Finally!  Don’t get me wrong.  Thoroughly enjoyed the time stateside, but it’s gonna be great to sleep in my own bed after five weeks in other beds.

Please pray for the family of a dear friend and co-worker of ours here.  Patty Uscategui’s 20-year-old son, Daniel, had a heart attack and passed away.  Patty has been such a tremendous blessing to us, and her family (who live just a block away) have become some of our favorite people.  Pray that they will receive comfort in their grief, and that an other-wordly strength will sustain them in their darkest of hours.

Hello friends!

May God bless and keep you all as you begin this new week.

Our work here in Quito continues day by day, and we find more and more things to be grateful for as the time goes by.  I am getting to know more and more of the students (in a non-counseling manner) and really enjoy the reality of working with teens most days. It is truly a blessing to see them grow, mature, and share.  It often brings back memories (good, bad, and bittersweet) of my high school years and all the things that I thought were soooo important then.  Some of them actually were important, and it is nice to see those same things in some of our students here at Alliance Academy.

One of our seniors came to my office this week, asking advice for a friend in the States who is facing an unplanned pregnancy.  Please pray for this friend, as she is 17 years old, lives with her father, has a history of poor decision, mother is not a good role model, and she has lost connection with many in her church.  Our student at Alliance has given good advice, talked with her (Alliance student’s) mother, and will talk with her friend this next Friday while she takes a home pregnancy kit.  Please pray that God will lead her (the friend) to the right resources, that she will grow in responsibility and her walk with the Lord, and that God will touch her father’s heart so that he will support and encourage her during this time.

I continue to spend time organizing the Counseling Summit, which will be a series of morning seminars for the high schoolers.  I have recruited 12 teachers, but could really use about 10 more.  Simultaneously, we will offer to seminars for parents to attend.  Please pray with me that it will be a success and it will meet the needs of those who attend.

I continue to learn more and more about students who deal with learning disorders, attention issues, and/or academic giftedness.  The teachers here have so much experience and knowledge, and are always willing to help me learn.

One of our school counselors, Cristina Orellana, has returned from maternity leave and has jumped back into the swing of things.  She has her ecuadorian doctorate-level degree in school counseling, and is much more qualified than I am for what we do here.  :)  It is our hope to begin a few elementary groups that focus on social skills, as well as one that focuses on issues of adoption.  It is a pleasure and a blessing to work with her.

I think I mention this every week, but it continues to be true…  Rick and I are steadily increasing our sense of community here, and God has blessed us with some very good friends.  We continue to hang out with people who are, predominantly, at least 10 years our juniors…  it could be immaturity on our part! :)  Our weekly, Tuesday (two-for-one), pizza-night has a group of regulars, and a few new people almost every week.  While many of us work at Alliance, others work with Youth World, Extreme Response, and other ministries here in Quito.

Rick continues to work on the school yearbook, and is beginning the process of getting pictures (mug shots) of all the students.  At this point he is mostly lacking pictures of staff and of the seniors.  Please pray that everyone gets to him on schedule, as delays can really make it difficult to get the yearbook out on time.

Rick is feeling much better, and is back in the school gym on an almost-daily basis.  He is also giving free jujitzu lessons to a friend and co-worker, Tommy Bowen.  If things go well, Rick hopes to be able to offer jujitzu classes to some of the other staff and, perhaps, upper classmen in the future.

As always, thank you all for your prayers and your support.  We are constantly amazed and grateful for the many ways in which God takes care of us, and one of those ways is though friends and family like you.  You are often in our thoughts, our conversations, and our prayers.  Again, thank you all!

Sincerely,
Rachel and Rick Sams

Hello to you all (or y’all, as my family has been known to say)!

The weather over the last week has been just beautiful!  The sun is shining almost every day, there has been very few rainstorms, and the temperatures are in the mid-70’s.  I hung up my first (ever) hummingbird feeder about a month ago and, this last week, had my first hummingbird come to visit.  I am hoping he tells all his little friends about it soon!  Ecuador is known for having the widest variety of hummingbirds of any country, although I don’t know how much variety I will see here in the city.  Even so, it always amazes me that God’s hand is on such tiny, fragile creatures.

