We moved! And some other observations & stuff

Last week we moved out of Rose’s beautiful house in Atuntaqui and into another beautiful townhouse in Ibarra (about 15-20 min away by bus).  We’re pretty sad to be leaving such a nice rural-ish area (Atuntaqui) for the city but at the same time it’s pretty nice to be so close to the SuperMaxi and other stores, to have internet at the house (yes!!!), and be closer to restaurants, etc.  In my nostalgia, I want to share some pics of Atuntaqui with you – scenes that I will miss!

 

The view from the street we walk up every day where Rose’s house is at (her driveway is about 100’ past where Sam is standing)

 

 

 

One of the nearby peaks

 

 

 

We fell in love with field service in Atuntaqui – we’re really going to miss it!  Here are some pics…(we plan on helping them with their territory once a week or so…as much as a non-Spanish speaking person can help)

 

 

 

Farm animals abound out in service here

 

 

An Ecuadorian’s sense of time is a little different than mine. They told me it was a 15 min walk home – 30 minutes of walking later I asked how much further-they said 10 more minutes…15 min later I was finally home.  So 15 = 45…hmm, at least the view was awesome the entire walk. Might take a cab next time…nah, probly not.

 

 

You run into lots of kids in service here.  Savannah and Sidney are looking outnumbered…

 

When we went out in service last week, Sam and I worked together…yes, WITHOUT someone to help us with Spanish at the doors.  It was great!  A lot of times when you’re partnered with someone who speaks Spanish, they end up taking over the door after you give your simple presentation.  Without them, we were forced to muddle through whole conversations the best we could.  We just told them that we were sorry we didn’t speak Spanish very much but we really wanted to show them something important from the Bible.  Most were actually really nice and patient with us and had no problem reading the scriptures aloud when we asked them to.  We ended up getting some really nice calls.  One woman didn’t seem to believe Sam when she said that she would bring a Bible back and it wouldn’t cost her anything!  Another woman I talked to helped me finish several of my sentences in Spanish when she realized what I was trying to say but I couldn’t quite spit it out.  All in all, the experience was really encouraging and even helped improve our Spanish!

As much as we will miss Atuntaqui, the place we have in Ibarra is pretty sweet.  Here are some pics of the view from the rooftop deck at the new place:

 

 

Aren’t the Andes Mountains cool!  And we’re ~8500 feet up in them.

 

 

This place is one of the only ones we’ve seen that actually has a dishwasher! 

Like I mentioned, we are now a lot closer to shopping conveniences.  There is one fairly modern small shopping mall area called La Plaza.  While not like a mall in the US, it’s kind of close.  Here are some pics from across the street taken while I was waiting for a bus:

 

Yep, they even have KFC!  Definitely not my first choice, but I’ve found myself lowering my standards pretty quickly here :P  Pretty sad, but I can’t wait until Ibarra gets a Burger King!

There's wildlife in Ibarra field service, too!

 

I tried to take this pic when they were blocking up the whole street – it was a pretty interesting experience for in-city field service…

 

Garbage service is interesting here.  I mean it’s normal in the sense that they come regularly on a schedule and pick up the garbage you put out for them, etc.  But the two times I actually saw the garbage men/guys/boys actually come by, I was compelled to take pictures.  It’s pretty amusing to watch.  They have one guy driving and about 3 or 4 other guys gathering the trash and throwing it in the back of the garbage truck.  The funny part is that the guy driving doesn’t ever really stop.  He just sort of keeps driving down the street the whole time.  The ‘garbage gathering’ guys are thus in a constant state of running and jogging back and forth to the truck.  They all jump off the back (or from wherever on the truck they’ve been holding on) when they get to your street and then quickly fan out, a couple running to either side of the street.  They grab trash bags and run back to toss them in the truck, which continues to make it’s way down the street without them, then they run to another house and repeat.  When they finish up the street, they have to run after and jump back onto the moving truck to head off to the next street.  Compared to this, the garbage men back in the States sure seem to have it good in their comfortable trucks with the motorized trashcan picker-upper things.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen my garbage man in Redmond stray more than 5 or 6 feet from his truck…

 

In Ibarra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Atuntaqui

 

 

 

One of the local brothers here that we met through Jill owns a small cafe type restaurant called MAPOCHO (I think I spelled it right).  Pablo has had his place open for about 6 months and business is booming because he has a pretty unique venue in a small open-air plaza downtown.  He does open mic nights where people can come and play music for free on a pretty decent sound system.  The first night we went to his place he ended up playing the guitar and singing.  Then this Italian guy gets up there and starts jamming on this interesting Columbian music.  The next couple nights (yeah, went three nights in a row…party animal) he had some small local bands playing – the place was packed out – fun stuff.  Pics:

 

 

Pablo doin’ his thing…he was actually pretty good!

