I’ve been reading Judges recently.  It’s one of my favorite books.  There’s so much visceral “rawness” to the story-telling.  Something really struck me as I was reading the other night.  I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of the “warrior-priest”.  It’s a peculiarly Western idea that the two must be separated - that the pursuits of men of the cloth and men of the sword are mutually exclusive and incompatible.  The Buddhist Shaolin monks of China are perhaps the most well-known example in the West that the East holds no such conviction.  As I was reading, I was reminded that this book is not a Western book.  The judges that God raised up to deliver Israel from the hands of her oppressors fit neatly into this category.  From Ehud’s dagger to Sampson’s brute strength, the stories of their conquests are bloody and merciless.  At the same time, these were all men who gave glory to God for the deliverance, who led the Israelites with grace and wisdom during times of peace, and who stood between God and the people in a role that not only foretold the arrivals of the prophets, but of Christ himself.  It also occured to me that perhaps this is a much better picture for what God expects of men in regard to masculinity than what either the traditional evangelical church or Mr. Eldredge have to offer.  Not hatin’, just sayin’.

I really thought my last job was the best job in the world.  I worked for myself for the three years before moving to Ecuador.  There were many nights that I was still working at 12:30 in the morning, but I could always sleep in until about 10:00 if I wanted.  I joked often that the dress code for my job was “boxers” and that while I thoroughly loathed my boss, my wife seemed to have a thing for him.  Many days I would take a shower as early as 3:00 p.m., whether I needed it or not. As most of you know, the plan was to continue on with the business once we moved to Ecuador.  Most of you also know that didn’t happen.  Most of you also know that I landed a job at the same school where Rachel is hired as school counselor.  I thought I’d tell you a little more about the job.

I teach three classes: Design and Digital Media (which covers design principles, digital photography, photoshop, basic html and other web-authoring applications), Video (digital video and editing), and Yearbook (which is a ton of work, but pretty self-explanatory).

I also serve as the school’s primary resource for graphic design needs.  In that capacity, I also am a part of the Public Affairs Team at Alliance, which is an oversight/planning committee for everything that the school puts out that ends up in the public eye.  One of the big projects for the coming semester is planning the school’s 80th anniversary celebration.

During the second semester of the coming year, it’s looking like I’ll have some additional teaching responsibilities.  One of the other teachers plans to be out due to pregnancy, and I’ll be covering a couple of middle school basic computer skills classes for her.

That’s all in addition to being recently named webmaster for a significant website changeover that AAI has planned for first semester.  Everything’s being changed over to a content management system that will allow for department heads and others with the need to access the site to be granted control over specific areas for editing.  I’m worried about what that will look like, as those who will be given access have skill levels that range from “I’m not sure where to plug my printer in” and up.

All that to say that this next year is going to be very, very busy for me.  The responsibilities are right down my alley, but there’s a fine line between knowing something well enough to do it and knowing it well enough to teach it.  I’m a little nervous, but am sure I’ll settle into a groove sooner or later.

One of the new AAI families that just got to Quito stayed with us for a while yesterday and last night, while their place was being fumigated. Ben Tuten will be teaching 6th grade math & science, and Mari Hernandez-Tuten will be working with Rachel in the counseling department. Ben’s about as white as me (howbeit significantly taller), but Mari’s Mexican/Puerto Rican.

The first day we hung out with them, we went to one of our favorite local eateries, and I overheard Mari ordering in Spanish. I seriously almost cried. I don’t know that I could have identified a Mexican accent before, but having lived in Quito almost a year it stood way out. It made me realize just how much I miss Mexican culture.

Rachel and I lived in the “Little Mexico” section of Kansas City before moving here, and loved it. So many wonderful restaurants, so many passionate people. Our grocery store didn’t have a Mexican food section, it had Mexican food in every section. (Mexican cereal in with the cereal aisle, amazing pepper selections in the produce aisles, and even a super-dark, Mexican coffee you could always find in the coffee aisle.) We really loved it.

Rachel has always been a huge fan of latino culture, and I was quickly on my way. I think that there was an assumption in the back of my mind that the culture in Ecuador would have some overlap. Other than the base language, I was really wrong. Andean culture, at least in Quito, is very cold, distant, and reserved. People don’t really talk to each other on the streets. There’s a very developed sense of the proper way to do things, and what people will think if you don’t measure up. You can know someone for years before getting an invite to their house for dinner.

All that to say that there are aspects of Mexican culture that I really, really miss … and I’m so glad the Tutens are here.