Rick has recovered from his cold and cough from last week, too.  Thank goodness for cough syrup with codeine, available without a prescription!  We are still mourning the fact that we cannot find Nyquil here, though.  Even so, the cold has run it’s course and he is back to his regular routine.  While some of his students like it when he is gone, some of them actually say that they miss him and want him to come back soon…  maybe the substitute gives more homework?  Within the next week Rick will cease teaching the middle school computer classes (their teacher is currently out on maternity leave), and he is looking forward to having a little more time in which to do all the other things that he does so well.

Rick has committed to being on the worship team at English Fellowship Church on a regular rotation.  It is wonderful to see him be able to join in leading praise, and many people have complimented him on how much they enjoy his presence there.

This last Saturday was Elementary Fun Day (read - fund raiser for the seniors to go on their senior trip).  There was a dunking booth, a pillow fight/balance bar, face painting, a trampoline, various other games, and yummy yummy food (from TGI Fridays and DiSergios, owned by the father of one of our seniors).  They raised over $3000, the elementary kids all had a blast, and many of the parents had a chance to spend time with one another, too.

One of my goals for this school year has been to create a greater sense of community among the parents of our students.  In the past many of the students came from missionary homes, and they had a great sense of community among those from their missions as well as among the missionary group as a whole.  As our student population becomes less missionary based, we have more students who come from homes that are not connected to any particular ministry, and some from homes that do not know the Lord.  It is my hope that we will be able to foster a sense of community and belonging for those parents, as well as a real structure of support and encouragement for them through the school.

On April 3rd we will have a half day of seminars for the high schoolers, coordinated by the counseling department, called the Counselor’s Summit.  There will be numerous seminars for the students to sign up for, and a few seminars for parents to attend, too.  Our special speaker for parents is none other than Dr. Roy Rotz, Rachel’s post-graduate supervisor and friend from Mid America Nazarene University in Olathe, KS.  He has graciously agreed to fly to Quito and speak to our parents (and do a little sight seeing while he is here).  We are so excited to have him and look forward to spending time with him here.

Rick is already starting to take the student’s pictures for the yearbook.  He has taken all the pictures for the elementary classes and tomorrow will take middle school.  Next week will be the high school pictures, with the exception of the seniors.  Rick has set stricter limits for the Senior pictures this year (setting aside only a few Saturdays and limiting the different locations to which he will go to take them) as well as enforcing the dress code rules (no strapless shirts, no ’sagging’ pants, etc.).  Please pray that the students will comply with these (seemingly simple) rules and that the process will go smoothly.

Our greatest sadness this week was learning that our friends and coworkers, Dan and Emily Weatherby, will not be returning to Quito in the near future.  They headed up the Campus Ministries Department and Emily worked part time in the counseling department, also.  Due to the birth of their first child, some physical difficulties, and other family issues, they have chosen to stay in the States for the time being.  We felt like really really connected with them and, more than the fact that they will no longer be our coworkers, we feel the distance that will separate us from them as friends.  We are praying that God will open the door for them to return to Quito in a few years.

Peer Helpers this last week was very good.  We talked about Praying For and With Others.  We talked about how one of the most loving things that you can do for someone is to pray for them, and all that this will entail.

As always, it has been a very busy week!  There have been many good days and we have been so grateful.  We continue to build relationships with the students, the staff, and the families around us.

Thank you all for your prayer and support as the Lord continues to use us to minister (and to minister to us) here in Ecuador.

Blessings to you all,

Rick and Rachel Sams

I know, I know … “the next month or so” was highly ambitious.  I’m WAY behind on my things I love about Ecuador.  Here’s one that’s been reminding me of itself for the last couple of weeks.

You know that kind of day that usually falls in early spring or late fall, when it really should be colder and murkier, but for some reason just isn’t?  You wake up on a Saturday, full-on expecting to have to drag yerself out of bed because it’s grey, wet, and chilly … again … but then you roll over and have to squint for all the light that’s trying to force its way through the curtains and blinds on your bedroom window.  You stumble, blinking, to the door, open it and a cool breeze playfully tugs at the edges of your bathrobe while the morning sunlight screams through cloudless skies to fall across your face like a blanket of white-hot comfort.  It’s the kind of day where the sun’s visceral and relentless presence, unencumbered by even the hint of inclement weather, keeps the air warm enough for t-shirts and shorts long before (or long after) the season should allow for it.  All while the gently moving wind carries just the right amount of chill to both keep you from sweating and remind you what a gift these days truly are.  Bright, golden sunlight.  Deep blue skies that seem much deeper and wider than yesterday’s.  The sweet, tactile tingle of the heat on your skin.  The light, flitting, breezy caress of cool air moving and wrapping itself around your body.  These are days made for hours in a hammock in the back yard, or a drive in the country with the windows down.  They scream for a house full of open windows, for closets and drawers scoured for another season’s clothes, and for being outside as much as possible.  You know the kind I mean.

