Second-semester classes haven't yet started, so the buildings are very empty.
Eventually, the team went off to a missionary's home for a devotional/debriefing time. We were waiting for a ride. So, we helped a bit with cleanup and then we were left there for about an hour with that pastor and his two kids. Though Quechua is his mother tongue, he can also communicate in Spanish (not our mother tongue either). There was a guitar in the room. So, he picked it up and sang some songs in Quechua. He told us that we needed to learn Quechua in addition to Spanish. He tried teaching us several phrases. He even had a Quechua Bible and he coached Barbara into reading John 3:16-17 from it. It was one of those wonderful times you could not have planned.
Jean David is now the academic dean of the seminario here in Ecuador. He's also a church planter! They started a congregation not too long ago in the chapel on campus and are now running about 140. He said it was an international church with people from Ecuador, Colombia, Haiti and . . . well, I cannot remember where all they're from. He said he'd be preaching this morning in both Haitian Creole and Spanish. We're going to go there for Sunday worship. So, we'll get a chance to hear the sermon twice! We'll understand more of it in Creole, but that may also help us understand some of the Spanish.
The Church of the Nazarene has seen great growth here in the past two decades. Missionaries Dwight and Carolyn Rich told us that when they came in 1983, there were 10 Nazarene churches with a total of about 400 members. Today there are more than 12,000 members in about 180 churches. I'm not very good at math, but that has to be an impressive annual growth rate! God is at work here.
The strangest vegetable we've seen thus far are huge, long green seed pods, which I assume are from trees. They look like the seed pods from the catalpa trees on the SNU campus except that they're about two feet long and two to three inches wide. They have black beans in them that are the size of squashed jawbreakers. I haven't yet found out how they eat them (raw or cooked, alone or with other stuff, plain or with ketchup or some other sauce).
To get other income, the school cafeteria and student lounge are rented out on Sundays to an independent congregation. Various groups also rent campus space throughout the year for conferences and retreats (they can even rent student housing when that is not being used).
Another interesting project the school has begun to bring in income is a rabbit-raising project. They currently have about 150 rabbits they are raising to sell for meat and fur. Yesterday, the school president told me that the long-term goal is to have a rabbit population of about 600!
Then, the "semester-abroad" Spanish language program to which several Nazarene universities are sending students makes a profit that provides income for the seminary. Missionary Stan Hall (who has an earned doctorate in philosophy) heads up the program.
Although classes here at the seminario don't start until Monday, the cafeteria has already opened. Yesterday Barbara and I ate lunch and supper there. Both meals featured a large helping of rice. The meat dish was beef liver, and there was a vegetable salad. We also had potato soup. For a drink, we had a fruit juice. Last night, in addition to the rice, we had an egg omelet with broccoli in it. Our drink was hot tea.
We sat at a table with two young families who are here as students. One of them is from the coastal city of Guayaquil. The young mother, Maria, talked wistfully about all of the seafood she missed having.
Up to one-fourth of Ecuador's population is made up of indigenous peoples. That does include the Woarani people made famous by two films: "Through Gates of Splendor" and "End of the Spear." The largest indigenous group, however, is the Quechua people. Indeed Quechua is one of Ecuador's two official languages (Spanish is the other). It would be fun to try to learn Quechua, but I think Spanish is about all we'll have time for.
People notes: Felix Vargas, former drug enforcer from Colombia whose story is told in the 2007 movie, "From the Dark," has been living here on the campus and ministering in Ecuador since his radical conversion to faith in Christ. He left a couple of days ago for Argentina, where he'll be in charge of evangelism for the Church of the Nazarene in all of South America. He has served time in U.S. prisons for drug trafficking and applied for a pardon from the Bush administration, but was turned down. I'm not sure why other people were deemed more worthy of a pardon than he was.
Felix Vargas
People note: Yesterday, at an orientation/get-acquainted session with the 9 American students and the students and faculty of the seminario, they paired us off for a prayer time. I got paired up with Yoan, a young man from Venezuela whose first name is pronounced almost like "John." Yoan asked me where I was from. When I said "Oklahoma," he asked if that was where the Oakland A's baseball team was located (think about it: Oklahoma and Oakland do sound somewhat similar). Then he told me that not long ago, he was playing for a professional baseball team in Venezuela. Then, about the time that he was offered a contract by the Atlanta Braves, he felt God calling him to preach. He decided to leave behind that baseball career (and the potential of big money) and follow God's call. So, he's now studying for the ministry here in Ecuador. Yesterday, he prayed a powerful prayer of blessing on me. The Church of the future is in very good hands!
His sermon was a powerful one but I actually thought more about how radically changed his life was. He had been an "enforcer" for one of the drug cartels in Colombia and then he met Jesus. Here was a man who had tortured and killed people and now, in an Apostle-Paul-like transformation, he is a herald of the Good News. Yesterday morning, I thought about "Christians" I knew whose spiritual lives seemed shallow and not-so-very-different from what they would be if they did not claim to be Christ followers.
NILI classes start today. We have to take two placement tests in Spanish (gulp). We'll be in Spanish class for about four hours each morning from now through late April.
Botanical note: Not far from the front door of our little apartment is a bush that I've named the "red-hat society bush." The flower buds on it are red but when the flowers open up, the petals are purple. It reminds me of those groups of ladies in the U.S. who wear purple dresses and red hats.
Lucy was born into a very poor non-Christian family. When she was six years old she and her brother went to a VBS at a Church of the Nazarene in her town. She never stopped going to that church! She became one of those children sponsored through Compassion International. As a young lady, she fell in love with the pastor's son, and they eventually got married.
Well, Spanish classes start today. It's a total immersion program in which no English will be spoken in the classroom. Off we go!
For the past 20 years, we have lived not far from the "mother road" in the U.S., old Route 66. Now that we're in Quito, we're living very near (300 feet) from another famous road, the Pan-American highway. That highway, which is more than 16,000 miles long, runs from Alaska to the southern part of Chile. The idea of such a highway linking many of the countries of the Americas was born in 1923. The U.S.A. gave quite a bit of financing for it in the 1940s and 1950s. Here in Ecuador, it looks more like old Route 66 than today's U.S. interstate highways because it runs right through the city with stoplights and vehicles making u-turns and pedestrians trying to get across it.
