Decisions, decisions, decisions…

It’s hard to believe that we have been in Ecuador for almost TWO years now.  July 14th will be the 2-year anniversary date.  What can we say after nearly 2 years?  Well my first thought is…what an amazing privilege it has been!  We truly, really, seriously feel blessed to have had the opportunity to learn and experience a new culture, new language, new congregation, country, and pretty much new life.  Exciting stuff.  They say one’s experiences shape who you are – an ever-changing process.  I’d have to agree with that.  I’ve seen a lot of changes in myself these last 2 years.  For one, normally I’m not exactly what you would call a laid-back person and patience isn’t one of my greatest strengths.  Unfortunately that doesn’t bode well for those that venture south of the border.  I had to quickly learn what ‘ya mismo’ means, which is a phrase pretty much said anytime you are waiting for someone or something.  Basically it means that who/what you are waiting for is imminent, could be here/happen anytime.  Problem is that its anytime either in the next couple minutes OR next couple DAYS…or heck, even never.  Combined with my initial complete lack of Spanish, I really had to learn to just chill out and wait for stuff because no amount of arguing (especially when the other party can’t understand you), sheer willpower, and/or micro-managing seems to make any kind of difference here.  Stuff happens when it happens; no sense trying to rush it or worry about it.  That was a tough lesson…that I’m still learning, but I am a LITTLE more relaxed than before.  To prove my point, the other day an electrician was supposed to be at our place at 1p…I stayed home all afternoon to wait for him.  Sure enough he finally shows up a little before 5p.  Hey, at least he showed up!  I felt fortunate for that instead of frustrated that I waited all afternoon for him (getting the electrical outlets in the office working again was also a plus (Welcome back Internet!)).  Surprisingly I didn’t have the urge to give him a piece of mind, it really didn’t even bother me…weird!  I’m not saying it’s the way it should be, but hey I can at least accept it for what it is now.  Anyway, experiencing new things like this, not just for a few weeks on vacation, but rather an extended time truly immersed in a different way of ‘doing’ life…it can really change  your perspective.

Also, I gotta say how cool it is to me to be able to communicate in another language! (notice I said ‘communicate’ and not ‘speak’…we’re still a ways from fluency).  Every week I feel like we’re progressing, becoming better teachers in the ministry, better able to illustrate and explain bible truths, better able to joke around with our friends.  It doesn’t take 5 minutes to get the joke anymore; ‘late laughter’ is becoming less of a problem…it’s awesome, I love it.  We’re essentially learning a new skill or ability, which, as is typical, becomes more and more enjoyable the better you get at it.  One thing I would like say to those considering learning a new language: be REALISTIC.  Personally, I felt kind of betrayed not long after embarking on this adventure.  A sister had told me that I would pick up Spanish fast, especially living here – in 3 months I would have a good idea of what people were talking about, and in 6 months I would be easily communicating.  Now look, I fully understand that I am NOT among the really really smart people out there in the universe.  However, I do figure that I’m at least of average intelligence (ok, my close friends need NOT feel obliged to chime in with their opinions right now).  Besides, I figure for what I lack in smartness I can make up for with pure determination and stubborn will.  So, I thought, if I study like a madman, I’ll be right in the mix of it after 3-6 months.  I really believed that sister.  Didn’t work out that way for me.  Yes, I studied like a fool on a mission.  Yes, we learned a lot fast.  Did I speak Spanish after 6 months?  No.  Well, then other people told me that really I was doing a great job and that the real mark was at one year.  So from the 6 month mark to the 1 year mark, I studied, I tried, and I worked like crazy on my Spanish, eagerly awaiting that day when it would all just ‘click’ and I would realize that I had ARRIVED.  Well, yes, I made marked progress, and I could communicate fairly well after that first year, but for sure, I was definitely NOT the bi-lingual marvel that I had envisioned.  So, finally I started asking the brothers who had been here for a long time what should I realistically be expecting in order to be able to speak Spanish fluidly and without so much darn effort.  From at least 2 brothers, one of which is European and speaks about 5 languages, the consensus was that one needs about 4 years to really be comfortable in a new language.  Wow.  I’m pretty sure I can’t keep the gas on all-out-full for that long, so the last year or so I’ve been taking the pressure off of myself and just trying to let it come to me without pegging a date or a timeframe to success.  Even as we wrap up this 2nd year where I know I have progressed a ton, I find it’s still a lot of work for me to speak in Spanish.  I am still hesitant to spontaneously answer at the meetings, preferring instead to have the Spanish words well-thought out in my mind before raising my hand (which often means the study has moved on to the next paragraph or someone already commented on the topic by the time I’ve got it!).  I still mostly read my parts and talks from a manuscript at the meetings and I don’t see myself using an outline anytime in the real near future (although it remains a goal for me).  Anyway, I’m just saying, if you plan to learn a new language, be sure you are realistic with the investment in time you are about to make.  I’m not saying don’t do it!  But do it knowing that for most of us who are of average intelligence, it’s gonna take a little while…but boy is it worth it!!!!!!  Now then, if either you know that you ARE one of those super super smart people out there, or you simply believe that I have given myself way too much credit and I am far LESS intelligent than I think, then you can probably ignore the above rant.

