with us for 3 hours once a month. This is going well but it is evident that many of the people in attendance have great need of growth in their lives. Pray for the community of Tolte as their leaders and pastors are experiencing a very trying time. The teenage daughter of a respected church leader (who attends our training) had premarital sex with another young man in the church and the consequences of that to everyone are being felt. The father, despite being one of the church leaders, handled the situation very poorly and we can now see just how fractured the relationships of that church are beneath pious talk. Pray for healing and conviction on all sides and wisdom for us and the pastor as we try to deal with this tense situation as God desires.

Thanks so much for your prayers! I know updates are sometimes a long time coming but I try to update when there's real news about definite needs. And I really do thank you for your prayers! They mean so much to me!

This week

I have a few quick updates regarding prayer requests for this week. First is that, as tomorrow is Monday, we will be having house church with Douglas and his friends in the morning. It is going well as he and Diana come consistently and he regularly invites some new people each week. We are taking them through a long process of discipleship that we began two weeks ago. One great thing is that Diana got baptized in a river today as she had never gone through with that step after being saved.

There is a small village by the name of Huangra that we are planning on taking a medical team to in November. However, in order to do that we must go there first to take care of some paperwork that the government now requires for medical teams. Huangra is about a 6 hour hike from where we will leave the truck so we will need prayer for that trip. Our plan is to hike in on Thursday, spend the night, and return on Friday. Pray for positive contact with the people of Huangra as we have been invited in but have never actually made the trip before. Pray for good weather as rain could make the trip difficult or force it to be postponed yet again.

Update

It's time for another update and I apologize that it's been so long since the last one. In the last update I mentioned a young man named Douglas who recently accepted Christ. Since that time we have had our first house church in his apartment. He invited 4 people, a couple that lives next door and the cousin of a friend from work. The names of the couple are Jorge and Maribel, the friend from work is Wasington, and the cousin is Diana. Pray for the salvation of Jorge and Maribel and possibly Washington as well. From conversations so far it's difficult to tell if Washington is saved or not. If he's not then he's definitely seeking...if he is then he'll need a lot of discipleship in the future. The couple is from Peru and is struggling with working here in Cuenca and having left their children in Peru. After our first meeting they seemed very interested in the things we talked about but not ready to make a decision. Pray that these people will continue to attend our house church meetings, which take place every Monday around 11am. Pray that as they here the Word they will see the Truth. Pray that they along with Douglas will invite more and more people.
Also pray for church leaders from several communities in an area called Chunchi. We have talked the church leaders about going through a program of therapy with the eventual goal of helping them become mature Christians who can lead their churches in a change from traditional church to house church. This therapy will cover all aspects of the Christian life as we have found that many believers accept Christ but are carrying baggage from their past with them. Pray that they would take it seriously and apply it fully in their personal lives. Thanks for the prayers and I'll update again when there's more news!

Update

Here's a brief update on what's been going on for the last week or so. As I mentioned in the last post, we've had a volunteer team in from Wellford, SC. They have adopted two communities that we work with, Zhud and Tambo, and send teams down about 3-4 times a year. The focus of this trip was donating school and sports supplies with the goal of being accepted to return in the future. We donated lots of toys and basketballs and soccer balls and were able to do some quick sports and craft activities to share the Gospel. After 3 days we were able to open many doors in these communities that we are praying the nationals can exploit in the coming months.

I also have a praise and prayer request in the form of a young man named Douglas. Here is his story. While the first volunteer team was here a few weeks ago we went out to eat one night. Douglas was our waiter and overheard us praying for our meal in Spanish. When we were finished and going out to the car to leave he came out and asked what church we were from. He seemed very interested although he wasn't a Christian. We met with him a few days later for an in-depth conversation. He still wasn't ready to make a decision so we left and told him that we would talk more. In the meantime he left town to visit family and we had the volunteer team. Yesterday my boss and I had to go out to a pastors/leader meeting with the nationals and invited Douglas to tag along. While we were in the car he asked a lot more questions and after an hour or so decided to accept Christ. It was a simple prayer and you can always tell when someone is sincerely seeking. Pray for him as he has been reading the Word a lot and will need discipleship in the future.

Prayer Updates

This is the same family I asked prayer for last week. This week the number of people at our house church there grew dramatically. Currently the only Christians in this picture are two sisters and their parents. However, this week they invited a number of other relatives. I took the kids outside for a craft and games while the adults had Bible study. Nobody was saved but hopefully they've heard enough that they'll come back when we return in a few weeks. Pray for the salvation of these relatives and friends in this community called Ayaloma. Also pray that once there are more believers in this little community we would find a way into the larger city Nabon, which is just down the road.








Yesterday we visited a very remote area southwest of Cuenca. We call this area Santa Isabel, although it's a least an hour's drive by dirt road from the city itself. The man in the photo above, Angel Leon, is in his 80's and his sons and daughters and their families constitute the majority of the only evangelical church in his area that sits way back in the mountains. Pray that more families would come to know Christ and that some who have left the church would return. Pray for encouragement as it is clear that these amazing people are getting discouraged. We are going to try to return at the end of this month to visit them again and show the movie "Fireproof". Pray also for the salvation of one of his daughters and a renewed spirit for one of his sons who is attending seminary and persevering but is getting discouraged.