To this point, all the license plates that I've seen are from Ecuador, but then I haven't been sitting out there next to the road for hours watching.
Prior to that event, we had supper at a KFC right across the street. It was fried chicken all right, but the rest of the plate didn't look like KFC in Oklahoma City. First of all, the plate on which it was served was huge. It was probably at least half again as large as those used in the U.S. I got one of the $2.50 combos. The drink was fairly small. We would have called it a child's drink in the U.S. There was a huge mound of rice on the plate. Then there was a serving of lentils and a very small lettuce and tomato salad with almost no dressing. Barbara had the chicken strips. She also had strips of fried banana on her rice. I was jealous. It was "different," but it was good, and the restaurant was full, so it appears that they serve what people in Quito want!
Last night at supper we had rabbit meat (they have a commercial rabbit-raising operation here on the seminario grounds). Some of the Ecuadorians were joking that it was guinea pig. Apparently, guinea pig meat is considered a specialty by some Ecuadorians, although all of the Ecuadorians I've met said they didn't like it.
Yesterday morning my Spanish teacher (I say "my" because Barbara is in a different class with a different teacher) talked about her pride in her country, both its geography and its culture. It was neat to hear that.
Luis said that he felt God had given him the gift of church-planting because in thirty-plus years of pastoral ministry, he has planted 17 congregations in Ecuador. The seventeenth, which he is currently planting as well as being director of student life, is a few months old and is already running in the 60s and 70s.
There is a lot the church in the U.S.A. could learn from pastoral leaders like Luis and his wife.
I went to the same church she did yesterday, the Comunidad Cristiana Nazarena Restauracion, and it was indeed a glimpse of heaven. There were people of all ages and from several different countries (Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti and the U.S.A.). There was lots of warm hugging and kissing on the cheeks. There was a sense of Christ's presence in our midst as we celebrated Holy Communion together.
Here in the Andes mountains, it's eternal spring and so flowers grow all year round. Exporting flowers — particularly roses — to the U.S. is big business. In fact, flowers are the fourth biggest export industry in Ecuador (after oil, bananas, and shrimp). So, my U.S. friends, those cut roses in the flower shop you pass by today may have been grown here in Ecuador.
This is particularly interesting to me because we lived for almost a decade in Florence, Italy. That region is also a big grower and exporter of flowers.
Still, we must be a challenge for the two Ecuadorian teachers. Some of the students have had a lot of formal school but not too much total immersion in a Spanish-speaking environment. Others have had quite a bit of immersion in a Spanish-speaking environment but not much formal classroom learning. Some began learning Spanish in middle school; some began after they entered college. Some — like Barbara and I — speak another Romance language or two. Some have a fairly large Spanish vocabulary but not much mastery of the grammar. Some have a fairly good mastery of grammar but a limited vocabulary.
There are moments of frustration for everyone (including the teachers!). My hope is that three months from now, this experience will have served as a bit of a food processor or blender and we'll be chattering away at similar levels.
Mariana de Jesus lived more than a hundred years after Martin Luther. So I found it sad that she was convinced that she had to physically torture herself as penance to try to purify her soul.
One of the bedrooms in our apartment here on the seminario campus has hammock hooks in the walls (it took me a couple of days to figure out what they were!). We don't have a hammock, but missionary Stan Hall does here in his campus office. Just yesterday afternoon he took a brief nap in it (or tried to, but North Americans kept knocking on his door and disturbing him!).
A couple of evenings ago, we had dinner with Dwight and Carolyn Rich. Dwight grew up as a missionary kid in Haiti. He told the story of a hiking trip across a mountain range in Haiti in which he and a friend carried lightweight hammocks that they strung between two trees.
As we sat in a church service this morning, I thought about the gospel coming to this part of South America and spreading along that same trade route. The pastor of the church told me she was from southern Ecuador. So, she had come north on that trade route to study at the seminario and then on further north to Otavalo where she married and now pastors a church (one of five Nazarene congregations in and around Otavalo). By the way, her husband makes wonderful pictures that are collages of leaves and other organic material. The one we brought back to Quito is a mountain scene with a Quechua Indian sitting beside a basket of flowers.
I'm trying to read the Bible all the way through in Spanish this spring. One of the readings yesterday (each day I read a NT passage, an OT passage, and something from the wisdom books), included Deuteronomy 32:11, which says in the New International Reader's Version,
He was like an eagle that stirs up its nest. It hovers over its little ones. It spreads out its wings to catch them. It carries them on its feathers.
What a great word picture that reminded me of the safety and emotional warmth these babies must feel as they are being carried by their mothers.
The socialist government here supposedly was going to do something for handicapped children, but that plan (and many other promises) was based on the price of oil staying sky high. Pray for Evelyn and her family as they seek to cope with the situation regarding her son.
I've been assigned naranjilla, which one English website calls "the lost fruit of the Incas." On the outside, it looks like a huge persimmon, but on the inside, it looks like a tomato (or so says the Internet). It's used to make juice and jam. It grows on a large bush with leaves about the size of ornamental elephant ear plants. I hope I don't get embarrassed by paying too much (part of our assignment is to haggle with vendors over the price of what we're buying). Barbara has been assigned to the "tree tomato."
I just bought a handful of my assigned fruit, naranjilla. There's not enough to make for juice for everyone and they're pretty sour without added sugar, somewhat like unsweetened Kool-Aid. I don't have any fancy plates fixed. I'm just going to cut some of them open. Barbara was also up late working on her speech about the "tree tomato." She even drew a map of Ecuador to show where they are grown. I haven't even written down any notes to take to class. Oh my, I'm going to look bad. I need to get my act together in Spanish so that I can at least say, "I'm embarrassed that I don't have a very good presentation this morning."
Supper in the dining hall last night was one of those "Oh, that's different!" moments. It was a pasta dish with pasta and peas and little pieces of ham. The Ecuadorians were dousing it with mayonnaise and ketchup. I do like ketchup on French fries and hot dogs and scrambled eggs and bacon . . . but on pasta?
