Ecuador Day 16: The Fourth Day of Classes

Today has been a very long day. We had to be at the Seminary by 9:00 because Karen had a meeting and Cindy had to meet with a couple of students in the class. I spent the time going through a large stack of books for the seminary library that needed call numbers looked up for them. I made a spread sheet of all of the books I needed to look up so I could actually look them up once I had some time and access to an internet connection. There's about 60 books that will be added to the collection. Some of them looked fairly interesting. Unfortunately, I couldn't read them since my knowledge of Spanish leaves a great deal to be desired.

Jon Lambert grading homework

Once I had plowed through all of the books, I finished re-reading over the material I was planning to teach today. This has been the first time that I've had to write new lectures for every class time. At the museum and at the zoo, I had a limited amount of material I could teach. That's because there's only so many science demonstration we could do at the museum, and there's only so many animals in the education collection at the zoo. Granted, I was continually teaching different programs, but they were mainly variations on a theme. It's been fun to research different topics and then be able to teach on them. There's certainly more variety this way. It's also a much more work. I'm just thankful I've had good classes on the subjects I'm teaching, and have good written resources to consult. It's made the going much easier.


After this, I still had some time to kill, so I went downstairs to see how Cindy and her shoe sorting were going.

Mariano, one of our students. This man truly has a servant's heart

Last week, we had picked up the 346 pairs of shoes she had raised the money to purchase.

Karen had put together a list of how many pairs of shoes we would be sending to each church, so now the shoes needed to be sorted by size and then by church. This took Cindy, Mariano, and Rodrigo more than an hour to do. I was quite impressed at how quickly they had accomplished their task.


Finally it was time to head back to the house to eat and change clothes for the upcoming classes. We ate lunch quickly enough that I even had time to take a power nap before class. I went to bed earlier last night than I had in quite a while, but I was still exhausted when I got up. I'm going to chalk it up to the thinner air up here, but that's really just an excuse. It's a good one though.

Cindy and a giant stack of shoes

My lecture today was on Jehovah's Witness. This is the one I was the most nervous about. The reason for this is that it is a tricky religion. They use Scripture so much, and their arguments are so polished that they can really pull you in if you're not well grounded in your own beliefs. It's not a terribly big religion here, but they're growing faster outside the US than they are in it.

I feel like it went fairly well. The students did have a couple of questions I did not have an answer to. One student was able to answer a question because she has friends who are Jehovah's Witness and she's even been to a party they hosted. I was surprised when she said they served quite a bit of alcohol there. It did show me that they have made it here though, and that they may be growing.

One problem I ran into today is that we've now gone through all of the material I had planned to cover, and even a bit that I hadn't. I realized during the first day of class that this might happen, so I had been looking for something to do on the last day. I found an article written by Watchtower that list six "myths" of Christianity and why Jehovah's Witnesses believe we're wrong. Luckily, they've also published it in Spanish, so we're going to go through that tomorrow and see how students would respond to this, and why they disagree with the arguments made in the article. I hope that they find it's helpful.

I sat in on Cindy's class again tonight. She finished up talking about conflict resolution and started on addictions. This will be probably the longest section she'll teach on. It seemed to really hit a lot of the students close to home because many of them have friends and family members who are addicted to something—many to alcohol. In fact, almost every one of our pastors sitting in here were raised in a family where at least one parent was an alcoholic. It is very prevalent here. After class, Cindy spent at least 45 minutes answering questions and then talking with one student.

During this time, I sat in the library and was reading a book on my iPod. Mariano came in and asked me about it. He knows some English, and I know a little bit of Spanish so we can communicate somewhat. We spent almost the whole time listening to music on my computer and looking at pictures of his family on his phone. We mainly listened to Fernando Ortega because he has some songs in Spanish. Mariano told me that he loves music, but he's not a fan of television. He said one of his favorite things is to sing at church. It was so sweet and interesting to see what really speaks to him. He has a son named Jericho who is just two months on. He's very cute. He also showed me pictures of his older children, two of which are attending seminary this week. I recognized them, but had not realized that they were his children. I got to see pictures of his class at school and his teachers. He's working on finishing high school. He takes classes in the evening. I really admire him for working so hard. Having his high school degree will allow him to get a better job in the construction field.