 

 

 

 

 

The Italian guy

 

 

 

 

Victoria, Santiago, Jill, and Pablo

 

 

 

 

Sam, Gianni, Nelson, Beth, and Tristan. In the back-right were a few more like Savannah and Sidney, Paula

 

 

 

Jill helps Pablo out by making drinks and pretty much running the show.  I think she took a few too many swigs in the process on this night

 

 

While our Spanish is improving, we continue to have funny moments that crack us up.  We had both studied pretty hard to prepare comments and scriptures to read for one of the Watchtower studies.  During the study the conductor asked for the reading of one of the scriptures.  We looked at each other to see if the other was going to raise their hand to read it.  Neither one of us did and we laughed as we whispered to each other that this particular scripture was a really hard one with words that were really difficult to pronounce – no way!!  While we were whispering, the conductor ended up calling on someone else – boy did we feel embarrassed when, at that moment that we were agreeing how really hard that scripture was, a little girl of about 7 or 8 years old starts reading it!  And she did a great job, too.  We have a long way to go… 

Last week we had another mixup.  Pablo evidently called Sam in the afternoon to talk about the possibility of us watching a movie with some local brothers/sisters that night.  Well, Pablo’s Spanish has some kind of accent that is really hard for us to understand.  So, I guess in the ensuing conversation Sam determined that Pablo wanted to come over with some friends and watch a movie at OUR place.  We thought it was kind of weird that he was inviting himself over here, along with his friends – must be some kind of Ecuadorian thing - but at the same time we figured that Jill, being single, probably had lots of movie nights and parties here and he was just trying to continue the tradition since she was gone for a few months.  So, Sam being the hostess that she is, went into a frenzy cleaning the house and trying to determine what she was going to offer everyone when they came over.  We ran to the store and bought chips, bear, soda, and some other snacks.  Sam whipped up a batch of chocolate cupcakes, we ate a quick dinner, and by about 7p we were ready for company!  Only no one showed up.  At 7:30 we figured everyone was just doing the typical Ecuadorian late thing.  A little before 8 we couldn’t stand it anymore so I called Pablo to ask where everyone was at.  I mean, besides, we had already told him that we couldn’t stay up late because we were traveling to Quito in the morning to pick up Keith at the airport.  When he answered the phone we ended up doing an English-Spanish version of ‘where are you? no, where are you?’ thing.  Turns out that earlier when he called, he was inviting US over to HIS house for the movie, not the other way around!  He was wondering why we weren’t at his house yet!  Talk about feeling ridiculous.  Well, at least the house was clean for Keith’s visit.  So we headed out for Pablo’s house with brownies in tow and kicked back there for the evening.  All in all, turned out to be pretty nice.  Pablo had a sweet setup with a projector aimed at the wall and big speakers for sound.  They even wanted to watch the movie in English with Spanish subtitles – supposedly so they could practice their English, but I’m pretty sure they were just being nice to us.

Well, this morning we’re headed out to Mindo for the weekend.  Will post pics next week…

Miss you all!

Arrangements and Thanks

Sometimes people ask what arrangements we needed to make to come down here.  While there were lots of moving parts, one particular aspect I like to think about is all of the help from so many of our good friends and even others.  It is without question in my mind that we would not and could not be here right now without their generous help.  Jehovah has given us an amazing brotherhood and I am truly grateful.  Below are some of the things that we had to do to arrange being down here and some of the awesome people that extended their help.  In effect, this post is kind of a cross between the description of what we had to do and a big ‘THANK YOU’ to the people who helped us:

Shed Building Weekend!  Building a shed at my parents’ house gave us more flexibility than renting storage because it set the cost of storage one time rather than having ongoing monthly payments indefinitely until we return.  So, we bought a shed package at a lumber place, got it delivered, and rolled the sleeves up for a weekend.  This is where (or at least one of the many times) the amazing Nichol’s family shined!  Petric, Chad, and Kade worked morning until night the whole weekend.  We had help on Saturday from some skilled brothers from Olympia like Lon Gerhig, Richard, Kyvie, and Paul who loaned us tools we needed, helped us get the floor joists square, the rafters cut, and the walls and roof up.  By the end of the weekend, we had gone from dirt to a nice 12x12 sturdy structure!  I can’t thank my parents enough, too, for letting us build the shed there and for their hospitality throughout.  Here are some pics:

   

 

Roofing is some nasty, dirty work…but Chad was a champ.