Ecuador is a natural location for this show (which is held in a different country each time). Ecuador has more than 4,000 varieties of orchids, 1300 of which exist only in this small country that straddles the equator. I don't know that all 4,000 of Ecuador's orchids were on display, but a lot of them were. We don't see them growing wild in Quito. This city may be too high and the climate may be a bit too dry.
They tell me that orchids are everywhere once you start down the sides of the Andes mountains and get into the jungle. Orchids come in an incredible variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. As we wandered through the Expo, I thought about how much fun our Creator must have had just making orchids (not to mention all the wonderfully colored little tree frogs that there are!)
As an example, she told us the story of a 16-year-old Ecuadorian girl who was the subject of an unprovoked assault in Spain a little over a year ago. In an incident caught on security cameras, a 21-year-old Spanish young man began insulting the Ecuadorian young lady sitting by herself on the subway. Shouting at her to go back to her own country, he began hitting her. Before stepping off the train, the man kicked the girl in the head.
Video of the attack:
In 2000, Ecuador joined Panama in using the U.S. dollar as its official currency. The change was made to curb out-of-control inflation, and it seemed to be the proper medicine for the Ecuadorian economy.
All of the paper currency I've seen in circulation is printed in the U.S. However, Ecuador does make a lot of the small coins used here. So, a handful of small change will be half coins from the U.S. and half coins minted in Ecuador. Though the coins minted in Ecuador have different designs than those minted in the U.S., both have the same value. The 50-cent piece is used a lot more here than in the U.S., although all of the 50-cent pieces I've seen are minted in Ecuador. As I noted, the dollar coin is a great deal more common than the dollar bill.
Our Spanish class teacher says that her family's favorite place for an outing is the park-like area at the "mitad del mundo."
We haven't gone up there to visit that line separating the northern and southern hemispheres of the globe, but we will soon. The line was first surveyed in the 1700s, and eventually, a marker was set up here in Ecuador. Satellite-based GPS systems have determined that the original surveying was about 700 feet off, but that's not bad for the hand-carried survey instruments they used in the 1700s!
There is a supermarket called Super-Maxi not far from the seminario campus where we live. They sell a discount card for $40 per year, which entitles a person to a 5% discount on everything in the store. Although we're not going to be here for a year, we did some calculating with a volunteer couple that is here from Missouri for three months and felt that together we would save more than the $40. So, each couple chipped in $20 and we purchased a discount card. When I filled out the paperwork I had to put down my mother's maiden name. When I turned in that paperwork and paid the $40, I received a temporary paper card which we've been using. Yesterday, I got the plastic permanent card. On it my name is: Howard Culbertson Rosbrugh. That reflects the Hispanic custom of a person carrying both the father's and the mother's last name.
In Oklahoma, clouds were what sailed above my head (at even four or five thousand feet!). Now that I'm at almost 10,000 feet, what do I call this white stuff that comes wafting through here every so often, obscuring vision? Does a cloud become fog just because it gets close to a mountain?
If so, then are those fog lights that the airplanes use when they land at the Quito airport?
They thought 75 was a lot; I didn't think it was very many. After all, we're trying to attain a degree of fluency in Spanish. Some say that the average college graduate in the U.S.A. has a working vocabulary of at least 50,000 words in English. . . and we're saying that 75 words are too many for us to study for a Spanish exam?
Today we're off for the Amazon jungle. We'll be there for eight days. They say that the town we're staying in does have Internet access. We'll see.
The little internet café I am writing this from is in the living room of a little home on the main town square. On top of a monument in the square is a replica of the plane used by the five North American missionaries who were killed not far from here in 1956 (Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, and three others). Jim Elliot authored the slogan, "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."
Kim is a key part of the NILI (Nazarene International Language Institute) in Ecuador. Indeed, she's a key detail person who makes things function, and she is the student life director. That means she handles all kinds of issues that range from getting medical problems cared for to making sure everyone is getting along with their Ecuadorian roommates!
Pray for Kim.
Some children and young people came running out to meet us as we taxied to a grassy spot beside the dirt strip. By the time we had parked the airplane, an old man was walking toward us. He came up, greeted us and said, "Let's pray," and began to pray in the Waorani language. As we walked around the village, our pilot told us that the man was one of those who had speared those missionaries to death. As I gazed at the little structure in which Rachel Saint had lived in that village, I marveled at the power of God's grace.
We spent a couple of hours there and then walked back to the plane. Just before we got back on board, that elderly man said again, "Let's pray," and he again prayed heaven and earth together in Waorani. It was a special day.
The little Cessna 172 that flew us to visit the Waorani village
It is also a soggy world in places because yesterday we got drenched by an afternoon jungle rainstorm! Our guide cut some large leaves which we used as small umbrellas as we trekked along on the jungle trail, but about all our leaf umbrellas could do was keep our heads dry.
We also took a 30-minute ride down one of the tributaries of the Amazon in dugout canoes.
Rachel was right. The soup arrived shortly after the popcorn and so I dumped a couple of handfuls of popcorn in it. Not bad.
David talked this morning a little bit about the churches on his district. This is a country where the Church of the Nazarene has exploded in recent years. David said that, sadly, there were a few other places on his district that used to have a Church of the Nazarene, but that because of the lack of good leadership, some congregations had faded away. Join me in praying with David that the Lord of the harvest will send forth laborers into the harvest.
The smallest orchid I saw in the wild in eastern Ecuador had flowers smaller than the nail on my pinkie. The Nazarene pastor from Shell who was with us that day said that orchids come much smaller than that!
Jesus once said, "Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." What Jesus said about entering the Kingdom of Heaven is also true of learning a language. As we try to achieve some level of fluency in Spanish, we've become like little children again. We struggle to make ourselves understood, and we try to look like we understand what people say even when they use too many words that we do not recognize.
Yesterday was one of the longest services we've been in here. We started about 10:30 and finished at 1 p.m. I was invited to help serve communion.