I got the chance to accompany a group from the Samaritan’s Purse office in Quito on a trip this past weekend.  We traveled by bus to Babahoyo, a city in the Los Rios province of Ecuador.  Samaritan’s Purse had done a lot of work in the area earlier in the year, when much of the province was ravaged by flooding, and wanted to throw a party for the city to celebrate their coming together and overcoming.  The event took the form of a 4.5 hour concert in a bandshell down on the riverwalk, and my buddy Jeff (the assistant country director for SP) asked if I’d come along and capture it photographically.  It was my first opportunity to take pictures of a night-time event like that and it was a great experience.  Hope you enjoy them.

From July 4th through July 16th, Rachel and I were blessed with family company. My sister and her family arrived July 4th and stayed through July 12th. My mom and dad got her on the 8th, and stayed until the 16th. We saw a lot of Quito and its surroundings. Here’s a bunch of pix from the trip:

Here’s the Rakes family at Plaza Foch in the Mariscal district of Quito. Rachel and I were strenuously corrected by a cabbie once, when trying to pronounce the plaza’s name. Evidently it’s pronounced “foash” … who knew.

Here’s the Rakes family in the market in Otavalo, along with their primary translator. When the primary translator wasn’t available, the secondary translator stepped in and did things like ask vendors whether this particular t-shirt was available in a more rapid clamshell, or whether their moccasins had angry moonbeams.

A little girl in typical Otavaleño get-up. She was cute, I took her picture, ’nuff said.

A vendor in the market at Otavalo tries to convince Gene that he needs garishly-colored, knee-high, crocheted socks for every member of his extended family.

Levi found a hat.

Levi found another hat.

Levi finally found a hat his folks would spring for. As did Josh. This may be one of my favorite pictures … ever.

When things got hectic in the apartment (particularly when there were 8 of us sharing space), Gwenda would calmly suggest that perhaps it would be a good time for the boys to go to the roof and play hackey-sack.

Levi on the rooftop.

Josh on the rooftop.

The boys threatening to drop the hackey-sack down ten flights of stairs.

Mid-afternoon snack. Did I mention how much I loved having my nephews here?

The boys in a tree at Mitad del Mundo.

Levi found it difficult to walk a straight line on the equator at Mitad del Mundo. We didn’t tell him that the real equator was several dozen meters to the north.

Some of the boys got a little carried away at El Ejido Park.

Josh had difficulty stayin’ on his feet at the bottom of the slide.

So did Levi.

More fun at El Ejido. Levi’s swing had bird poop on it, so he turned it upside down.

Guess how long that hat stayed white? Josh found a slide that didn’t throw him on the ground.

Christmas in July! Gwenda got a typical Ecuadorian tablecloth.

As did Mom. Wow, those Ecuadorian gift-givers were on a roll that day!

Jerseys from Ecuador’s national soccer team for the guys.

Mom wanted a picture of her manger scene.

Josh reacts upon finding out that Honey & Honey won’t put put their namesake condiment on his hamburger.

Dad gets a quick shot of some of the lovely ladies you can find at 14K feet, high about Quito.

The family at the top of the Teleferiqo. I think Levi’s ears were cold.

Dad’s either pretending he doesn’t know us, or mentally preparing himself for the cable car ride back down the mountain.

Dad scoping out great camera angles at the Basilica del Voto Nacional.

I’ve been up the tower twice, and opted to stay on the ground. Gene and the boys were not satisfied with such, and decided to climb.

Then they went higher.

And higher. I wish I had a shot to really show you how far up there this is. It’s majorly vertigo-inducing.

Otavalo, a market town to the north of Quito, is really something that has to be seen on a weekend. So, we made two trips. One for the Rakes fam, and one for the Sams’. Here’s Mom and Dad with their primary translator. After the previous week, the secondary translator had been fired.

“Wayne! Do they really live that close to a volcano?!”

Dad and Mom on the rooftoop, with Quito in the background.

Mom and Dad at one of our favorite local eateries, Bom K-fe. Breakfast is $2/person, lunch is $3.

By chance, Mom and Dad’s trip just happened to overlap with a missions trip that our good friend Ron Fischer was on. His son, Brian, had been down to see us over spring break. It was great to get to see Ron again. Here we are at another of our favorite places, a Colombian restaurant called “Crepes & Waffles.” (Bet you can’t guess what kind of restaurant it is.)

Mom and Dad at Mitad del Mundo.

