Dear Friends and Family,

This week has been a lot of fun.  Between camping trips (for Rick), girls night (for me) and a birthday party…  we have been pretty busy!

Rick went on a camping trip with a bunch of guy friends this last weekend.  They drove to Cotopaxi national park and then hiked into the park a ways.  They built a large campfire, ate amazing food, and took a bunch of pictures.  You can see some of their pictures here and here.
This last Sunday was the 25th birthday of our friend, Daniel Klassen.  (The primary organizer of the aforementioned camping trip.)  He grew up in the Alliance Academy dorms, while his parents served as missionaries in Peru.  He has grown up hiking, climbing mountains, ice climbing, and trekking through the jungle.  He is currently working (through Youth World) as a chaplain at AAI and he also helps head up the Climbing Club at the school.  He has studied photography extensively, as well as attending climbing school in Norway.  We have been so thankful to have him in our lives here in Quito.  Daniel has helped Rick teach his photography class on several occasions, and has also helped spearhead a few camping trips for Rick and the other guys.

While Rick and the guys were out camping, I organized a small girl’s night of my own.  A few friends came over, we ate yummy snacks, and watched the movie Hero.  It was so much fun to have a group of girls to hang out with!  I tend to be more of a couch potato and less of an extrovert, which means that I don’t often seek out opportunities for deeper friendships. God seems to be working on me in this area, and has provided several wonderful ladies that I am getting to know more and more all the time.

Rick and I continue to pray for direction regarding our staying here in Quito.  We continue to form closer friendships (both with adults and students) and continue to find things that we love about this country.  At the same time, we want to make sure that we are following God’s will in all that we do.  We must let the school know what our decision is by next week, so I am sure that the Monday Memo next week will also include that update.

Please continue to pray for the people to whom we minister.  I often feel that spiritual oppression is increasing (or maybe I am just more aware of it), and I see more and more people struggling with depression, anxiety, marital issues, drugs/alcohol, pornography addictions, etc.  There are days when my heart feels so heavy, and all I can do is pray that the Lords return is soon.  I am so thankful for the opportunity that He has given Rick and I to minister and love the people here.  I pray that God will continue to guide us as we tell (and show) His grace.

Thank you all, once again, for your prayers and support.  We look forward to hearing from you and welcome any visitors who might want to come and see us.

May God bless and keep you always,
Rachel

Hello, friends and family!

‘Saludos’ from Quito, Ecuador!  I bet there are a whole bunch of you who never thought you would hear that in an email! 

As always, this has been a week full of adventure, challenges, and ministry.  School has been back in session for one week, since coming back from Christmas break.  For many, the joy of seeing friends again (after being gone for 10 days) has worn off, and the daily routine of school has returned.  Already I hear students complaining of schoolwork, projects, and tests that are due.  Project reports went out last week, so some are worried about their grades, too.

I am preparing for the Counselor’s Summit, which will happen on Feb. 1st.  It will be a half day of school, during which the middle school and high school students will have seminars (instead of class).  The focus of the seminars this year will be “What do you know?”.  The basic focus is what we believe to be true about ourselves, our world, and our God.  We will also address different topics that affect what we believe about ourselves/the world/God, such as abuse, disabilities, addictions, culture, music, etc.  I am still trying to find enough teachers and adults willing to lead seminars, as well as coordinating the whole event.  Please pray that our students (and parents) will learn and be ministered to through this event!

Quito continues to experience rolling blackouts which seem to last about two hours a day.  We are thankful for the rain that we are receiving, since the blackouts initially were lasting for about four hours a day.  Please continue to pray that God will send us rain, as this not only affects the electricity, but also the agriculture throughout the country.  Many farms and their animals are really suffering.

We have been blessed, over the last week, to have dinner with several different friends here.

On Thursday night we ate with the Douce family.  They have been in Quito for many years and work with a ministry called Casa Gabriel.  Their main ministry is to teenage and young adult boys who have grown up on the streets, but have now voiced a desire for a relationship with the Lord and a better way of living.  Rick has developed a relationship with several of the guys at Casa G (especially with Boris, shown below, who is getting married next month to a wonderful Christian girl).  Their children have all attended Alliance Academy and have been a real blessing to work with.  Their youngest son, Tully, is involved in Peer Helpers with Rick and I.

On Friday night we ate dinner with the Pickens.  Their oldest son, Noah (seen below in a picture of Rick’s yearbook class or ‘08.  Noah is the one in the middle in the grey shirt) was one of the first students that Rick really felt a connection with here.  He is currently studying at Wheaton college.  His younger brother and sister still attend AAI.  The Pickens have ministered in Colombia and Ecuador since Noah was an infant.