Interestingly enough, the young Ecuadorian's name was also Joshua. Will you join me in praying for this young Ecuadorian? Pray that the gospel seeds planted as a result of a relationship begun on a soccer field will sprout and grow and flower! Wednesday, February 25, 2009, at 6:34 am.
Over the past couple of weeks, there have been some heavy rains here in Ecuador that have caused some landslides that have blocked roads, including a major one that connected the capital city with the coast. One of the landslides was on a road we took into the jungle last week. By the time we got to where the landslide had occurred, road crews were already at work on the problem and the road was passable. With almost no problem we made our way past the heavy equipment and on into the jungle.
The problem occurred on the way back. It was a rainy day (most days are rainy in the jungle) and we were headed uphill this time instead of down. The road in the landslide area was no longer gravel but mud. We started up the landslide area and stalled out, tires spinning. "Oh no," we thought. Then we saw a road worker headed our way, waving and holding up a large chain. Behind him, a massive, track-mounted Caterpillar backhoe/excavator was turning around and slowly heading our way. The backhoe came lumbering down to where we were, hooked up to us with the chain, and up the hill we slowly went. He pulled us a hundred or more yards through the landslide area, unhooked the chain, and moved off the road. The road crew waved to us and off we went! It was obvious we weren't the first vehicle that backhoe operator had pulled up the muddy hill that day.
From a distance, it is an impressive building. Up close, it is clearly unfinished with all kinds of details missing. Little alcoves in the main sanctuary which were supposed to hold altars sit empty. Some openings are boarded up. Steel rebar rods stick out in various places. Although the church building is in use, it would take millions of dollars to complete it. Finding that money seems so far-fetched that local legend says that when the Basilica is completed, the end of the world will come. One interesting thing about it is that the rainwater downspout gargoyles on the outside are sculptures of native Ecuadorian animals.
It is the fruit of a dream for which someone did not really count the cost (or was it the victim of cost overruns?). Interestingly enough, as I'm reading the Bible in Spanish, I've run across passages in both testaments that say that God is more interested in us committing to Him our hearts than He is in us giving great sacrifices (building great cathedrals?).
One such wrong image in South America is the animated cartoon show "The Simpsons." The show, dubbed into Spanish, is hugely popular in Latin America. Yesterday in Spanish class we read an article from a news magazine here that noted how the cartoon Simpson family enabled Latin American viewers to see how families functioned in the U.S.A.
I've only seen occasional snippets of the Simpsons. What I have seen is not how we relate to each other in my family. It's not how most families I know in the U.SA. function.
What do the ashes on the forehead mean for the Ecuadorians? Well, our language teacher told us the story of a friend. The friend who runs a little store was being nagged by her mother to go to the church and get the ashes on her forehead. "You need to do this to get your sins forgiven," her mother said. Finally, Evelyn's friend — tired of being nagged at by her mother — closed up her store, ran to the neighborhood church, and got the ashes!
I'm praying that Evelyn — who became a believer not many years ago herself — will have an opportunity to witness clearly to her friend about God's forgiving and transforming grace.
Yesterday evening Barbara and I went with the Student Development director of the seminario to a new church he's started in his free time. Right now they're having services on Saturday afternoon. He began about two months ago with two people. Yesterday, there were 20-25 adults crammed into the little storefront they're using. Outside in a kind of carport area, there were 40 children.
It was an exciting day: (1) to be with key leaders of a congregation that has an unbelievable ministry in Cali, Colombia and then (2) to observe what God is doing in birthing a congregation in the hills on the north end of Quito.
Well, I can now add guinea pig to the list of things I have eaten. Four college students (three from Olivet and one from SNU) and I had guinea pig for Sunday dinner! I doubt that "cuy" or guinea pig is going to become a global food like pizza or hamburger. For one thing, it doesn't have a lot of meat like is found in rabbit or chicken. Then, secondly, the guinea pig meat that we had was quite greasy.
The guinea pig is served much like a pig is served in big festivals in some cultures. That is, the head was still attached and the feet were there as well. We ate it while sitting in a fancy restaurant about 150 feet from the line marking the equator.
So there is a willingness to overlook Guevara's violent side — this former medical student unhesitatingly shot defectors — and embrace his idealism much as North Americans do with Thomas Jefferson (who said Jesus did not do miracles and that God doesn't intervene in the world in any way and who fathered children by one of his slaves) or Thomas Paine, the oft-quoted pamphleteer of the American revolution who also said, "It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene."
Being here hasn't really changed my views on Guevara but I can see how he is a symbol for those who feel disparaged, oppressed and exploited by the wealthy and entrenched elite of their own society.
Jon and Shirley talked yesterday evening about how the Lord had provided for their financial needs during those eight years of volunteer service. That provision often came from unexpected sources. God is good! Pray for the Fischers and others like them around the world who have stepped out in faith to give themselves for the cause of world evangelism.
New churches which are planted in Ecuador using the JESUS film are being challenged to plant three daughter churches using the film. Those three new churches are then being each challenged to plant three more new churches using the JESUS film. The film tells the story of one new church that had done just that: it has planted three new churches with the JESUS film. Those daughter churches have now gone on to plant grand-daughter churches!
This morning, the group received some instructions on how to act in the homes. Among the things they are NOT to do is run around the house barefoot. Ecuadorians are very meticulous about order and cleanliness in their homes. Running around with bare feet means that you are going to get the bed dirty when you climb into it! Another instruction was NOT to scrape food off your plate into the garbage if you are helping clean up. That's like a slap in the face to the family who offered it to you. Food not eaten will be given to pets or to a neighbor or to the homeless guy who stays nearby. Then there was the caution for students to ask right away if hot water would be available for showers/baths and at what hours.
Not long ago, a Korean church was also organized here in Quito among immigrants from that Asian country. For more on this, go to: http://www.andeanadventure.blogspot.com/
Thus, while my friends and family in the U.S.A. got an hour's less sleep last night (unless they went to bed an hour earlier than usual), I got my eight hours and still went to bed at my normal time and got up at my normal time.