Living in a foreign country for this long has made me consider how other cultures and values, while so different from the modern and theoretically progressive culture of the States, are at times, IMHO, better.  That’s not to say all of it, heck not even most, is better (I mean pulling your car over at any random location and peeing on the sidewalk with the open car door being your only shield to the public eye or should I say poor victim’s eye is just wrong in every culture…just my opinion) but some things, other things, yeah.  For example, whether done by choice or necessity, those who live the simple life clearly have advantages (no kidding, I think I read that in a good *book* somewhere).  Also, the family closeness that generally exists here is unquestionably enviable.  Not to say families aren’t close in the States, but here it’s different.  Parents and kids actually seem to LIKE each other (believe that??).  It’s not uncommon for kids to live in their parents’ home well into adulthood.  And its not because the kids don’t always have the means to leave (although that can be the case); the family is just close and it doesn’t seem to be as common a desire in young people to assert their independence or escape the ‘yoke’ of their parents.  Parents, too, don’t seem to want their kids to leave.  When kids finally do leave the nest, it seems to be a pretty grievous event as far as I can tell.  An 18-year old sister who recently started pioneering and just switched over to a foreign language cong (Kichwa, of the indigenous Indians here) told me that the change was a challenge for her because now she could no longer go out in service with her mom as regularly as before (mom is still in our cong) and she is really missing that.  Awwwww, cute.  At least she still sees mom everyday since she’s still at home.  I mean, how much time do American kids want to spend with mom and dad at 18 years old??

Ok, changing the subject as my opinions probably aren’t that interesting.  So…well, now that it has been nearly 2 years here, what now?  Well, a few months back we had already decided we would be staying at least another year, perhaps longer if we could.  In April and May we had already started making plans to renew our current visa, which expires in July.  Then, we got ‘The Letter’…and it made us do a double-take.  ‘The Letter’ came from the branch.  It was sent to all need-greaters here regarding a change, effective immediately, that the branch could no longer renew our 12-7 missionary visas to stay in the country.  Ouch!  Unfortunately, this would/will affect HUNDREDS of brothers & sisters serving here, including us.  And we only had 2 months left on our visa (now 1 month as of this writing).  Well, we did some soul searching and prayer to try to figure out if this meant we should be moving on.  Are our days in Ec done?  Unfortunately, for a number of our need-greater friends and also many others we’ve heard about, once their current visa expires they don’t have the circumstances to pursue a different type of visa.  However, for us, it did look like there might be an option or two we could pursue.  Decisions, decisions. You might remember that 2 years was the goal we had ‘updated to’ after being here a couple of months (original goal was 1 year).  Well, on one hand, that goal is accomplished and perhaps now we could seriously consider the option of returning to the creature comforts of the States, where good coffee can be had on every corner (and even in between the corners if you’re downtown Seattle), where what we consider ‘normalcy’ reigns, where food I can safely eat is readily available everywhere, and the list goes on and on of the things we miss and would love to have back at our disposal (let’s not even start on Sam’s list!!!)…well, trust me, we put some serious thought into that.  We also considered switching countries where we might find at least a few more comforts and familiar things.  A number of places in Mexico sounded inviting – they even have Costco!  And those pics of Panama’s beaches on Chris Greer’s blog look soooo relaxing.  Well, we’ve put a lot of thought and prayer into these ideas.  Ultimately though, instead of thinking of just our own comforts we tried to determine what Jehovah would want us to do and we prayed for and continue to seek his guidance.  We ultimately decided to stay.  Well, let me qualify that…we decided that we should TRY to stay…to do everything in our power to do so and, if Jehovah wants us here, we trusted that he would bless our efforts to make it happen despite the very tight deadline (you do remember that ‘ya mismo’ thing right??).  So, long story short, we are in the process now of applying for another type of visa…and still praying.  I’ll let you know how it works out.

