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.

… or at least back to the States.  I’ve long been confused as to where “home” is.  It’s only a 13 day-trip, but it’ll be the first time we’ve been back since September of 2007, and we’re pretty excited.  Here’s our itinerary, for those interested:

• Depart Quito (Delta #330) at 9:00am on Saturday, December 20, 2008.
  Arrive Atlanta at 3:00pm on Saturday, December 20, 2008.
  Depart Atlanta (Delta #1587) at 6:35pm on Saturday, December 20, 2008.
  Arrive Kansas City at 7:50pm on Saturday, December 20, 2008.

• We plan on being at Oak Hills for Sunday morning, December 21, and will be in the K.C. area until sometime later in the day on Christmas Eve, December 24.

• We’ll travel to Springfield on December 24, and spend Christmas and the days following with my family.

• We’ll travel back north to Ft. Scott on December 27 to spend time with my mom’s extended family, after which we’ll drive back to Kansas City.

• We’ll spend the night back in K.C. on December 27, and will be at Oak Hills again Sunday morning, December 28

• Depart Kansas City (AirTran #445) at 5:12pm on Sunday, December 28, 2008.
  Arrive Atlanta at 8:08pm on Sunday, December 28, 2008.
  Depart Atlanta (AirTran #131) at 10:05pm on Sunday, December 28, 2008.
  Arrive Tampa at 11:31pm on Sunday, December 28, 2008.

• We’ll spend the next few days, including New Year’s, with Rachel’s folks.

• Depart Tampa (Delta #888) at 9:00am on Friday, January 2, 2009.
  Arrive Atlanta at 10:34am on Friday, January 2, 2009.
  Depart Atlanta (Delta #331) at 5:30pm on Friday, January 2, 2009.
  Arrive Quito at 10:45pm on Friday, January 2, 2009.

We’ll want to see as many of you as possible, so get in touch with us and let us know what your plans are.  We can’t wait!  Thanks very very much to Russ Ramsey and Marsha Frazier for all their hard work toward making this happen.  Thanks especially to Oak Hill Presbyterian Church for their generous financial help toward the purchase of our tickets.

See you very soon!

I think God is always speaking … always.  I believe that sometimes, for His purposes, He can and does render us unable to hear or listen.  I think that may have been a big part of what this past year has been for me.  I didn’t hear anything.  Sure, it’s possible that I wasn’t really listening, but He has ways of fixing that when He wants.  Right now I feel like i’m learning how to hear Him for the first time, but more on that later.

I also believe that “American” Christians think about failure in a completely backward manner.  It might just be the Calvinist in me talkin’, but I believe that God does much, much more than simply “allow” us to fail at things.  I believe he orchestrates it.  And I’m not just talkin’ about the Hitlers and Pharaohs of the world.  I believe He’ll guide, lead, and direct me into something for the express purpose of having me fail miserably.  Even here, my practical, entitled, idol-factory-worker self wants to say that He would only do something like that to shape me, mold me into something that looks more like His son.  The sad truth is that the real reason I hold onto that imagery is that I want Him to build me into something that’s a better version of me … something in my image, not His.  I’ve caught myself saying (only half-jokingly) in the last couple of weeks that I didn’t know if Ecuador was refining or ruining me.  I think I know the answer now.  I think the failures that God faithfully leads us into aren’t to teach us a lesson, nor really even to mold and shape us.  I think we think about that completely inside out.  I think He’s doing all of that to break me down.  I think He’s doing it to destroy me.

“God cares much more where you’ll be in five minutes than He does where you’ll be in five years” is a statement that I’ve made for years, but understood little until this moment.  What it means is that there is a choice placed before me in this shattered and broken state.  I can struggle, and try to stand up again … all very noble and western-style pictures, those.  I can try and pull the pieces together, and carry on for Jesus.  Or … I could quit.  I could stop trying.  Stop and realize that even if I had the power, anything i could possibly “do” would only make things worse.  I could just quit, lie down, and let my brokenness dissolve into Him.  Right here.  Right now.  He doesn’t want my future.  He doesn’t want my plans, my potential, my talents.  He wants me.  And what He wants to do with me is to completely eradicate any sense of self that isn’t rooted in His definition of who I am.  He wants me to be completely consumed in the eternal moment that is Him.  The picture of Him filling me is ridiculously insufficient.  I must melt, evaporate, and fall helpless and paralyzed into Him.  Right here.  Right now.