Where we moved from, there were maybe two months of the year where days like these were even possible.  At that, we counted ourselves fortunate as kings to have a dozen or so of those kind of days a year.  Consider how many of them we get now … living at 9,300 ft. high in the Andes mountains, 30 miles south of the equator.  As rainy season starts to sputter and draw to a close, we’re bracing ourselves for the onslaught of sheer awesomeness.

Dear friends and family,

This ‘weekly‘ email was delayed a few days this week due to a long weekend for Carnaval Holiday.  Much like Mardi Gras, but without beads or nudity, Ecuador celebrates the week leading up to Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and Lent.  The holiday here is celebrated with water balloons, Super Soakers, buckets, water hoses, etc.  There is much dousing of unsuspecting (or well-aware) strangers who happen to cross ones path.  Apparently the celebrating has gotten pretty out of hand over the last few years (or decades), so the Quito police have begun enforcing a no-water-throwing rule.  Most of the younger crowd in the city have, instead, opted for cans of foam (no unlike shaving cream) with which to spray one another.  Apparently that is allowed…  :)  It was fun to see little kids walking around the town square with green foam in their hair and on their faces.  It appears to dissolve pretty quickly and doesn’t seem to stain clothes at all.

An update on my students in middle school.  Last Wednesday I lead a discussion for the middle school girls in which we discussed ‘appropriate touch and flirting’, as there has been an unnecessary number of incidents reported of unwanted and inappropriate touching amongst this age group at the school.  This is a difficult topic, as there are things that are considered ‘appropriate’ culturally that would be considered ’sexual harrassment’ in the States, and pornography is everywhere.  We talked about being assertive, how to say ‘no’ in a way that communicates they are serious, and how to speak up when needed.  It is my hope that the girls will gain confidence and respect for themselves, as Daughters of the King.  One of our male chaplains spoke with the middle school boys about the same topic.  This age group is still in the process of learning how to navigate relationships and developing a sense of self apart from their family of origin.  It is such a difficult stage in life and some of them really struggle through it.  Please keep them in your prayers as the Lord works in their hearts and minds.

Many of our Christian Service Outreach (CSO) groups plan missions trips over the Carnaval weekend.  Due to landslides on several major roads leading out of the city, there was a last minute scramble to see if these missions trips would even be possible.  Thanks to many donations from friends and family like you, as well as a small donation from each participating student, they were able to fly out of the city and to their destinations with greater comfort than they usually would have had.  The different groups led children’s outreaches in the jungle and on the coast, returning safely (although very tired) the day before school resumed.  We are thankful that they all returned safely and that the trips were all successful.

Since Rick and I’s CSO works with street boys here in Quito (Opcion de Vida), we didn’t join in the trips this holiday.  Instead, as you might remember, we arranged for all the boys to join our group on a small farm-area the school owns, called Calacali (Ka-la-ka-lee’).  We had a day of games, hiking, horseback riding, and a short devotional.

Since we were in town for the four-day weekend, we took advantage of the opportunity to finish painting our apartment.  We did most of the main rooms over the summer, and only lacked the two bedrooms.  Now all the walls are either a warm beige, a mustard yellow, or a brick red.  All we have left is the trim and the doors, which will have to wait until summer… 

On Saturday we joined some friends and bussed to a small town named La Merced.  This used to be the home base of an organization named Covenant Bible College (CBC), where one of our friends (Amanda Black) taught several years ago.  While she was in Ecuador she met Craig Black, who was teaching at Alliance Academy at the time, and they have now been married a little over a year.  They returned to AAI this year to teach, and are numbered among some of our closest friends here.  Craig is Canadian, and Rick often teases Amanda about ‘marrying outside her race’…  Ah, how we love to tease the Canadians…

It was on this trip that I was squirted by a Super Soaker (in the name of Carnaval, of course).  The ’shooter’ was a toddler (maybe 3 or 4 years old) and the gun was bigger than him!  He could barely hold it up.  It was all very cute, and the weather was warm, so it was fun.