 

 

 

 

 

Roofing would have taken a lot longer without Mike Beriault’s staple gun – thanks, Mike! (If I told you how long it took for us to roof this little shed, you would probly laugh way too hard – so I won’t)

 

 

 

 

 

Digging the trench for utilities! (ok, it was just electricity)

 

 

 

 

Voila!  A mostly finished product…

 

Our Dads finished up the door during the week, we painted it the next weekend, my Dad’s friend Tom got the electrical in, between Sam’s dad and Petric the insulation was installed…and a shed for all of our worldly belongings was born!

Packing and Moving.  They say that moving is one of the most stressful things that you can do – uh, yeah.  When you’re packing the house you’ve lived in for the last 7 years, it’s amazing how much junk you find that you had hidden in corners and stuffed into and under other stuff…all for ‘when you would have more time’ to deal with/organize it.  Well, when you’re moving you definitely don’t ‘have more time’ to deal with those things, but you’re forced to anyway because it has to go somewhere.  Then you deal with the monumental task of trying to organize and label to some degree the boxes you’re packing, just so you’ll have a semblance of a clue and maybe be able to find stuff some day down the road when you need it.  In retrospect, after the way we packed the shed, I seriously question if all that ‘organization’ will make one iota of difference.  Anyway, with all of the boxing, packing, organizing, tossing, selling, wrestling over what to keep and get rid of….well, we needed help.  So, Sam’s mom, Jane, came over and stayed with us a couple times for days at a time to help.  Don’t ask me how there can be this much work, but we would literally sort and pack from 8a until almost midnight each day.  We can’t thank her enough - without Jane, we would probably still be there sorting through stuff right now.  Allison, Chelsa, and Corey also came over at different times to pitch in – we really appreciated their help!

The main moving day actually came and went pretty smoothly.  Van Sun and his bible study, Stan, came from Lynnwood; Kevin Connors, Petric, his boys, including nephew Reese, Allison, and Jane were there.  We were able to load up pretty quickly within a couple hours.  Most were able to car train down to Olympia with us to unload into the shed, and we were back in the evening – just like that moving day done.  All the help made it relatively easy – thanks you guys!

With all of the big stuff moved we focused on all the little stuff the last couple weeks, running them down to the shed in separate loads in Sam’s MDX, and figuring out how to fit all of the stuff we wanted to bring into the two checked pieces each the airline allowed.  We scrambled literally to the last day, last hour with this.  So we were extremely grateful that the Krueger’s offered to do the final house cleaning after we left!  Apparently, Linda had to do battle with our oven, but in the end she won.  We appreciate those that helped Linda, too.

Another family we will sorely miss is the Schierberl’s!  They threw a really nice going-away party for us – thanks for the send-off Tom & Karrie!  I can’t seem to find the pics right now – but I know Allison has a bunch…

When you leave the country but still have a house there, your bank account, the stuff you couldn’t bring, mail, etc…lots of little things come up that need to get taken care of. It’s pretty tough to do these things when you’re on a different continent.  Some banking things and bills can be done online, other things can be taken care of on the phone, but there are some things that simply have to be done in person.  I need to thank Petric, Howard, Sam’s parents, and my parents for all of the help they’ve provided with these types of things.  Everyone needs to have friends and family like these awesome people – we’re thankful we have them.  Hopefully, we don’t wear them out with all of our requests…

That’s it for now.  Will post more of our experiences here soon…

Food and District Convention

Cool pics of the mountain we took when we were in Ibarra.

