Ecuador Blog

Ok, I´m going to try this agian. I wrote a long blog the other night and right when I went to save it, I accidently exited out of it! Oh man that stunk! But, I guess I´ll give it another go…

Ok, I guess to start I´ll briefly mention the trip I just took. I went with friends to the coast. We went to go visit Rocio, a friend I made when we were just visiting the congregation. I couldn´t wait to see her again when we knew that we were going to live here in Pillaro. After only maybe a month of living here, Rocio had to go to the coast (around 8/9 hours away) to build a rent house, so she´d have money to live here in Pillaro. So, along with her brother, his family, and some friends, I went to visit her. All was fine until themorning after we got there. I was already sick. The trip was short, and my fun time was even shorter. I was feeling a little better the day before we left and was able to spend some time with Rocio. So that worked out. However, Í haven´t felt good since we´ve been back. Well, I just found out why. I have amebas! I tell you, it´s inevitable! They have tests that you can take to see if you have them, so I did. I´m not even going to tell you what you have to do to be able to take the test. So I got the results later that day, and I´ve got 2 different types of amebas. As of right now, I´m trying this natural medicine to try to kill all of them. Oh ya, when I was sick in Milagro, a store owner asked if I was pregnant. ha. Now my friends are having a fun time saying that I´m pregnant with amebas. They´re crazy! ha. I love em. (the friends!) So, the moral of this storyis that even if you are trying to be the Queen of Caution, you will still get amebas. That´s why everyone here just takes the medicine for it twice a year.

Moving on… Want to know how I wash my clothes? I climb up the stairs to my roof (yep, my roof) and scrub away by hand. That´s right, I´m a true Ecuadorian. There is a washing station on my roof where you go to scrub your clothes. It consists of a well like area, faucet, and stone washboard. It´s all concrete and together. They are everywhere here. The norm. Then I hang my clothes up to dry and hope it doesn´t rain. Right now, they are building a roof on top of my roof. It´s going to be made of some type of plastic so that we can still wash and dry even if it´s raining. Nice, huh? We think so. I took a video (before the new roof construction) of the process. I hope that one of these days I can get it put on here.

Now,I want to share with you a little bit about my service experiences. I don´t remember if I´ve mentioned the two sisters that I study with. They are great, when they are at home. I do believe that will prove to be a problem no matter where you go. I origionally found this woman at the marketplace, she has her own booth selling shoes. I ended up starting a study with her, and then later with her sister, who was helping her, as well. Both are adults, I´d say around late 30s early 40s maybe. The origional one, Blanca, is married and has 3 kids. Her sister, Carme, is single and lives with their elderly parents. I´ve studied with them separately and together. Right now, they want to study together. So I have 1 good study, ha. When I first started studying with them, we were on the part of the Bible Teach book about how Jehovah is not the cause of our problems. Blanca´s little boy (around 1 1/2 yrs old) has a lot of health problems, and as she was holding him, she starting crying. She talked of all the problems that he´s had and she said…”So God´s not testing me?” I really think it touched her heart to know that such a loving God would never do something to hurt us. They both seem to have real interest. I can´t say it´s been easy, though. It´s been a real struggle tying them down. I just have such a strong desire to share with them all these Bible truths, cause they really seem to soak it up. At the last study, Iwas showing them how to prepare ahead of time by reading and underlining the answers. I got out my pen and literally showed Carme how to do it. She looked at me wide eyed and asked, “I underline this sentence like this? Is this right?” She´s usually the one that answers the questions and reads the scriptures from her Bible. She really seems to take in everything. She´s such a wonderful student. Even when the topic is contreversiol, like hellfire, they seem to just accept what the Bible says. How great is that?! I´m going to try to stay patient and hopefully they will continue on studying and learning. I want to briefly tell you of another experience I had. Out in service, I found an elderly woman ( around 83 yrs old) at the door. As I talked about the tract, I asked if she had a Bible in the house. She told she didn´t, because she didn´t have any money to buy one. She told me I could return another day to visit with her. When I went back, I took her a Bible. She said,”But I told you that I don´t have any money.” I told her it was gift. With eyes welling with tears, she gave me a huge hug and thanked me profusely. I went on to tell her about the Bible Teach book and explained to her the study arrangement. She accepted a study. As of yet, she hasn´t been able to start studying, but recently she told that she should be able to soon. I´ll try to keep you guys informed. As far as the others, I´ve had people accept studys, but I haven´t caught them again. I´ll keep trying and tell you what happens.

Alright, what else? Ah, yes. I´m sure that at one time or another you were at the meeting, listening intently, and -boom- the lights go out. Ah, blackout. This, also, happened to us a little while back. We had started the Watchtower and -boom- no lights. What did we do? Kept going, of course! The Watchtower conductor held a little candle up so that he could read the questions, and the reader stood at the window to read until there wasn´t enough daylight to do so. Then he, too, had a little candle. I really love the perserverance of our brothers. But what about the closing song? You bet we sang! A brother in the back counted to 3 and the entire congregation just started singing. Without a note of music, we sang together all 3 verses! (Thank goodness we knew the tune! hehe) I have to tell you, that was extremely exciting and encouraging to me. I loved it! Oh yes, we have proof! Jen took video of it. Hopefully it will also get posted sometime. Speaking of meetings, want to know what we do when we don´t have a speaker? We watch one of the Branch´s videos. What a neat idea! We´ve already had to do that twice. Yesterday being one of those times. It´s nice. Hmmm, can I think of anything more? Oh, the bookstudy. At times, mybookstudy has found itself without a reader. Our conductor, the only elder, just asks who wants to read the next paragraph. I´ve been able to help with the reading at the bookstudy! hehe. This, too, has happened several times. It does demand more participation.

Well, I think that about wraps it up for now. When I think of something, I´ll try to jump on here and let you guys know. I love you all, and don´t forget to keep me posted about the States!