Inter-hemisphere lip lock. Again, we didn’t have the heart to tell them that the French had misplaced the equator. We were just glad the kiss wasn’t French.

When the Sams fam was in Jamaica, they listened to HCJB, a Christian shortwave radio broadcast out of Quito. When Mom found out that HCJB’s headquarters were right across the street from our school, she really wanted a tour. Rachel and I learned a lot about this fantastic ministry, and hope to be able to volunteer with teams in the future. (I really don’t recall what had me so amazed in this picture, though.)

In the Mariscal district of Quito, there’s an artisanal market in the same vein as the one in Otavalo, howbeit on a much smaller scale. Here’s Mom trying out a finger puppet of an Andean condor, whose wingspans in the wild can hit ten feet. I think it woulda been much more interesting if the finger puppet had been life-sized.

Not that the backside of the primary translator is her best side, but I’m certainly not complaining.Hope you enjoy the pictures a fraction as much as we enjoyed having the company. We programmed a lot of free time into our schedule, and it was so amazing to have my whole family together in South America. (Even when the showers ran a little “luke-cool.”)

Oh, yeah. Happy birthday, Gwenda!

Some days here I get glimpses that make me realize just how little I know. I saw this little girl on the bus yesterday. We were riding back from Mitad del Mundo with our visiting friend Dan, and she got on the bus crying. The “conductor” helped carry her back to her seat right in front of us, as (whom I could only assume were) her mother and grandmother hobbled down the aisle, each carrying boxes loaded with fruit, plants, vegetables and such strapped to their backs with large pieces of fabric. As soon as they got seated, the girl jumped up on Grandma’s lap and settled down. She was wearing all of her clothes inside out, probably because that side wasn’t completely filthy yet. Everything about her was dirty. She had this unbelievable smile, and talked pretty much incessantly from the moment she stopped crying until the moment she fell asleep.

As I watched her, I slowly became aware of two things: 1.) I have never, at any point in my life, been “poor”; and 2.) I may not really have a good understanding of what the word poverty means.This little girl will likely never see another country. She may never leave the outskirts of Quito. She will work from the time she’s old enough until the time that she dies. She’ll never graduate from high school, let alone college. She’ll eat lots of yucca, potatoes, and chicken. She’ll never be completely healthy. She won’t ever remember not knowing loss, want, and fear; they will be her constant companions. She will grow accustomed to her place in the “food chain,” and won’t expect or hope to be treated as anything more than just another of the throng of those who “get by.” She will have children of her own, and they will inherit all that her grandmother and mother have passed down to her. They will know no better.I think that there’s a fable that the rich (like me) tell ourselves. We tell ourselves that there’s something “noble” about the poor. That there is something admirable in managing to survive with so much less than us. We tell ourselves, as we eat out multiple times a week, that the poor understand something that we do not. After all, look at the little girl as she laughs, chatters, and smiles her infectious smile. Isn’t she happy?We don’t look at her mother, as we sip our decaf non-fat cappuccino. We don’t see the permanently bowed shoulders, the lines already sunk deeply into her too-young face, or the resignation that keeps her from ever making eye contact with her betters. We don’t look at her grandmother, who has maybe three teeth left to shine out of a face weathered into crags and furrows not unlike the sides of the mountain she takes her meager harvest from.Even here, I live in luxury. I have almost 1000 square feet of home, two bedrooms, three bathrooms, and wide open entertaining spaces … for two people. I have a refrigerator, a washer and dryer inside my house, and a television. I don’t know what poverty means.

Our good friend Dan Audley is here from Kansas.  He got here June 17th, just in time to help me finish up the yearbook.  (Seriously, he and Rachel pretty much single-handedly assembled the index.  He spent two days in the basement of the school with us, helpin’ it all come together.)  It’s his first time out of the States, and he picked Ecuador!  He’ll be here until the 28th.  It’s great havin’ him.  Here’s some pix I’ve taken.

Here’s a pic of Rachel’s Birthday part at Mongo’s in La Mariscal. There were seven other people there who weren’t in the picture, but this is (inexplicably) the one I chose to put here.

We went up the Teleferiqo in the late evening with some friends, a new experience for us. The sunset was a little obscured by the clouds, but the view of the city was still amazing.

Dave is the guy that I’ll be replacing next year. Honestly, when I first met him I didn’t know how well we’d work together, let alone whether we’d be friends. I was wrong on all counts. Dave is, hands down, the most interesting person I’ve ever met. He headed back to the States last Saturday, and I already miss him.