  

The last week or so has been crazy busy!  I think this is compounded by the fact that we only have the daylight hours to get things done.  At about 4p or so, the traffic gets lousy and riding the bus between Atuntaqui and Ibarra takes twice as long.  And especially when it gets dark at about 6:30-7-ish, there is pretty much nothing you can do after that point, unless it can be done at home.  So, taking off from the house in the morning and spending 4-5 hours either in field service, at an internet cafe, shopping, and/or a variety of other typical errands, and there you go, the day is shot.  It should help if/when we find a place in the city in Ibarra so that we’re closer to everything.  Until then…

Still haven’t found a place of our own yet.  We saw a house that sounded great when we talked to the neighbor, but later when we went to look at it, we learned that the owners don’t have the money to complete it, so who knows when it might be done.  We actually did find the perfect place, though!  4bed, 3 bath, brand new townhome, modern, perfect guest room with bath, lots of amenities, and so nice!  But…the guy will only sell, not rent.  :(  We actually considered buying it for a minute…and so the search goes on.

Food.  It’s so easy back home, but not so here.  You have to be so careful with everything!  Every piece of fruit or vegetable that you buy at the market or anywhere else except a fancy hotel has to be cleaned.  Even when you buy things at the SuperMaxi you can’t relax.  2 of the 3 chicken packages we bought there smelled so bad when we opened them that we had to throw them away.  Maybe we need to buy the live chickens at the market and wack them ourselves to be sure its fresh, I don’t know.  Sam has often bragged about having to do that as a kid so she DOES know how...  It is kind of funny to see people walking around with a chicken they just bought at the market.  Usually they carry it by it’s feet hanging upside down with the poor thing softly cackling and squawking – I really feel bad for them.  I mean these Ecuadorians swing the poor things around like they’re a sack of potatoes.  I can only imagine the headache you get being swung around upside down like that.  Anyway, getting hungry here is a bad idea.  You see, the days of being able to run down the street 5 minutes away to grab some decent food are a distant memory.  There is no such thing as ‘fast’ food here – I don’t think anything, especially food, is fast in this country.  So, it either gets prepared at home, or you have to take an adventure into town, which requires a walk to the bus stop, the bus ride, the walk to the ‘fast food’ place from the other bus stop…you get the picture – you might as well have stayed home and made something.  Either way, you’re a looong time away from food.  So it’s just best not to get hungry. 

Speaking of needing your food to be clean – I got sick again.  It was different this time, though.  No puking.  No squirts.  This time it was just a gurgling in my gut, especially after I would eat.  The first day or two I didn’t pay much attention to it, figuring it would pass at some point.  But, the gurgling had a nasty side-effect – gas.  I was CONSTANTLY passing gas.  These weren’t your every-day run-of-the-mill puffs.  No, they were awful, nose-hair melting, run-from-yourself kind of gas bombs.  Sitting on the john was a torturous experience that I had to keep finishing as quickly as possible.  They were uncontrollable, too, so if one leaked out while I was around people, I would have to play it off on a nearby baby or little kid, or simply walk off and hope the people around me didn’t smell it until I was on the other side of the room/street/whatever.  After a couple of days of this, I realized I needed some help.  At Sam’s suggestion, I started mixing some grapefruit seed extract (GSE) into juice 3 times a day – a couple days later I’m cured!  I am now a believer in that stuff!  I think this means now I can eat anything I want as long as I chug down the GSE.  Apparently I am late to this party, though - just about every other gringo/American already uses GSE for just about everything.  They wash their food in it, they drink it, it’s the cure for everything that tries to kill you in South America! (including gas)

District Convention:

The DC here was awesome!  I don’t know why but having the DC in a small venue of less than 1,000 people was amazing.  The more amazing part was that nearly all of those in attendance were need-greaters or Bethelites, or even missionaries.  Being in the midst of all of these high-quality, self-sacrificing brothers and sisters and talking to ones who have been here for years accomplishing so much while making do with all of the inconveniences of a 3rd world country – it was inspiring and makes me utterly impatient to settle in, learn this language, and dig in!  It’s only been 3 weeks but I’ve got ants in my pants (not literally but that probably happens easily here).  At least the Spanish is starting to go from ‘utterly atrocious’ to just ‘really atrocious’.  Here are a few pics from the DC (you might recognize some faces from WA).

(Allison, I put this one in just for you – wanted you to know that your awesome gift goes with me everywhere!  I love my coffee cup!)

 

Mike & Linda from Canada – just got here and moving to Cuenca after the DC.

Scott Ness, serving as a missionary for a long time here

 

The branch organized buses to pick us up at the various hotels.  It was so nice to ride a bus with no porn or rated R movies playing!

Some of the friends who stayed at the Sheraton.

The Muller’s – the Australians who shared their mustard & avocado with us on Saturday – thus saving us from a dry sandwich lunch.