Then, he talked about how different Ecuador is from Colombia (although they share a border). He talked about various things about Colombia that he missed here in Quito. His homesickness for various things about his home country reminded me that we North Americans too often lump all the countries in South America into one package and assume that because almost all of them speak Spanish that South America must be somewhat like the U.S.A. As he talked, it struck me that the variations across the U.S.A. are less than the differences between the various countries in South America.
After pizza and pie and while everyone else was chatting and looking at the huge, eight-inch-across spider (dead and in a glass case), I picked up a book on the history of evangelical work in Ecuador. The book began with a panorama of how Christianity first arrived in this country along with the conquistadores. There were a lot of awful things committed in the name of Christ in that early period. For instance, one native leader was being tortured to try to get him to convert to Christianity. Finally, under the pain of the torture he gave in and agreed to become a Christian. They cleaned him up and baptized him and then murdered him anyway. I wonder how such perversions of the Gospel are going to be dealt with at the Last Judgment.
That caused a stir because the Ecuadorians view themselves as Americans too. For them, restricting the label "American" only to the citizens of the U.S.A. is somewhat offensive. The slogan "Buy American" sounds bizarre to them as well since that slogan means that people should purchase goods made in the U.S.A. (and not in Ecuador or other South American countries).
Schools in Ecuador even divide up the land masses of the world a little differently than those in the U.S.A. For them there is only one American continent rather than two or three. They see North America, Central America, and South America as being only one continent in the same way that we North Americans see Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe as all being part of the same continent.
Yesterday, we were there at meal time so we spent our two hours with the two-year-olds, helping them get ready to eat and then eating and then a little bit of clean-up time. I spent more than an hour helping "Maria of the Angels" eat. Though she is five years old, she was with the two-year-olds because she is so severely handicapped. She cannot speak or move her limbs and seemed to be blind.
While I was trying to coax Maria to eat, I thought of Jesus' words, "Whenever you did it for any of my people, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you did it for me" (Matthew 25:40).
Another difference is in the use of oatmeal. While we North Americans eat a lot of cooked oatmeal as a breakfast cereal, here oatmeal is the main ingredient of a drink! Yucca is eaten fairly frequently in either soup or as an ingredient in bread. Beans are eaten only occasionally, unlike in Mexico where refried beans are a component of almost every meal including breakfast.
One of the most delicious things we've eaten is a sweet cornmeal and raisin concoction wrapped in a huge leaf that resembles that of the ornamental, flowering canna plant.
This morning I was reading in the seventh chapter of John's gospel when the last phrase of verse eleven jumped out at me. The rather plain-vanilla English phrasing of the Jewish leaders' question, "Where is he [Jesus]?" becomes a delightful probability phrase in the Spanish Nueva Versiòn Internacional translation, .i.e., "Where could he be?"
The use in Spanish of the future tense of a verb to express conjecture of this kind in the present is something we studied one morning this past week. I'll never read John 7:11 without thinking beyond the plain vanilla of English to the additional subtle nuances of the Spanish, "Where could he be?"
One lady came to know the Lord while a young child. She said it was the story of the fisherman Peter being told by Jesus that he would become a fisher of men that grabbed her heart. A man named Carlos said he became a believer as a young man because of the transformed life of his wife. Marelene said she was at a lake one day and became overwhelmed by the wonderful creation and came to know the Lord as a result of that experience.
Later, in the worship service, the pastor interviewed two families, one of them an Ecuadorian military family and then a couple in which the husband was a policeman. One of the things they talked about was the challenge of living their faith in environments where there was a lot of corruption.
Of course, all of that stuff would be very foreign to St. Patrick anyway. He was a teenager living in England in the early 400s when Irish pirates came to his fishing village and destroyed it, taking him back to Ireland as a slave. In his early twenties he managed to escape and return to England. There he felt God calling him to go back to Ireland as a Christian missionary. He did and managed in about 30 years of ministry to foster a church planting movement that gave birth to 700 churches which turned the Irish from faith in leprechauns and other things to faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The four-leaf clover which you often see associated with St. Patrick's Day is something heretical. Patrick used a three-leaf clover to try to explain the trinity to some Irish pagan chieftains. I'm not sure how the extra leaf got in there except to say that human beings often distort the things of God.
Sometimes we North Americans are tempted to think we're the great dispensers of knowledge. In his book The Next Christendom, Philip Jenkins says that the center of gravity of Christianity has shifted away from the West and to south of the equator. I certainly had a confirmation of that at lunch on Monday.
When we returned to our apartment, there was an email waiting for us from Richard Schneberger, our pastor in Oklahoma City. In that email, Richard included some words from Gary Haugen, founder of the International Justice Mission. Among the things Gary wrote was this:
"The victims of injustice in our world do not need our spasm of passion; they need our long obedience in the same direction. They need our legs and lungs of endurance; and we need sturdy stores of joy. We cannot ache and sweat through history's long arc of justice without clutching life-giving stores of beauty, laughter, goodness, love and light, without snatching delicious naps in the cool grassy spots, and without late night fires with friends who make us flush and ache with laughter. To carelessly ditch the cool canteen of joy in the name of a severe urgency is to misunderstand the expedition and to render one's self useless in the fight against aggressive evil.
"The grim, sophisticated, self-serious activist finds himself angry and spent and exceedingly bad company. For while it is heartless and lazy to pretend that the pitiless suffering, slaughter, and waste of our world is not real and true, it is indulgent and false to believe it is the whole truth in this world or the next — for it is not. To lose this faith is to lose sight of what makes evil evil and our fight worth fighting. Moreover, as wizened and weathered veterans have observed, nearly once every day the Divine struggle for justice should make us laugh — for the juxtaposition of the grandness and glory of the calling with the quality of his recruits is sure evidence of a comic heart within the Sovereign."