As he was showing me pictures, he came upon quite a few pictures of work campers. He knew some of them by name, but he kept referring to everyone of them as his brother or sister. After we looked through his pictures, I checked my computer to see if I actually had any pictures of my family. Because I've only had this computer a few months and I mainly got it for travel, I haven't put many pictures on it. I did have a few pictures of my parents, sister, and nephew. Mariano took one look at a picture of my dad and got really excited. He exclaimed that this was his brother and pastor. I knew he knew who dad was, but I had been pretty sure that he had not made a connection between us. Almost everywhere we go, Jon introduces me as the son of Pastor Jim Todd. Some people make the connection, but not everyone. Once Mariano realized who my dad is, he gave me a big hug and told me to give dad his greetings.

Spending some time talking with Mariano is definitely one of the highlights of my trip. I've been working near and with him for almost two weeks now, but this was the first time we were able to spend more than a couple of minutes communicating. He truly has a servant's heart. Serving along side him this week has truly been a pleasure. He's also been one of my biggest encourages in class this week. Even when I feel like I've given a lousy lectures, he's been encouraging.

It was about 10:00 before we made it back to the house. We sat down to eat supper and talk for a few minutes. We ended up talking and joking for more than an hour. It was a great way to blow off some steam. We certainly need it. It has been a very busy and stressful week. I did not appreciate how much work seminary is. Granted, I only had to teach one hour and fifteen minutes today, but there was always plenty of work to keep me busy. By midnight, I could barely keep my eyes open and was ready to head to bed. Tomorrow's the last day I have to teach a class!

Ecuador Day 11: Meeting and More Shoes

The past few days have been very busy. Saturday started off with the National Committee meeting at their office at the seminary. It was great to meet many of the pastors. Some of them I'd only met once or twice several years ago, and some of them I'd never even seen before. The Lamberts translated for us some, and I was able to pick up enough on my own to at least have an idea of what was going on. It was a meeting though, which means it can only stay interesting for so long.

We had planned to go back to the house to grab some food before picking up the shoes for Hands 4 Ecuador's Happy Feet program, but the National Committee had other plans. They decided to treat everyone at the meeting to lunch down the street. I'm still not sure where the money came from, but the food was very good. We went to a small restaurant that is close to the Seminary. The food was roast chicken, rice with beans (can't remember what the dish is called), french fries, and cole slaw. It was a neat experience. I'd wanted to eat at a place like that for quite a while, so it was nice to finally do that.

With lunch out of the way, we headed off to the shoe store to pick up 300 pairs of shoes. Mariano went with us to help us load and unload them as well as get a truck for us. I would say that it took longer than I expected to get the shoes, but that would be a lie. At this point, I'm getting pretty used to the concept of Ecuadorian time. While we were waiting, we found some more shoes on sail, so Karen and Cindy picked out another 14 pairs of shoes bringing the total to, I think, 344 pairs. One interesting thing we noted was that the price tag on last years shoes were $26. The same shoes this year cost $36. That's a huge increase in just one year! Because of the increased price of shoes, school has just gotten much more expensive for families, and it makes it much harder for many families to send their kids to school.

The best part of dropping the shoes off at the Seminary was that we planned to get paila afterward. Have I mentioned how much I love paila? It's pretty awesome stuff!

Jon and Cindy showing off their paila

We took Mariano with us to help thank him for all of his hard work. He said he'd only had paila once while he was in the military. I think he's as big a fan of it as I am!

Mariano and his delicious paila

We spent the rest of the day at the house working on our lessons for seminary and just relaxing a little bit. We knew that Sunday would be a long day. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, we didn't need to go to Ofelia for church so we discussed where we'd like to go. We decided on Zabala once we realized that it would be their anniversary celebration. The downside was that the service starts at 8:30 so we'd need to leave by 8:00. Oh well, I figured it'd be worth it.

Ecuador Days 8, 9, and 10: Shoes, Seminary, and Ceviche

It's been several days since I posted partly because we've been somewhat busy, but I haven't had a great deal to post. Part of the reason for this is that a family that is moving from Quito to Orlando stayed with us for several days. The husband is from Ecuador and the wife is from Illinois. Their kids, while American citizens, have grown up in Quito and are essentially Ecuadorian. They owned a hair salon here catering mainly to Americans. As Americans have left the country due to the government here being less friendly to Americans and American business, their business has declined. Because of this, they've felt that moving back to the United States is a better option for them and their family. It's been interesting seeing the family saying their goodbyes to friends and family here while preparing to transition to life in another country. Their kids were asking me lots of questions about what it's like to live in America and what Orlando is like. While they've travel to the US some to visit family, they've never spent a significant amount of time there. To make matters even tougher, they are not Christians. They Lamberts have spent years developing a relationship with them, but they have not been terribly open to Christ. My prayers go out for them during this time of transition that they not only find Christ, but that they find a place to settle and jobs.