This is a picture of Dàmaris Intriago delivering the salutatory address at Commencement 2008 at Alliance Academy International. I got more sniffly at Baccalaureate, I think. I was really proud of the seniors.

I know that one of the cardinal rules of working with kids is that you’re not supposed to have favorites. I do, sorry. Noah Pickens is such an amazing guy. Remarkably nuanced and sophisticated beyond his years, he never failed to make me think. He was in my Design & Digital Media and Yearbook classes. There was a lot of yearbook that I wouldn’t have gotten done without him. He even showed up to help after graduation! I already miss him, too.

That title sounds a little bit like Tarzan speak…  ‘Birthday… fun!’ Perhaps my English is suffering, or maybe I am still recovering from all the carousing over the weekend.

A heartfelt ‘Thanks’ to all of you that called or wrote or messaged me a Happy Birthday.  I felt very remembered and very loved!

On Friday night we went out with a group of friends to a restaurant called Mongos (a complete and total rip-off of BDs Mongolian BBQ in KC).  After dinner we all went back to our place for cake and ice cream.  The turn out was good, the food was amazing, and the laughter was plentiful.  (An aerial view photograph of the top of two, bald heads… one of them Rick’s…  was a good sign that the evening was descending into chaos).

Saturday we slept in a little and then spent the afternoon running around town.  We ate a a local restaurant and did some window shopping in new stores.  We knew we would need to nap at some point, because we had volunteered to help with the after-after-party for the school’s Junior/Senior Banquet (no prom…  just food).  That lasted from 2am to 6:30 am Sunday morning.  Needless to say, we slept pretty late on Sunday!

Over all, it was a wonderful Birthday and a wonderful weekend.  Thanks to all who contributed to the enjoyment!

I struggle with how honest to be here.  Is this my online journal?  Or is it more of an outlet for getting the word out about our ministry efforts here?  If missionaries talk about struggles, does that shoot their credibility in the foot?

The last few months have been hard.  I’ve kinda come to grips with the fact that I’ve been struggling with a low-grade depression for some time now.  Relationships and community are a minefield, and I keep stepping wrong.  I told someone a while back that I felt like my whole life was on training wheels.  Some days it really feels like that.

I spoke with a good friend from the States just a few days ago, and he kinda spanked me (in a good way).  Said he’d been struck recently when reading Phillipians where Paul talks about “learning” to be content without regard to circumstances.  The thing that stood out was that he spoke of knowing what it was like to have much, and knowing what it was like to have little, and that through it all he’d “learned” to be content.  This wasn’t something that he knew just cuz he was a believer now, and zen had taken up residence in his soul.  This was something that came about via process.

Here’s what I know:  I know I’m supposed to be here.  I know that God said “go,” and we went.  I know that God promises not to change anything in my life unless it’s for my good.  I also know that “good” doesn’t always equal “fun.”  My buddy said that it’s altogether possible that God’s going to be faithful enough to see to it that my life doesn’t get any easier any time soon.  (By the way, if anyone ever ‘fesses up to being depressed to you, this might not be the best way to respond.)  However, it musta been one of those “right time” kinda things.  It really snapped me out of it a bit.  Life in the trenches is easier when you know there’s a purpose.  I think I’d kinda started to lose sight of that.

I’m not feelin’ any happier, really.  Then again, I’m not sure God promises “happy.”  I think what I’m starting to feel is “content” … maybe.

In way of an update, there’s 13 days of school left and things are absolutely insane.   I’m understanding, for the first time, just why it is that teachers merit two months off every year.  I’m doing posters, programs, bulletins, diplomas, certificates, and the like.  Pretty much everybody at school wants a piece of the graphic designer right now.  Remember the kid who was ignoring my deadlines in yearbook class?  Well, he’s still ignoring deadlines.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen.  We had the yearbook staff over to our place the other night for a year-end party, and he attended and seemed friendly.  We’ll see if we’re still friends after I give him a D- for the year.  Peer Helpers is done for this year, and Rachel and I are already looking to what it will look like next year when we’ll be running it.  Our hope is to keep it on a night of the week that will allow both the students and us to be involved in other student outreach opportunities.  One that I’m really excited about jumping into is a group of students that works with Quito’s homeless street kids.  We’ve been figuring out what our responsibilities look like, and haven’t really availed ourselves of other opportunities yet.  Next year is going to be a whole different ballgame, when Rachel is counseling department head, and I’m actually teaching full-time (instead of subbing/designing/teaching).  We’ll not likely have tons more time, but our time will be a bit more predictable … I hope.