My favorite of Guayasamin's paintings
Let me tell you what we've done since arriving less than 24 hours ago. Late yesterday afternoon we unloaded our stuff in the dorm-style housing of the unfinished district center at the edge of Riobamba. Then we went to eat at a really nice pizza restaurant with the name Monaco. The pizza was fairly close to being authentic Italian pizza. From there we went to one of the local Nazarene churches for a get-acquainted time. They were a great bunch of people. Their youth group has about 120 young people attached to it and their building only seats about 120 people! At the close of our time, we gathered in a large circle and prayed. While the pastor prayed, several people also joined in spontaneously. A young lady next to me prayed an intense prayer. The pastor's father went around, placing his hands on each of the North American's shoulders while praying for us. It was a moving moment. Then quite a few of the young people got in vehicles with us (one vehicle that seats 17 had between 25 and 30 in it). We went up to a high point in the mountains overlooking the city. There the young people from the church led in a prayer time for their city and for our time with them. Then we got up early this morning and drove as far as we could up the extinct volcano Chimborazo (20,000 feet in elevation) and then walked up (at times it seemed straight up!) for another kilometer or so. We got back about lunchtime and ate some sandwiches. We have the afternoon off and then we're headed to a city park this evening with the young people from the church for an evangelistic outreach event they've organized.
I'm not sure what my friend from the U.S.A. had in mind when he said, "There's nothing to do in Riobamba."
Up at about 17,000 feet on Chimborazo
Yesterday afternoon we went to a small town at the base of a volcano that erupted about 10 years ago. That eruption destroyed a village of about 300 families. The evangelical relief and development organization, Samaritan's Purse, built homes for 100 of those families at the edge of another town. The program director of Samaritan's Purse in this area is a longtime Nazarene. So, he's very interested in trying to get a Nazarene congregation started in this new housing settlement. Yesterday afternoon we walked around that development and talked to some of the people living in the new houses. It was awesome to view the power of that volcanic eruption. It was also awesome to see the hand of God at work through His people to provide homes for displaced families.
Uno dei miei amici italiani mi ha castigato su Facebook perché scrivo sempre in inglese — va bene, "castigato" può essere una parola troppo forte. In ogni caso, eccovi qualcosa in italiano. Vi prego di scusarmi i tanti errori che senz'altro appariranno in queste poche righe.
Per questa primavera Barbara ed io siamo in Ecuador, un paese della Sud America. Per alcuni anni sono stato professore di missiologia in un università nazarena negli stati uniti. Questa semestre per me é un semestre sabbatico. Ho scelto di passarla cercando di imparare in un modo migliore la lingua spagnolo. La scuola biblica nazarena in Quito (la capitale di Ecuador) ha una scuola di lingua spagnolo per stranieri.
Allo stesso tempo abbiamo l'opportunità di essere coinvolte nell'opera delle chiese nazarene ecuadoriane. Ecuador é un paese in cui la Chiesa del Nazareno sta sperimentando una crescita enorme. Vent'anni fa, c'erano soltanto 10 or 20 comunità Nazareni qui. Adesso, ci sono più di 120. Che privilegio vedere l'opera di Dio in questa paese.
The music in the service yesterday evening was very different from what one would hear in either the U.S. or in Spanish-language churches here in Ecuador. It wasn't just the words. It was the style (and however else you describe music). All the women had shawls of about the same color and the men all wore ponchos. Both men and women wore hats.
Barbara and I had a chance to talk at length with one of the men of the congregation because he rode back into Riobamba as our guide (a rainstorm had made the mountainous dirt road on which we went too muddy to attempt a return trip so we had to take a different route) and ate supper at a chicken restaurant with the group. Later Barbara and I commented to each otherabout how rural agricultural people in third-world situations seem to grasp so much of scripture better than many supposedly educated North Americans we have known.
The trip was supposed to take about five and a half hours. It took more than nine. The roads were bad and there was also a lot of construction going on (it is an election year!). Then because the 13-passenger Sprinter was totally full, all of our luggage was in a carrier on top. Because of the rough roads the carrier and the road's steep incline, the carrier kept creeping forward with its load of luggage and we had to spend some downtime readjusting it.
The climate here is what you would expect at the Equator — warm and muggy. That is very different from what we have been used to up in the Andes mountains.
One highlight of today was a trip to a park in downtown Guayaquil that is filled with iguanas, hundreds of them laying in the trees and lounging on the grass of the small park. They would let you touch them but they were not exactly cuddly little things.
I have also been amazed at the importance given to corporate prayer here. The youth group at the church in Riobamba where we spent five nights earlier this week has a 3 a.m. prayer meeting every morning for a week each month. Those young people are so committed to that prayer meeting that a good-bye party for us broke up at about 9 p.m. because they needed to get to bed in order to be up for that 3 a.m. prayer meeting. No wonder that church is growing and has an aggressive outreach program among young people!
Guayaquil is Ecuador's largest city; Quito is the second largest. I was therefore surprised that the road connecting the two cities was not in better condition. On parts of it coming up into the mountains, the blacktop surface had disintegrated into just gravel.
Marco, the fellow who lives in the district center in Guayaquil that has some rooms where our group stayed spent some months in Italy earlier in his life. So, Marco spoke Italian. That was fun to chatter along with him and have other members of our group stare darkly at us because, while they speak English and Spanish, they did not know Italian (and probably assumed we were talking about them).
Structures built entirely or in part with bamboo range from very simple houses for the poor to elegant buildings and pavilions. I have seen older buildings here in Ecuador where the plaster had cracked and fallen off. Underneath was bamboo (as opposed to the stud and lath construction one might find under plaster in U.S. buildings). Bamboo poles are used for support when pouring concrete ceilings and roofs. Large bamboo is split into board-like pieces and used like planks from large trees would be used elsewhere. There are about 450 species of bamboo native to Latin America.
Bamboo is fast growing. In 30 days after sprouting, they say it is at the right point for eating. In 6-9 months, it's perfect for making baskets. In 2-3 years, it is big enough for bamboo boards. In 3-6 years, it will have grown into those big, long poles that I saw that were ready to be used for construction. Maybe this is why Oscar Hidalgo Lopez, a Colombian architect, has called bamboo "the gift of the gods."
Here's the story: In the iguana park was a pool of water with some fish in it and some large turtles (at least a foot in diameter). While we were there marveling at all of the iguanas (iguanas on the grass, iguanas on the sidewalks, iguanas in the trees!), a couple of city employees were there washing the turtles one by one. They would grab them by the tails, pick them up and scrub the backs of their shells with a brush, and then put them in another part of the pool. Why? I don't know.