Their last night here, we all went to a restaurant called La Ronda. La Ronda is a restaurant that serves traditional Ecuadorian food. Fritada is one of their specialties as well as a very traditional Ecuadorian dish. I decided to order that and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Fritada is a dish that is made of pork that has been boiled and then fried. It was served with fried bananas, a type of corn cake, and hominy. I've had hominy multiple times, and have never been a fan until this time. It was pretty fantastic. My only complaint about it was that it had quite a bit of cilantro on it and I'm not the biggest fan of cilantro. Over all though, I was a big fan of the food. I would eat there again in a heartbeat!

The best part of the restaurant was the live music. They had a group of six men who went table to table playing traditional Andean music. They were all dressed in matching ponchos and hats, and played quite a variety of instruments. They had guys playing quenas, pan flutes, guitars, drums, and even a charango. One of the guys who played the charango played it the fastest I've ever seen. It was truly impressive. They were not the only life music though. There was also a group of three guys who played Spanish guitar and sang ballads. They were quite excellent as well. It was a truly enjoyable experience.

The next day (Wednesday) after the families departure to the airport, we headed out to run errands. Our first stop was at a shoe store to price out school shoes. Hands for Ecuador has been raising the money to buy school shoes for children in the churches here. They had hoped to raise enough money to buy 220 pairs of shoes. Cindy called a couple of days before to tell us that they had managed to raise more than $5,300. With this number in mind, we set off to see how many shoes could be bought with this money and to put a deposit down. After picking out styles for both younger and older boys and girls as well as sizes, one of the salespeople set off to see how much 200 pairs would cost. He came back 15-20 minutes later with the quote, and we realized we could buy at least another hundred pairs. The salesman went off and came back a few minutes later with his total. 305 pairs of shoes came out to just under $5000. This meant that we still had $300 left to spend. While he had been putting together the quote, we had been looking around the shoe store and found some really awesome shoes that looked like Chuck Taylors and had dinosaurs all over them. I'm still kind of wanting them… Anywho, we also found a clearance rack with some shoes from last year. All of them were 50% off. Karen told the guy to get us every pair he could find as long as the total was under $300. Several minutes later, we were walking to the register with another 30 pairs of school shoes, the most expensive of which was $10. Keep in mind that all of these shoes are made of leather and are pretty good quality. Karen paid for the shoes and then put down a deposit on the rest of the shoes. The salesman seemed pretty excited for his sale and event through in 200 plastic rulers with the Bunky logo (the shoe manufacture) on them. We'll had back tomorrow to pick up the other 305 pairs of shoes.

After that, we grabbed lunch at a Chinese restaurant and then headed to the Seminary so Jon could attend a short meeting. While he did that, I helped Karen go through all of the Children of Promise files to look up the birth dates of all of the children in the program. I enjoyed getting to see all of their pictures and hearing about some of them. Some of them, like the kids at Meridiano, have grown up a great deal since I last saw them nearly 8 years ago. It was also a good time to learn more at the Children of Promise program. I didn't realize just how little I knew about it.

After Jon's meeting, we headed back to the house. They worked in the office some and I studied some for my upcoming classes. I might have read a little bit of Harry Potter as well. Ok, I read a little bit of Harry Potter. After Danny got home from working at the hospital, we had supper. As we were finishing up, Jon was commenting about how nice it would be to have some paila for dessert. Sadly, there was no place to get paila nearby, or so we thought. Danny told us there was a place only a few minutes away that looked pretty good. That was enough for us. We grabbed our shoes, jumped in the car, and were off with Danny at the wheel. As we got there, the owners were just leaving the shop and were in the process of locking the doors. We inquired about their hours, and it turns out they close at 7:30 and we had gotten there at 7:35. They then told us we'd be welcome to still come in and get some if we'd like. They had a ton of flavors to pick from. I ended up getting a scoop of taxo and a scoop of guanábana served in a tulipan. A tulipan is an edible ice cream bowl that looks a little bit like a tulip. All I can say about the paila was that it was absolutely delicious. It wasn't as pretty as the one I had at Mitad del Mundo, and didn't have all of the extras on it, but it didn't need it. I suspect I will be getting paila there at least another couple of times before I leave Ecuador.