After such a fun-filled weekend it was pretty hard to come back to school today.  Even so, it is good to see the students again.  It has surprised me how much we get to share in their lives.  We know many of their parents, their siblings, and their teachers.  We see them on the street and in the movie theaters.  Some of them actually acknowledge us, too!
As usual, thank you all for your prayers and your support.  You are a large part of the reason we are able to be here in Ecuador.

May God bless and keep you always,
Rachel Sams

Dear Friends and Loved Ones,

The last week has been an eventful one.  Rick and I have both dealt with stomach bugs or the flu, but are both feeling better each day.  We missed a little school, which was hardest on Rick’s classes, as they had to have a substitute teacher for a day or two.  It would seem that they all survived (including the substitute) and are back on track again.

We spent Valentines Day in the Mariscal, which is the tourism/artsy part of town.  We spent most of the day just wondering around, looking in the different parks and markets.  We met up with two other couples for dinner that night, then back to our place for dessert (molten chocolate cake and ice cream).

Rick hung my new hummingbird feeder up for me, but we are still waiting for the hummingbirds to discover it.  Since Ecuador has the largest variety of hummingbirds in the world, I am hoping that they find it soon!  If they do, I will be sure to post pictures at some point.

There are some hopeful possibilities pending regarding the sale of our car.  Please continue to pray that God will guide us and that we will be able to sell it soon.

This current week is also Spiritual Emphasis Week (SEW) for middle school and high school students.  They will have chapel every day, as well as ample opportunity to discuss spiritual matters in their classes.  Please be praying with us that God would touch their minds and their hearts, that they would continue to grow in their relationships with Him.  Many of them have heard the gospel since they were little, but some of them come from un-churched homes and this is all new to them.  Please pray that God would reach out to them, regardless of their background or current knowledge.  It is a pleasure for us to be able to walk with them through this stage in their journeys!

Thank you for all of the prayer and support that you send our way.  Please continue to call, email, facebook, etc.  We love hearing from you all and look forward to every note that we get.

May God bless and keep you always,
Rachel (and Rick) Sams

Rachel and I had a great Ecuador weekend.  Part of it may have been bein’ home sick from school on Thursday and Friday, which gave me lots of down time.  (One of those evenings in there I slept for 14 hours.)  I was still comin’ out of the death throes of the yuck on Friday, so we hung out at home for Valentine’s Day Eve, skippin’ out on a Mardi Gras masquerade party a friend of ours was throwing.

We slept in until 9-ish on Saturday morning, lounged about a bit, then headed out about 11.  We caught a cab down to El Egido, a park where a ton of local artists ply their wares every weekend.  We spent some time walking through a couple of markets, and bough matching tagua rings for a $1/each.  Then we walked north into the Mariscal district, which is quickly becoming our favorite place in town.  We hung out down there for about 8 hours yesterday and it was a blast.  Had a late lunch at a coffee shop and watched all the ex-pats and tourists.  Went to a bookstore where we know the owner and bought a couple of paperbacks.  Then went to a Vietnames restaurant (where we also know the owners), bought a couple of drinks and just sat and read for a couple of hours.  (The owners didn’t mind.)  Around 5 or so, we met two other couples at a tapas restaurant and had dinner.  A couple of hours later, we all headed back to our place, where Rachel made molten chocolate cakes for everyone.  It was a great weekend/holiday.  Hope all y’all’s was, too.

Here’s a bunch of pictures that we took over the late summer and fall.  I’d misplaced the doo-hickey I use to transfer pix to the computer and only recently remembered that I have a cable that would do the same job.  Hence the numerous pix.

My favorite piece of graffiti from the summer.  I thought it encapsulated the angst of a disenfranchised generation in a singular, plaintive cry for significance and meaning.  Or maybe the artist just got interrupted mid-sentence.  At any rate, I think it may be my new memoirs title (and cover art).

There for a while over the summer, I was makin’ it a habit to be on the rooftop at sundown.  It was almost always gorgeous.  This day, particularly so.

