Loving Otavalo

Hi everyone!

It was so great to be back in Otavalo again for that pastor's retreat at the beginning of the week. The main point of the pastor's retreat was to give these new pastors from mostly indigenous areas in the jungle some instruction on how to lead a church, especially during the difficult times. They also brought their wives and even a couple brought their small children, and those are who I mostly hung out with. There were 9 pastors there and 6 women, and all of them were so nice and caring to me, as I am only an intern for the summer and wasn't able to speak too much Spanish to them. However, Spanish wasn't the only language barrier between us. A lot of the pastors and wives are fluent in Quichua, which is the native language of those in jungle. Quichua is nothing like Spanish, so I couldn't even pretend to understand what they were saying. But, during the meals, I spent a lot of time talking to people and getting to know them, and when they spoke in Spanish, I could generally understand them :) It was exciting to see how much I can understand and translate into English when people talk, and they were telling me that I was doing a great job speaking Spanish. When they found out that I knew French as well, we would spend time pointing to an object, saying it in Spanish, English, Quichua, and French. Sometimes I was on a little bit of a language overload, but it was pretty cool. The Quichua that I remember from the trip is wa wa which means nino or baby, uma which means cabeza or head, and yaya which means padre or daddy.

On Monday I got there and we did all the introductions, and then we sat down to lunch. It was the first meal and we tried to divide ourselves amongst the tables, but even all the pastors and wives did not know each other so it caused for a little awkward silences here and there. We tried to have some conversations, and I sure had an interesting one. I sat next to Lenin, a younger pastor in the jungle, and we started talking about food that he eats and enjoys in the jungle and he kept saying that he liked gusanos and I knew I had heard the word before, but I couldn't remember what it was. He kept describing it, and I realized that he was talking about worms. He asked me if I had ever tried one, and I did my best not to make a face and say no, but he kept going on about how great they are and how I should eat them. I just smiled and said I wasn't sure, but maybe. We also were talking about how many kids he had and he said a number that sounded very much like 15 and I couldn't believe he had 15 kids being so young, but then he told me another number, tres, which is only 3, and it wasn't until then that I realized that the number 3 in Quichua sounds just like the number 15 in Spanish. After the little bit of language barrier road blocks during lunch, we split the women and the men up and I went off with the women for a Bible study. We started off with a little worship and then when we went to the Bible study, we could tell how much the women enjoyed reading the Bible because they do not get to much at home. A couple of the women ended up sharing their testimonies, and some of the stories just broke our hearts. There was one woman who knew her husband was so busy and wrapped up in his work on a church that he was opening that he had no time for her. She was working all the time to help get them out of debt, and she was not able to have any time for her own ministry, not even any time for herself. There was another woman who had 12 boys, most of them were older, but she was still taking care of the young ones on top of taking care of a lot of grandchildren. All she wants is to be able to host people from the church in her house and be more involved in the churches activities with her husband, but she is once again, too wrapped up in the home to even think about doing anything for herself. The three leaders of the women group and the other intern and I talked about this afterwards and we realized how hungry these women were for the word of God and we wanted to supply them with a safe place to talk about what was going on in their lives and realize that there were ways they could change some of their situations.

Tuesday morning after breakfast when we split up again, one of the other interns did a Bible study for the women about the story of Mary and Martha. We talked a lot about how Martha was too busy doing things around the house to prepare for people and making it look good for Jesus, while Mary just sat at Jesus' feet and talked with him for a while. The women completely connected to this story because they all felt they had so much to do and were not taking any time to have their own personal time with God. They saw that they really were wanting that, and struggled with how they were going to incorporate it into their lives right away. We talked about getting up that extra half hour or even just telling their children they needed this half hour during the day to sit and read the Bible, and letting themselves take the time that they need to really take care of themselves. It is sad how easily we can forget about ourselves when we have a lot of stuff going on, this includes men as well as women, and how all we really need to do is take that half hour to an hour away from our day and give it up to God. I could tell the women were inspired because some of them marked the page in the Bible and I just know they were going to look back on that passage whenever the hard times come. Then, we were able to take the women to the Otavalo market in the afternoon. We supplied them with a little money, and they got to relax and do a little shopping for themselves. One woman was so proud of the fact that she got a great deal on this beautiful blue shawl, and it was awesome to watch her wear it for the rest of the time there.