We have had a few funny experiences that happened to us over the last year which, because we haven’t blogged much, are kind of old by now.  I’ll relate a couple anyway… 

Above is a picture after the pioneer meeting w/ the c/o last year in May.  Likely, you know that I just started pioneering last September.  Well this picture is a few months before that.  You are all aware of the arrangement where aux pioneers get to attend the first half of the pioneer meeting with the c/o, right?  Well, I had been auxiliary pioneering the prior months but I wasn’t pioneering the month of May when we had the visit because I was prepping for our trip back to the States in June.  So it happened that, during the week of the visit, it was after one of the meetings, I gave one of our local elders a ride home.  In making conversation on the way to his place, Pablo mentioned that he was looking forward to seeing me at the pioneer meeting the next evening.  Well, I sheepishly replied, actually I wouldn’t be there because I wasn’t aux pioneering for that month.  ‘What?’, he says, ‘Clint, it doesn’t matter…as long as you’ve pioneered anytime in the last 6 months since the last c/o visit, you qualify to attend the meeting’.  Whoa, really??  Sweet!!  Ok, I guess I’ll be seeing you at the meeting after all!!  In retrospect, I have to admit that what he said sounded a little off but then again, things change from time to time, right?  And it should be safe to assume that he would have the most current information.  So, the next evening I show up at the meeting with Sam and take my seat.  We got there right as things were starting so I quickly got busy getting my notepad out and getting situated.  In the meantime, the c/o and Coordinator started doing a headcount to make sure everyone was there.  Evidently, something was wrong and they counted like 3 times and there was a delay getting going.  Unfortunately, I have a habit, especially back then when I had less than a year of Spanish under my belt, when something is going on around me in Spanish and I don’t think it pertains to me, I tend to tune out and start occupying my mind with something else because it just takes so much brainpower to understand – gotta save that for actual real conversations.  So when the brothers were delaying for whatever reason it was and they kept doing the headcount over and over, I figured someone probably forgot about the meeting and they were trying to figure out who it was or whatever.  So I dutifully exercised patience and started chit-chatting with my neighbor.  After wrapping up that conversation, I finally looked up and asked our Coordinator, who is from Canada and speaks English, what was going on and do we know who is missing?  He answers, while still trying to count yet again, that actually we seem to have one EXTRA person there but he can’t figure out why.  Figures, either yet another example of bad Ecuadorian record-keeping or someone actually has the guts to attend the meeting uninvited and try to get away with it!!  Believe that?!?  Well, finally the c/o realizes we are really getting a late start from all this hoopla and he decides to just forget the whole thing and start the meeting anyway.  He then proceeds to ask me to say the opening prayer.  I stumble through the prayer in Spanish and we go on to have a really really nice meeting.  Later, they excused the aux pioneers and so I left Sam there and arranged to come back for her after the meeting ended.  Well, they always have a ‘Pioneer Dinner’ after these meetings, so when I got back, I joined everyone in sitting around eating and chatting for a bit.  Before long, one of the elders (Paul, also from the States) comes up to me and starts congratulating me on pioneering for the month.  So I have to explain to him, no, I’m not pioneering this month but I had pioneered the last few months prior and that’s why I was here at the meeting.  He got a very confused look on his face and was like, ‘huh?’  Hah!  Evidently, I knew something he didn’t.  So I proceeded to explain to him what Pablo had told me about qualifying to attend the meeting as long as you pioneered any of the months since the last visit.  Didn’t he know about that??  No………………and then I started to feel a little warm.  You know the phrase of when something ‘starts to dawn on you’?  It describes that event when you start putting together a whole bunch of events and things that had previously tucked themselves into the back of your brain or subconscious and you didn’t previously realize their importance.  Hmmm, lets see…the count was off at the beginning of the meeting…there wasn’t just someone missing when the meeting began, there was an extra person…shoot, I KNEW it didn’t sound right what Pablo was telling me in the car!  Well, then there is that other phrase, ‘it hits you like a brick’.  And instantly the room went from very warm to dang it’s a raging furnace in here!  It hit me like a brick that *I* was the bonehead that had the guts, or more aptly put, stupidity to attend the meeting uninvited, and then I even ended up getting away with it!  Heck, I even said the opening prayer!!!  And I was the reason we started the meeting late!  Oh man, I haven’t been that embarrassed in a long time.  Of course, in short order the c/o knew, the Coordinator knew, everyone knew, and they all got a laugh out of it, including the c/o.  I felt so bad about the whole thing that I ended up getting 52 hours for the month, even though I wasn’t technically signed up for aux pioneering.  That relieved my conscience a little and just slightly ebbed the harassment I was getting from Paul.  It was only appropriate that I took the picture above of everyone else there since I didn’t belong in it anyway!  But hey, now since last September, I’m fully legit.