Does anyone have any idea why they were washing the turtles?
I wonder if the iguanas felt left out? After all, the park is nicknamed after them, not after the turtles.
I thought back some years to a denomination-wide offering in the Church of the Nazarene in which funds were raised to open Nazarene work in Venezuela. We've come full circle, haven't we? Now, the Church of the Nazarene in Venezuela is sending out some of its best young people as global missionaries.
Carla understands that the road ahead will not be easy. She said she had been told that it was easier for North Americans to become Nazarene missionaries than it was for people elsewhere in the world. I tried to assure her that if God was leading her in that direction, the right doors would open for her.
There are three things that struck me about the museum. The first was a collection of 12,000 flowers and plants collected throughout Ecuador and dried by an Italian Jesuit priest about a hundred years ago. He meticulously cataloged all those plants with scientific notations. Some of those plants are now thought to be extinct.
The second thing that struck me was an amazing restoration project being carried on by a dozen or more people with the antique books of the museum. With some funds from the Spanish government, these people were restoring books damaged by fire, insects, humidity, and even because they were printed on faulty paper. Our guide took us into the area where they were working. They had masks and gloves on and were using tweezers and tiny brushes and mysterious liquids and tapes and stuff.
The third amazing thing was a butterfly and moth collection lining both sides of a narrow hall. All other butterfly collections I have seen were glass cases in which the butterflies or moths were lined up in neat rows. Not these! One glass case had butterflies forming the flag of Ecuador. Another had a car design; another butterflies/moths forming a sunset. And on and on. Not only were the butterflies and moths themselves amazing, but the designs seemed to highlight the diversity and colors of the butterflies and moths even more. I kept wanting to shout, "Yahweh is an amazing Creator!" It is clear that He is very creative and that He enjoys His creation!
Butterflies in a rainbow design
Mariana de Jesus would wear clothing filled with needles so that her skin would be pricked and would bleed. I've seen those garments in a museum in downtown Quito. Mariana actually had people nail her to a cross for hours at a time. It is said that as she walked the streets of Quito with blood dripping on the ground, flowers would miraculously spring up where each drop of her blood fell. She died at the age of 27.
Mariana de Jesus has been given the name "The Lily of Quito" for her acclaimed holy life, and because it is believed that she saved the city of Quito from the wrath of God by taking the punishment upon herself.
I've thought a lot about that young lady and some parallels with the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel who also cut themselves. It's clear from being here that Mariana de Jesus de Paredes y Flores is an example to many Ecuadorians of Christian holiness. As I sat on that trolley yesterday at the "Mariana de Jesus" stop, I reflected on what an extremely troubled young lady she must have been. It is sad that here in Ecuador she is considered as the pinnacle of holiness.
Mariana de Jesus with one of the miraculous flowers that sprang up where her blood dropped on the ground.
The one thing that is different about Ecuador is the use of numbers to identify parties. I think most of the parties do have an official name, but those names are not used. Instead, you see only numbers used: "Vote for list 60!" and "Vote for all of list 35." The numbers were not assigned in order. It's my understanding that a political party can pick any number it wants so long as that number is available. So, yes, there is a number 1, but there is also a number 155. The current president's party is number 35.
I'd be interested in knowing the reasoning behind why the parties have picked the numbers they are using.
Ecuador's coat of arms
Praise be to the LORD my Rock . . . He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge. . . LORD, what are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them? They are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow. . .. I will sing a new song to you, my God . . . blessed is the people whose God is the LORD.+
The next few days will be busy with all of the arrangements that will need to be made. We solicit your prayers.
In a conversation with Carla, one of the Colombian students here, concern was expressed that we were going to miss my mother-in-law's funeral. In Colombia, as in many other countries of the world, burial often takes place within 24 hours of a person's death and no later than 36 hours. I tried to explain to her that it is not unusual in the U.S. for a funeral to be a week or even 10 days after a person's death. I could tell from her puzzled look that she thought we were pretty strange.
Cemeteries here look much different from those in the part of the U.S.A. where we live. The ones here in Ecuador are somewhat reminiscent of those we saw in New Orleans years ago on a visit there. They seem very crowded with many of the burial places above ground. Indeed, the cemeteries here often have walls with rows of niches into which the caskets are placed. A stone cover is then cemented in place over the opening. That stone cover will serve as the tombstone with the appropriate data carved into it.
Ecuadorian cemetery structure with rows of openings for caskets
In lieu of flowers, her children Barbara and Gerard are asking that people make a donation to the international child development programs of Compassion International. That organization is based is Colorado Springs and is one to which my in-laws Paul and Lucile Reed donated many hours of time when they lived there. It is also an organization that provided a lot of assistance to the elementary school children of the Church of the Nazarene in Haiti when we were missionaries there.
Sample of overhead wiring in Quito
Penitents staggering under the weight of huge beams and crosses
Thousands of people lined the streets of Quito as a very long march of "Los Cucuruchos" (or penitents) all dressed in purple looped through the old colonial part of the city. Some were staggering under the weight of huge crosses. Several had made crowns of thorns out of barbed wire and jammed them on their heads. Some had long strands of barbed wire wrapped tightly around their upper torsos so that blood was drawn. Quite a few had long lengths of heavy chains attached to their ankles. What looked to be one entire family — women and children included — were staggering along with one heavy cross. Many of the men were stripped to the waist and were beating their backs and raising red welts with branches from a bush whose leaves cause an itchy rash on bare skin. Most were walking barefoot. The crowd became wildly enthusiastic when a statue of the Virgin Mary was carried by. People watching from balconies and windows along the parade route threw handfuls of rose petals at that statue.
To be one of the "penitents," a person had to apply to the central cathedral in Quito. Those chosen to be in the parade were those with the most grievous sins and/or bad habits from which they wanted to be cleansed.
The atmosphere was both somber and festive. For instance, there were people selling umbrellas, candy, suckers, and even bottled water wandering up and down the route, shouting out their wares.
Barbed-wire crown of thorns
We had a two-hour bus ride to get to Otavalo. One fascinating thing about it was the vendors that would get on for a short ride between two stops to sell snacks and drinks. It was almost like being on an airplane with the flight attendants coming down the aisle with drinks and peanuts!