That night, we did a talent show! Mark, one of the missionaries in charge, told us the night before to prepare something, so OF COURSE the other intern and I were really excited about what we could do. We thought of this YouTube video called "The First Semester Spanish Love Song" (which is hilarious and you should look it up if you have not seen it) and we thought that would be a great idea to do for everyone. It basically uses all the words that you would learn in one semester of a Spanish class and it randomly puts them together so that it forms a love song. It doesn't make sense, but it is really funny. So we practiced that a few times, and were ready for the talent show. Mark had us go first since we were representing the United States, and it did turn out really funny. Someone video taped it for me on my camera, so I will have that moment captured forever. All the other families did a great job as well. They all ended up singing either a song in Spanish, Quichua, or both. It was a lot of fun and I could tell that everyone, even if they seemed uncomfortable at first, enjoyed themselves. We handed out glowsticks to everyone too, and since it was something that neither the kids or the adults had seen before, it was a big hit with all.

Wednesday we spent the morning with the women and just prayed for each one of their individual needs. Sometimes there were prayers in Spanish, sometimes in English, but it didn't matter because we all spent the same time praying to the same God. It was a great connection that we made with these women, and I am pretty sure they made a great connection within themselves as well. It was tough saying goodbye to everyone, especially because they all asked me to go to their churches and when I would be coming back to Ecuador, but I am really glad that I was a part of this great experience.

In the afternoon when we all said goodbye, the other intern and I decided to go back to the market to shop for ourselves and our families a little bit. I was just looking around and I saw an area where I had bought some necklaces before and I thought maybe I would like some more. When I was looking, all of a sudden a little girl just jumped in my arms and I looked down and it was someone who I had spent those 10 days with in the Compassion ministry when I was in Otavalo a month ago. This little girl, Sisa, remembered me and just basically attacked me down to the ground. I had to quickly explain to her parents that I knew her from Compassion and I stayed with Lorena when I lived here a month ago so that they didn't freak out that their daughter was jumping in a strangers arms, but it was just amazing. It was at that moment that I realized how much I loved Otavalo and how that has probably been my favorite ministry so far. It was such a blessing being able to see this little girl again. I, of course, was sad to say goodbye again, but I still knew how great it was to see her.

I spent Thursday and Friday back at the orphanage I had been going to in Quito. Of course I enjoyed more time with Anayi and the rest of the kids, but they were a little crazy those two days. On Thursday they had lunch and instead of rice they got a treat of french fries, and they went a little insane. They tried to steal each others' food and protect their own... I had to stop a lot of almost food wars. It was such a treat for them to have something else with their food that they freaked out a little bit, but I managed to stop a lot of food from being stolen. Friday was a little bittersweet for me because I said goodbye to the kids, just in case I do not get a chance to get back to the orphanage before I leave. I have a very busy schedule for the rest of my time here, so I may not be able to see them again. I was sad leaving them, so I do hope I can get back there at least once.

Saturday we got up early in the morning and went to Teleferiqo de Quito where we got to ride up a mountain in a cable car and end up 12,000 feet in the air. I think it would have been even more of a beautiful site than it was, but it had been a little cloudy. We hung out at the top for a little bit and ate lunch, and by the time we were ready to go down, it started to storm. We were literally in the middle of a storm (because we were in the clouds) and it even started to hail a little bit. They never shut down the cable cars, and by the time we were in one, it let up a little bit, and we did make it down safely :) We spent the rest of the afternoon at the market and went out to dinner for one of the girl's last nights here.

There is a team that is coming tonight and we are doing some Quito ministry with them until Wednesday morning. Then, we are heading back to El Carmen to keep working on that field to get ready for the building of the church. We will also get to do some VBS in the places that we were before. I am excited to see the people and families again who we will be staying with. We get back to Quito on Monday, but then at night I am headed straight to a place which is 40 minutes outside of Quito to stay for the week and finish helping with the VBS. Friday night, there are four interns that have been here from the beginning together and we are the only ones left so we are going to go to the beach. The beach is like 6 hours away, but one of the intern's has a friend who owns a house there and is letting us rent it for pretty cheap. It will be a great and relaxing time for us. We will be there for a couple of nights, and then I am probably going to another place outside of Quito and staying for a week for another VBS. I may not be back in Casa Blanca until August 6th when I leave this Wednesday, but I know I will get to do a lot of really great stuff. I may not be able to update until then, but I will do my best to get a couple things down to let you know what is happening.

I hope you all are doing well & time is just going so fast in Ecuador! My internet is bad again right now so I can't get any pictures up, so hopefully next time! :D

God bless!