Finally, there is a volunteer team coming in this week from Wellford, SC...almost home. They fly into Cuenca on Saturday. They will be doing sports ministry among many other things. Pray that their time here would open hearts in some communities where people have not been very receptive. Pray that many children would come to the workshops and parents would see the love of Christ.

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?

Update

A few things have happened since the last update so I'll let yall in on what's current.

1. On Monday the 21st we received the papers we'd been waiting on so we could apply for our visas. So that afternoon we went to the city to spend the night and get up early the next morning to apply at the consulate. We were at the consulate office before it even opened and the whole process went fairly smoothly. The hardest part was actually paying for the visas since they cannot accept ripped or torn bills. It's quite hard to get untarnished money here so we did some trading around hahaha. In the end, we can't actually get the visas until we bring plane tickets. Then we can retrieve our passports which they're holding and get our visas. The big fiasco was that nobody knew who was actually supposed to buy the tickets. Because of this, a process that could have been completed all in one day is delayed until Jan 4th because the consulate office is closed until then for the holidays. It was quite funny actually. First we were told that the tickets couldn't be bought until we had our visas...then we explained that this just wouldn't work since that put us in a bit of a catch 22...then after deciding to buy "dummy" tickets, the person in Richmond that was supposedly going to buy our tickets suddenly decided that they couldn't...it was the job of our "language director". This was interesting to hear since we don't really have a language director and the person closest to that job has a budget of $0 for us. So we had to quickly get on the phone with our logistics coordinator in Ecuador to find out who exactly was going to pay for us to get out of the country. This was all very rushed because we were trying to get the tickets the same day so we could go back to the consulate and get our visas and be done. Oh...and did I mention the consulate office is only open from 9am-1pm? So eventually it became clear that there was just no way we were going to get the tickets that day so we gave up and went home. The good news is we have visas but we just can't pick them up until we come back with our tickets. So we will return to the consulate on the 4th when they reopen and fly out the next day. All this has proved to me what I had heard...that the simplest government/bureaucratic matters are incredibly complicated overseas. Also that while we have been here we have disappeared mysteriously into the Twilight Zone or Bermuda Triangle and nobody knows what to do with us if they even happen to know we're here.

2. Last night (Tuesday, Dec 22) we showed the film "La Esperanza". Against all odds it went great. I was expecting trouble because 5 of us had been in the capital for 2 days applying for visas and so we had no time to test things or prepare. We got to the school an hour early to set up and at 7, when we were supposed to start, nobody had arrived. Not to worry...that's par for course for Latin America. So around 7:20-30 people started to pour in. We had invited all our host families and teachers and their friends and family and anyone we happened to walk by on the street that night. In all, we had about 60 people not including the 10 of us. We projected the film onto the wall outside of the school and about froze to death due to the extraordinarily cold weather that night. But we took a break halfway through for an intermission to eat chuchitos (I don't know how to describe this food) and drink ponche (basically a cider of mixed fruits with the fruit still in it). The movie went very well and people actually stayed for the whole thing and seemed to enjoy it. It clearly presented the Gospel from creation to Christ and gave a personal invitation at the end. All without out being cheesy and hokey which is quite an accomplishment based on some of the films I've seen. We don't know if any decisions were made but I suspect it gave them a lot to think about especially as they go about their celebrations the next few days.

3. Christmas here is nuts. First off they don't really get started until midnight Christmas Eve. In fact, nobody eats all day and they have dinner at 12am. Then it gets rolling with fireworks and music and food and lots and lots of booze. So between all that I don't expect to get a whole lot of sleep. The next day there will be dancing in the streets. The theme this year is pirates....and don't ask why because I don't know. But lots of people will be in the streets dancing dressed in pirate costumes. After that I will be heading to a missionaries' house in Antigua to spend the day there where it will be more quiet and hopefully grab a nap, eat American-style food, watch Christmas movies, relax, and call home. The festivities will then be over...until New Year's of course where I'm sure there's lots more craziness to come.

Prayer request update

I'm now only 4 short weeks away from finishing up language school and moving on to Ecuador. I'm hoping and praying that these last weeks will prove to bear fruit of all the work we've put in in the past 8 weeks here.

1. There is a girl named Cecilie, a Norweigian language student who has been studying with us, who is definitely seeking. I and others have had the opportunity to share testimonies, salvation, and just about every major or controversial subject in Christianity and the Bible. She still clings to the humanist European view that's very trendy these days that inspires the false hope that humanity is good at heart and can accomplish good things if you really put your mind to it. However, I think after seeing the way our beliefs are not just a tradition but a way of life for us has caused her to rethink the traditional, liturgical, forced Christianity she experienced as a child. But with only 4 weeks left there's not too much time for us to see the fruit of all our conversations. It doesn't have to happen while we're still here...but it'd be real nice to see a salvation experience before leaving.