My second-favorite piece of graffiti from the summer.  There was a constitutional referendum not too long ago in Ecuador, where the people ultimately approved a “new and improved” constitution for the country (it’s 20th since it gained independence from Spain, which amounts to a new one every 6.3 years, on an average).  This is a likeness of the president, Rafael Correa.  The artist evidently didn’t think too highly of his rhetoric.  Unless that’s supposed to be soft-serve ice cream …

Our late summer project was painting the apartment.  The green went away.  One of our friends described it well as being “dentist waiting room green”.  I loathed it, and had no one to blame but the guy who picked it out.

In a glass case at one of our fave restaurants … I have no idea why it’s there.

We got a new plant toward the end of the school year last year.  It’s really pretty, but we have no idea what it is.  It got these big, white buds on it within a few weeks, but they were really slow growing.  I remember hoping that it would bloom when my folks were here in early July.  It didn’t.  It finally dropped the last of it’s flowers about a week ago.  Once the buds opened, they lasted about a day, then dropped off.  Very strange piece of flora.  If anyone recognizes it, please fill us in.

Some friends of ours, Andrew & Lindsay Flemming (Andrew pictured above) organized a hiking/climbing trip up Pichincha, the volcano in our backyard.  It was a perfect day for it … until it started hailing on us.

Pichincha has two main peaks, Rucu and Guagua.  Rucu was the target for the day.  It’s the older, extinct part of the volcano that is closest to Quito.  Guagua is the “live” part, and is farther west.  Rucu and Guagua mean, respectively, “old man” and “baby” in Quichua, an Andean dialect.  By the way, the spot where we’re standing is higher than any point in the continental U.S. … and it’s in our backyard.

I was surprised by the variety and color of the plant life above the tree line.  Beautiful, hardy stuff.

It kept getting more and more stunning.

Nice contrast.  More than halfway up, there was this rock overhang with a lush, mossy floor.  The entire overhang was plastered with painted slogans and names.

Lunch break.  Leslie’s demotivating herself by looking back up the trail to see where we have to go yet.  There’s a reason the rest of us were looking the other way.

Páramo grass is weird stuff.  Looks like sawgrass, but it’s really quite soft and cushiony.  Once you get down in it, you really don’t want to get up.

Still lunching.  Me and Andrew NOT looking at how much farther we have to go.  Actually, just a few minutes after this picture was taken, it started to rain/hail on us.  That coupled with altitude sickness symptoms starting to appear in two of our group prompted us to head back down the trail.  Next time we’ll make it to the top.

It really did feel like we were miles out of the city.

When, the reality was, you could see Quito from many places along the trail.  At least you could once we dropped back down out of the clouds.

We took over a large section of Archies, a local Italian joint, for Jeff Schuurman’s birthday.  Cherie had seafood.

After many weeks of pointless jumping through hoops, hidden “special fees”, and making the right people happy … I finally got my Ecuadorian driver’s license.  Rachel got her’s about a week later.  Not that we’ll have a car anytime soon, but if we did …

Just in case you ever wanted to know what a GPS readout looks like at the equator.

Layin’ in the street, on the equator, in the town of Calacali.  I contributed to the amusement of a few locals.

The school owns some property right outside of Calacali.  The RCE group spent part of the day out there last Saturday hangin’ out, plantin’ trees, eatin’, playin’ Frisbee, and chattin’ it up.  It was time well spent.

It costs $3.50/person/night to stay out there.  I think Rachel and I are going to plan a weekend trip out with some other couples.  If Pichincha felt miles out of the city, this felt a world away.  It was needed.

Starting on Thursday last week, Rick and I started the process of getting our Ecuadorian driver’s licenses. So far we have given them a copy of our Kansas driver’s license (to prove that we really do know how to drive!) and sat through a four hour class on the Theory of Driving (long, random, and mostly stuff we already know… really geared towards new drivers) and filled out the actual application. On Monday we will go to the Police hospital to get our blood type verified (they really won’t just take our word for it), get copies of our Passports and Censos (Ecuadorian id card) and pay the $165.32 (each) fee. Then… a few weeks later… we can pick up our driver’s licenses!!!

Of course, then we have to figure out if, and when, we want to drive in city traffic!

(edit by Rick) Rachel forgot to mention the driving test part of the process, where we drove for the first time in over a year in Quito’s rush hour traffic. THAT wasn’t nerve-wracking or anything!