Our bus to Otavalo
Yesterday was a tourist day. We went with our friends, the McCaslins, up a gondola car ride to the top of a tall mountain which is actually part of the volcano Pinchicha. In the afternoon we went walking around Colonial Quito or Old Town as it is sometimes called. We found a delightful restaurant for a late lunch in an atrium of what used to be the Palace of the Archbishop. The restaurant was called "The Friar's Café."
The huge Palace of the Archbishop sits on the main plaza or square right next to the presidential offices. For years, that building was the headquarters of the Roman Catholic church in Ecuador. It fills one side of Independence Plaza with a building housing the President and a lot of government offices filling another side. A large Catholic church nearly fills another side of that plaza.
That huge "palace" and the church opposite it typify the internal battle or struggle which Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have had to decide whether they are to be (1) a part of the power structure, influencing and even dictating culture from a position of power or (2) whether the Church is to be a counter-cultural force with a prophetic voice speaking against culture when it fosters values at odds with the Gospel. It is a struggle in which Protestants in the U.S. now find themselves involved as they debate about how hard they should fight to keep a "Christian America."
In Ecuador, part of that internal struggle about the Church's identity vis-a-vis economic and political powers can be seen in the fact that in the 1600s the Jesuit religious order ("Society of Jesus") actually imported slaves from Africa to work plantations on the land they owned. Another part can be seen in the amount of gold used in the churches in downtown Quito (two tons were used in one church alone, an amount of gold worth almost nine million dollars today)) as the church attempted to build cathedrals that mimic the glory of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.
Archbishop's Palace in Quito
Fortunately, it has good public transportation. There is a network of buses — privately owned but licensed by the city. There are electric buses or trolleys as they are called. They also have a network of diesel-powered buses that are double-long and hinged in the middle. In addition to these larger vehicles, bright yellow taxis are readily available and quite inexpensive. The interesting thing about the taxis is that paying for one is a bit like haggling in the market. They all have meters in them but sometimes the driver prefers to leave the meter off and haggle with you on the price. Then, the meters — although supposedly certified by the city — don't register the same. Yesterday, for instance, we went to a restaurant in a taxi. At the end of the trip to the restaurant, the meter said $2.70. At the end of the trip home, the meter said $5.60. We complained a bit on that return trip and only paid $5.00 (but still paid too much!)
Taxi in front of one of the hinged buses
At 4:30 on Wednesday morning, as we walked out of our little apartment on the seminario campus in Quito, we were met by Lucy Olivo, one of our language teachers. She had gotten up way before dawn just to ride to the airport with us. Lucy had already been by our apartment the evening before to say good-bye. But, there she was in the dark, ready to make a 20-minute ride with us through Quito to the airport. At the airport there were long hugs, a reminder that God made us to live in relationship with others.
Lucy Olivo, one of our language teachers
Jim was really taken by one demonstration regarding how the equator affects water draining out of a tub. Right on the GPS-established equator ten miles north of Quito, the water drained straight down with no vortex or swirl. The tub was moved about eight feet north of the equator, and a counter-clockwise swirling vortex appeared in the water as it drained out. Eight feet south of the equator, as the water began draining from the same tub, it began moving in the other direction and a clockwise vortex appeared.
This was not a happenstance or a magicians's trick. The little museum there at the equator does that demonstration many times each day, and the result is always the same. It's a reflection in nature of what has been called the "dependability" of God.
Vortex in drain
People here are REQUIRED to vote, except for those over 65 and for illiterates. If they do not vote, they can be fined for as much as $250. If I understood a television news report correctly this morning, even many of those in jail will be voting. I believe the news report was about how they were going to set up voting booths in the jails.
The national voting commission has been doing a lot of commercials on television on "how" the voting will be done.
I used one of those "Read the Bible Through in One Year" charts, doing about four days worth of reading material every day. My daily "chunks" of Bible reading consisted of about 4 chapters from the New Testament, 4 chapters from the "wisdom" literature (Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs), and 8 or more chapters from the rest of the Old Testament.
It is not unusual for a student here at the seminario to dream of planting a new church. It wasn't unusual for ministerial students in Haiti to have that as their goal. It is not, however, common for a ministerial student at SNU to have planting a church as a dream. Most often, U.S. ministerial students dream of leading an existing congregation. I wonder why. We often speak of the U.S. culture as being entrepreneurial in ways that many other cultures are not. Yet, at least in this particular context, ministerial students in other cultures seem more entrepreneurial than U.S. ones.
Churches — even in a country like Ecuador where there has been phenomenal church expansion — often go through a cycle of birth, growth, solidifying gains, achieving a plateau, decline, and closure. The Holy Spirit can help leadership break that cycle. Still, sometimes churches do die. This large Nazarene congregation had withered and died. Now, the district was offering this abandoned building to the Restoration Community Church.
The offer was accepted and there was a hectic month of cleaning, painting, and repairing to get the old building in shape. On Sunday I sat behind a lady who had been a long-time member of that original congregation that had worshipped in that building. I watched her rejoice and weep on Sunday morning as that building once again was filled with about 200 excited worshipers. I thought of Ezekiel's vision of the valley of the dry bones and the Lord's question to him: "Can these dry bones live again?" On Sunday morning, the answer was a resounding "yes."
Yesterday we were in El Bosque, a Quito shopping mall, with our friends Jo and Darrell Watkins. The Watkins were visiting us for 5-6 days. At the shopping mall, Jo was ordering lunch at a counter in the food court. She wanted lasagna and a drink of some kind. When her tray of food showed up, it had the drink she had ordered along with a bottle of water.
We took it back to the cashier to ask what had happened. Well, Jo's American accent had caused the young lady to hear "Dasani" (a brand of bottled water) rather than "lasagna." It is likely that the young lady had repeated the order to Jo (restaurant wait staff in Ecuador almost always repeat your order back to you). However, because of the young lady's mask, Jo didn't understand her and although I was right there, I didn't either. We got it all straightened out and had a good laugh over it.