It’s really the only choice I have in the matter … whether or not I choose to fall in paralyzed surrender.  Not really whether I choose to “do” or “say” or “be” this or that.  My best efforts will miss the mark by embarrassing margins.  All I can do is fall, paralyzed, before Him … into Him, and submit myself to whatever He might have in mind.  The beauty of it is that when I do, it all ceases to matter.  All of it.  My fears and doubts, my missing home, my failed friendships, my regrets, my shame … none of it matters.

There’s a lot of parallels right now with my learning of Spanish and my learning to hear God.  It’s such a struggle, and I realize that’s probably because I’ve never really done it before.  Not right, anyway.  The vocabulary He’s using is the most fundamental, and I’m still reeling with the import.

Still don’t have our driver’s licenses. Everything from the driving school itself is finished, but we still have to go to the Ministerio de Transito for the actual license-getting part. Some have told us that we’ll have an additional test there, but I’m hearing from other sources that the test we “took” at the driving school may suffice since the school is run by the police department. Who knows? Last I heard, a group of us was headed to the Ministerio next Tuesday, which just happens to be my birthday. When I told Doris, the lady who’s been helping us through this process, she told me that the license would be her “regalo” to me.

School is going well. I’m lovin’ workin’ with the kids. It would still be a stretch to say that I love “teaching”. There’s a lot of prep work still, and my room still really looks like it’s in “first week/getting settled in” mode. I only average three periods of classes a day, but I stay really busy with graphic design work for pretty much the entire school, and trying to keep the new website rollover project on track.

Rachel and I have locked into a CSO (Christian Service Outreach) group. CSOs are groups of students that are involved different weekly ministries. Ours is called Opción de Vida. Every Wednesday, we head out right after school for a nearby park (about a 30 minute walk away), where a local church has built a facility for homeless street boys. The boys range in age from 12 to mid-20s, and have so many different stories. We’ve only been a couple of times so far, but I already feel my heart being owned by these kids. There’s a group of about 15 or so of the students from Alliance that go with us, and they’re a fantastic group of kids. I’m really excited about what this ministry is going to change in me.

The other student group that Rachel and I are working with is one that we’re actually leading this year. The group is called Peer Helpers, and comprises about 18 students who’ve expressed interest in engaging their peers in a meaningful and helpful manner.  I’m really excited about this group, too.  They seem to be interested in digging into deeper issues than just “what do I say to a friend who’s bulimic/depressed/hurting himself/experimenting with drugs/etc.”  With all due props to Scott Sauls, the question that we pose to them every time we meet is “how would a better understanding of the gospel help me know how to address (fill in the blank).”   We’re trying to do a bit of breaking down of the typical picture of “helping”, where the helper reaches down from a lofty position to minister to and try to pull less fortunate souls up to their level.  We’re trying to instill in the kids a sense that 90% of real “help” is just showing up and being engaged, which will always mean stepping down from your perceived lofty position, and getting involved in their mess.  Real support is more about pushing up than pulling up.

Tomorrow, I’ll be helping lead worship at church for the first time since we’ve been here.  It’s not our regular church, though I’m on the schedule to get involved there soon as well.  A good friend who lives just up the hill from us is the worship leader at the English Fellowship Church, and asked if I would help her.  She’s very talented, and I was delighted to respond in the affirmative.

Update on the driver’s licenses:  since I started writing this, it turns out that one of the higher-ups got concerned that the gringos were getting preferential treatment, and now we have to go back in and take a test on Monday that they’ve translated (poorly) into English for us.  I’ll keep you posted.