2. Our Wednesday night Bible study has been going quite well. I haven't been in several weeks but they tell me that our national leader (the father of the host family one of the fellow missionaries here is staying with) is really stepping up and leading it. He's starting to see the possibility of the group continuing after we leave and even turning into a church. He's slowly been letting go of one Catholic tradition after another and just reading the Bible and doing what it says. Pray that this would not fall apart after we leave and that he would truly step up to the plate and accept the role of shepherd that God has clearly put him in the unique postition to fulfill. He's not 100% doctrinally sound...but I think when we reach Heaven we'll all have some corrections made too. The most important part is that he's making steady progress and has the big things right and is clearly experiencing God moving in his life.

3. The IMB has a film they produced called "La Esperanza", or "The Hope". It's mainly narrated with CGI graphics in the background, so there's no hokey, low-budget actors to interfere with the message. I'm hoping that we could show it here in our town just before Christmas. At the very least we would invite our host families and teachers and all their friends and family...at best we could promote it to the entire town and show it in the town square. I found out yesterday that we have access to a projector and screen and one of the Guatemala missionaries is gonna come up from the City to talk and see what we can do. Pray that we could get him and some of the other career missionaries behind it as it will be tough to pull off on our own. It's hard to get them out of the work they're already busy enough with and into things that must seem like them to be quite small in the scheme of things. So pray that this would all work out logistically and that many Catholics where we live would here the true Gospel that isn't preached by the Catholic church. As an ironic side not, the town square where we would show the film happens to be right in front of the Catholic church...hahaha what irony.

Thanks so much for your prayers and if I don't update this sooner then I will once I reach Ecuador!

Thanksgiving

This past weekend was the first real holiday out of the States. Although it could have been somewhat sad and lonely it turned out to be very enjoyable. All of us studying language here in Guatemala were invited to spend the holiday with the other career missionaries in a vacation house on Lago Atitlan. There were several families there so in all there were about 30 people. It was about as close to family as we could get from an ocean away. There was turkey and every kind of casserole you can think of. We played a little soccer and football in the yard and spent hours walking around the city of Panajachel where there were quite a few shops to look at. We ate dinner one night at a beautiful place that overlooked the lake. The lake itself is quite beautiful but dying. It has been one of the most popular tourist spots for years but due to extreme contamination it is now a sickly green-brown color covering most of the blue underneath. Not somewhere to go swimming. It's extremely unfortunate that this is happening to the lake, especially because so many of the locals in the area depend on tourists for their livelyhood. But despite the contamination it's still a beautiful sight.

One day we went across the lake by boat to a small pueblo called Santiago del Atitlan. The main sight there was a local god that is moved from house to house each year. Although many would claim it as a saint and it is carried during Semana Santa (Holy Week), it has pagan heritage (as does nearly everything in Latin American Catholicism). The locals call it Maximon. We visited it and it looks very much like a normal Catholic altar to a saint but with some odd twists that mark it out as having pagan origins. In fact, the Catholic side of this god/saint is Saint Simon. However, in the local dialect "ma" is an honorific prefix for a person and the "x" sound becomes "s" in spanish. Thus, Saint Simon and Maximon are the same thing. This is a perfect example of syncretism... where the Catholic church came in an forcibly converted the local mayan population but the people only converted on the surface. Actually they merged their previous pagan beliefs into the ones the Catholic church handed down to them. For that reason, Semana Santa is really a hand-me-down of the old mayan religion and the "adoration" of Saint Simon is really worship of a mayan god. Look up "maximon" on wikipedia if you want a more in-depth but simple explanation.

To end the weekend there was some excitement in a nearby town called Solola. We had to drive through this town to get to and from Panajachel, which was right on the lake. Solola is in the mountains overlooking the lake. The excitement had to do with a riot of the locals against the police and some alleged criminals. To make a long story short, there have been many killings of public bus drivers in Guatemala lately. The perpetrators have been extorting the drivers to pay a monthly "tax" and in return they won't be harmed. Some have refused to pay and have been murdered. The police had captured 3 of these people although who knows for sure it is they were actually responsible. The criminals were held in the Solola police headquarters but some people wanted more. They wanted to kill the criminals then and there. There are various stories about how it all started but some say that a mob led by a friend of a murdered bus driver started out by blocking the police caravan. What is for sure is that several police vehicles were burned and the police station gutted and burned. The alleged perps were beaten, doused with gas, and burned alive. Thankfully this didn't effect us at all. But it shows the true state of politics here underneath all the calm. The problem is that there's a general feeling among the people that the police can't be trusted and that in the past they have let the criminals go free for bribes. In this case however, people were just fed up with normal working people being killed and no one being held responsible. So once someone was caught they wanted blood. Here's a link to a short story on it with some pictures. But I'll warn you...one picture is fairly graphic. http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/guatemala-mob-kills-burns-216572.html