Phil Cassidy – he and his wife Tina serve in Rio Bamba.  Here he is realizing aloud how the loving elder has a point and maybe he did need the counsel.

 

Another nice thing about the small size of the DC was it was a lot easier to see the drama.  It so happened that some of the first families/couples that we met when we arrived happened to be some of the main characters in the drama.  So, we took a whole mess of pics.  Here are just a couple:

 

We signed up for a cleaning assignment on Sunday.  It’s definitely a little different here.  To begin with, all of the bathrooms are in one building; about 2/3 or more for sisters and the rest brothers.  Being in one building, there really isn’t a need for a little push cart like we used in the Tacoma Dome.  The assignments seemed a little more ad hoc than back home (go figure).  In our first time slot, the brother at the desk just told me to go check on how the supplies were doing and to see if it needed to be mopped.  Well, not sure where the miscommunication happened, but apparently the whole place had already just been mopped.  In fact, half of the bathroom was still sectioned off with chairs so the floor could dry.  So that left the dispensers for me to check.  I dutifully wandered around to each one.  Since it would have been irresponsible to miss any, I moved aside one of the chairs and gingerly walked across the damp floor to check the dispensers on that side.  Well, I guess one of the mopper brothers was still standing by to watch things dry, and here he goes and sees some brother (me) messing up their handiwork.  Since I had absolutely no evidence about me that indicated I was supposed to be crossing the chair border – no latex gloves (I don’t think Ecuador has those), no little push cart, no apron…I just looked like some disrespectful and disobedient brother who was crossing the line.  So, before I could even check more than one dispenser, I ended up getting reprimanded by the mopper-watcher brother that I was violating an off-limits area.  I tried to weakly explain that I had been told to check the dispensers as he was ushering me out of the ‘restricted’ zone but he assured me that they were already full.  So, that part of the assignment didn’t last long.  I didn’t want to go back to my seat having done nothing (except get a scolding), so I went around to the back of the building and found the mop & broom room.  Scott Ness happened to be there and he hooked me up with a mop.  Ok, so now I was carrying a mop around and I could look official!  Who would have thought that a mop could elevate you to a VIP person who belonged.  Now that I belonged, I got to clean up some the floors and counters that get dirty within about 30 seconds after they’re cleaned – now I felt like I had helped…

Speaking of bathrooms, there is a little detail here that makes it a real necessity to do some planning ahead before you decide to make use of a stall.  You see, the toilet paper ain’t in the stalls.  You need to remember to reel off some TP from one of the ‘community’ rolls and take it into the stall with you.  If you bolt into a stall in an emergency and forget, you’re going to have another emergency.  Fortunately, there are showers available…

  

Other DC observations you might find interesting:

• Building: Covered open air.  This allows you to hear the birds singing and see the occasional iguana that climbs up the roof support structure
• Seating: Plastic chairs – better than benches, although you might not be convinced of that towards the end of the 3rd day
• They serve free coffee!!!
• Plenty of bathrooms for all (Sam was blown away by how many stalls there were for the sisters)
• Attendants don’t have to wear jackets!!!

Let’s go back to the topic of food.  It’s tough to find any kind of familiarity here, especially as it relates to food.  For example, we thought we were splurging a little yesterday and we ordered filet mignon steaks in a nice little hotel in Cotacachi.  The waiter described them as very ‘suave’, which means soft.  I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into a really good steak – it’s been so long!  Well, those steaks really were soft - just as soft as they were expensive.  So, for $6 = not so soft <sigh>.  I don’t know if there is any soft meat in this country.  I guess the cows have to constantly walk up and down the mountainsides and they probably have less fat on them than I do.  I’m not sure how long I’m going to survive here without getting a decent rib-eye at least occasionally.  On a positive note, we did find an awesome restaurant in Guayaquil!  They call it Burger King…and it is sooo good!  The Texas Doble is absolutely the best hamburger fast food has invented here.  I’m told that they import the meat, but then they also add jalapeños and some other stuff…it tastes nothing like a Burger King burger in the States.  We liked them so much we had them for dinner twice while we were in Guayaquil for the DC.  So, basically I have to go to Burger King for good meat – go figure.

Above, Mike & Linda ‘protect’ our table at the foodcourt in Guayaquil.

Anyway, I have some more stuff to tell ya’ll but this post is probably long enough, so I’ll save it for later.  We’re missing you guys and missing home, but we’re having fun!  Signing off until next post…