Tonight we ate dinner with the Hanlin family, who came to Ecuador one year after us. Rene teaches French and Brett teaches English at AAI.  Their daughters are in elementary and middle school.  They, like us, are in the process of praying to see if God wants them to continue on at AAI.
Rick was able to have a Guy’s Night with a group of the guys from the dorms last Friday night.  They spent several hours just hanging out at our place and watching movies.  He is really loving the opportunity to sow into their lives, as well as to get to know them better.  Many of them will graduate this year, so it is a wonderful opportunity to help prepare them for the life they will lead after high school  (The picture below is Rick and Nick, one of the dorm boys, and a friend to Rick).

As always, please continue to pray for the country of Ecuador.  There are always many political, socio-economical, and spiritual needs that are on our hearts.  No government is perfect and it is always difficult to trust that they have the people’s best interest at heart.  Our current president often voices his desire to help those of indigenous decent and those who struggle financially.  He has made some very positive changes in areas of schools for those in rural areas, as well as the children who live on the street.  Please pray that God continue to use him to help others, and that his political and spiritual beliefs will not impede the continue spreading of the Gospel throughout the country.

Thank you for keeping Rick and I in your prayers.  For me this has been a very challenging week, and the next few will be very busy as well.  Please pray that God will give me peace, as well as strength, to truly glorify Him as I work with students and their families.

May God bless and keep you all,
Rachel

I’ve said here before that there’s not a lot of Ecuadorian food that really moves me.  It’s mostly bland.  And while shawarma definitely doesn’t qualify as “Ecuadorian,” this is the first place I’ve ever had it.  And it’s everywhere here.

The closest thing to it in the U.S. is probably gyros, the lamb “sandwiches” that are cut off those big upright, rotating logs of meat that sit in those heater/cooker units.  Shawarma is cooked similarly, but it’s made of seasoned chicken breast.  Once they slice the meat off with a monstrous knife, they put it over lettuce and tomato on a flatbread/tortilla kinda thing.  Then they serve it with a creamy yogurt sauce and a hot pepper sauce.  I’ve gotten through 2.5 of them before.  They’re yummy.

Oh, and by the way … today is totally another one of those days.

Yeah, yeah … I’ve gotten behind.  Blame Lost, a busy weekend, and a stomach bug I’ve been fighting.

I’ve mentioned our apartment many times, including here, here, and here.  So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it makes my list of things I love about Ecuador.  Everything from the view, to the distance from busy streets, to the crown moulding, the hardwood floors, to the enourmous kitchen, to the three bathrooms … I love all of it.

It makes entertaining so much fun.

I’ve been challenged recently that my attitude could use some adjustment.  Specifically since returning from our holiday trip to the U.S., I’ve struggled with focusing overly much on all the reasons why “here” isn’t “there.”  One of the things that was strangest about our time back was how weird it wasn’t.  We slipped right back into our life in K.C., almost as though we’d never left.  I had to stop and remind myself that I (mostly) speak Spanish now.  It felt like everything that has happened over the last 15 months happened to another person, almost as though I’m living two concurrent lives.  When I’m here, the guy who lives in K.C. feels like another person altogether.  When I’m there, this guy feels 3K miles away.  Frankly, when I compare the two guys, I like the one who lives in K.C. a lot better.  That’s something that I need to work through, but in the short run, what I think I need to do is to start focusing on the positives about my life here.  To that end, I’ve decided to spend the next month or so chronicling thirty of the things that I love about living in Ecuador. Here’s the first:

#1: Mountains

I’ve always wanted to live in the mountains.  For years I tried to talk God into letting me move to Colorado, to no avail.  Now I live on the side of one.  The mountain I live on the side of is called Pichincha.  It’s an active stratovolcano, and it’s elevation is 15,696 ft. (which, incidentally, is more than 1,200 ft. higher than any of the mountains in Colorado).  As a matter of fact, there’s a place on the trail (really little more than a brisk hike) to the summit of Pichincha where there’s a boulder set at the point where you’ve climbed higher than any point in the contiguous United States.  Again, that’s the mountain that’s in our backyard.

From our rooftop, we can see three snow-capped peaks, Cayambe (18,996 ft.), Antisana (18,874 ft.), and Cotopaxi (19,347 ft.).  Chimborazo, the highest peak in Ecuador is farther south, and weighs in at 20,565 ft.  The peak of Chimborazo is generally regarded as the spot on the Earth’s surface closest to space.  The earth is not a perfect sphere, and bulges near the equator.  Thus, even though Everest’s elevation above sea level is greater, Chimborazo’s distance from the center of the earth is significantly farther.

Mountains ground me.  Having something to look up to puts me in my place and reminds me that there are things in the world bigger, older, and more dangerous than me.  I love them, and Ecuador is full of them.

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.

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.