Pic of our c/o, Joffre and his wife Ester:

Below is a typical one-vehicle family leaving the house together. We were ringing the buzzer at the house next door while watching their whole load-up process. The little girl on the end was last – I don’t think she had more than like 2 inches of seat left to try to squeeze onto. How she would stay on the bike while hitting even the slightest bump is beyond me.  Also, I don’t think CPS exists here, or they all died of heart-attacks seeing this stuff and there aren’t any case-workers left.

Below: the trespassing rules are a little different in the campo (rural field service) than in the States.  So there’s a chain and lock…puhleeease!  Believe it or not, we did NOT get shot at when we got to the house…actually was a nice call!

Below: An Ecuadorian brother wanted to help out when we went to a community about 3 hours away and decided to bring his work truck. The truck ended up breaking down. It was all a little clearer after we found that he doesn’t really believe the engine needs an air filter.

Below: Another brother’s truck in the campo.  It was looking like rain when we were headed out for field service so he put the tarp on.  What?

Misc:

Above: gave these school kids a ride down the mountain…every one of them all got their very own tract.

Below: why wouldn’t you do it manually if the labor is free? (Yes, that’s a baptism pool after the assembly)

Above: more scenery. 

Below: Yes, the sun shines here…Washingtonians and white people BEWARE!  If both, ouch…sorry, Aaron! Hope you guys are doing good and you come back again! (He was redder than that ketchup)

Above: Even a cute fleabag is still a fleabag! Just kidding, these guys were adorable. 

Sam actually bought a puppy from another woman in this pueblo to give as a gift to a couple that moved out to a rural town to serve there.  Being from the campo, the dog really was a fleabag when we took him home…they were launching off of him everywhere in the bathroom when Sam gave him his first flea bath.  Well, for the couple days we had him before giving him away, we affectionately (more or less) called him Tonto (which means dummy).  Pics:

Above: dumb dog would sleep anywhere in any position.

Below: all growed up…his new owners decided to call him Kye.

Below: Sam with more of her school kids in Carchi!

Above and below: It was more fun getting it dirty…

Above: Some of the adorable kids in our hall.

Below: Josh and Rachel got tired of the lack of decent wine options and decided to make their own.

Above: We took a trip to Columbia, just over the border.  We were shocked at the prices! Oh wait, that’s just in Columbian pesos…so why do they use the dollar sign??

Below: Sam’s bible study, Helena (on left), has her first talk, which just so happened to be in the front school…and during the c/o visit!  Talk about throwing her in the fire.  She did awesome!

Above: Evidently someone leaned up against the truck while it was dirty.

Below: Killer view.  If you look closely in the far mountains you’ll see that there are several more communities up there on each flat/plateau area…someone has to preach to those folks!!

Well, I actually have a lot more stories and stuff I wanted to share with you but they will have to wait since this post is already pretty long.  I hope you are all doing well and we would really love to hear from you.  Send us an email and let us know how you’re doing and what you’re up to!  Love and miss you all…