On Thursday, Jon and I started off the morning by heading to the Seminary to drop a hand truck off so that Mariano could go get the gas cylinders filled for the kitchen at the seminary. Mariano is the man who was stabbed, thrown off a cliff, and left to die several years ago. I've only met him briefly before now. Our next stop was Mega Kywi. Mega Kywi is the largest hardware store in the city. It may be the largest in the country (Jon isn't sure if the one in Guayaquil is bigger).

Mega Kywi is a lot like a Home Depot or a Lowes. They have just about everything you could need ranging from desk to plants to mowers to hardware. The biggest difference between Mega Kywi and hardware stores in the US is the prices. Many items such as lawnmowers are much more expensive here than they are at home. Karen pointed out to me later that while the prices may be significantly higher, at least you can get all of these things now. In the past, it was almost impossible to get much of what Mega Kywi carries. On the way back to the car, we stopped by a little stand that had really great vanilla cake donuts. Jon knows of all the best food places around!

After our trip to the store, we headed back to the Seminary to drop stuff off. We had purchased a desk and a file cabinet for the office, so we left those with Mariano to put together. Then we headed home for lunch, and what a lunch it was! Karen had cooked ceviche for lunch. Ceviche is a traditional Ecuadorian soup that is served cold. Karen made ceviche that was tomato based with shrimp and chochos in it. Chochos are a type of bean that you can only get here. It was very, very good.

After lunch, we headed back to the Seminary so that Jon could meet with some installers who are putting in internet at the Seminary. The internet they're getting is the cheapest available. It's 256K and cost $80/month! It's still cheaper than the other option which was a blazing 512K and cost a mere $175 a month. When the told me the cost of the more expensive one, I about fell over. That just seems like highway robbery to me.

Once we were done with the installers, we headed to Santa Clara to hit up the market to buy some pots and pans for the seminary. Some of the cooking utensils have a habit of walking off, and some larger pots and pans were needed so that the cooks can prepare food for more than 40 people. We went to three different shops to compare prices and ended up getting some stuff at each one. With that out of the way, we headed to Bosque, one of the malls in the area. We went to a computer store first to purchase an ethernet cable for the Seminary. I was expecting it to be really expensive, but a 10 foot cable was only $4. It turns out that the cable is imported, but is not considered a luxury item. Because of that, computer cables can be made here very cheaply. While Jon was buying the cable, Karen noticed a rack of jackets on sale for $10 a piece. She looked at all of them and mentioned that they'd make great Christmas presents for some of the older girls in Children of Promise. She ended up picking out 10 of them. It was fun helping play Santa for some of the kids. We're hoping to hit up the Christian bookstore soon to pick up presents for the rest of the children while the store still has some good stuff in. We then ate dinner at the food court in the mall.

We ate supper in front of some big windows that face out over part of Quito as well as the airport. As the sun went down, we noticed that one of the valleys out past the airport was positively glowing. Over the next 15 or so minutes, we watched the light creep up the side of the mountains. The light turned everything gold and it cast deep shadows helping to see the topography of the land. Sadly, the show was over pretty quickly. The sun sets and rises incredibly fast here on the equator. Once we were done eating, we wandered into a movie store for a few minutes. They sell DVDs for $2.50 each, and have tons of them. They also sell games for computers and many gaming systems (also for $2.50). You can guess where the DVDs come from. It seemed funny to me to see two such stores in one mall.

Once we were finished at the mall, we headed back to the house for the evening. I worked a little bit on stuff for my classes and then played on the computer some. We had hoped to get some paila, but were not able to make it to the shop before they were closed. Maybe next time…

Today, I've just hung around the house reading for school and for fun and worked on finishing up my lectures. I also did some laundry while I had the chance because life starts getting much busier tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the meeting of the National Committee. We also need to run pick up the rest of the shoes, all 305 pairs of them. Sunday, we're going to church at Ofelia where Jon will preach both services. Then we have to go to the Seminary to register people for the week and then have a worship service for the seminary tomorrow night at Comite. Classes begin on Monday and run through the rest of the week. It's going to be an adventure!