EARTHQUAKE??

•••July 11•••

Our God is great and worthy to be praised. I am blessed greatly to experience him here in Ecuador!

Another week has flown by and the North Carolina team has gone home. The team was fun, kind, and servant-hearted, which is such a blessing to those who came in contact with them. Our week was filled with serving the less fortunate in Nanegalito, Tulipe, Somewhere-in-the-foggy-mountains, and Palmito-Pamba areas. Daily we put on bible schools for primary schools and served them by painting walls, bleachers, and giving out toothbrushes.

We met a boy my age at the Palmito-Pamba elementary school VBS and shared the Gospel with him. He lives in London with his parents but was only visiting his cousin who directed the school and was leaving the next day. God plans amazing things and his timing is perfect. This boy had heard the gospel many times but the devil kept stealing it away as our skit that day of Matthew 13 taught. He got to see our skit and talked with some team members for an hour or so about his questions and wonderings if he was truly a believer since he kept drifting away. Please be in prayer for him- Stewart- that the Lord will reveal himself to him, teach him, and change his life.

After our mornings of VBS, we served the special needs community here in Nanegalito with bags of food- rice, lentils, salt, oats, etc- and visited with them. God provided an extra packed bag we had on our bus to give to a couple we met on the road asking for help because they spent their money on doctors trying to help the husband’s hip pains. Timing was everything when we met them as they were walking. 

Carlos’ family was a touching experience. This is Carlos’ story:

His father was a drunk who beat his mother often. Every time she became pregnant, the beatings caused the children to become extremely handicapped. In time, the father left, leaving behind his wife, and three children: Angel, Nellie, and Carlos. The two oldest are extremely handicapped- blind, deaf, and mute- and Carlos is blind. Since his mother has to care for his siblings 24/7, he has to provide for his family. He has a keyboard that he plays the most amazing music on to sell. He walks alone about 5 miles of bad road to the bus stop where he rides to Quito to teach in a school there. Eduardo met him when he was 18, providing for his family many years prior to that. Please pray for him and his family. That the Lord will provide physically and will give Carlos peace and joy to continue on persevering. 

 We hiked through the jungle one afternoon to an underground river that poured into a waterfall! A gigantic boulder hid it so we hiked under, around, and above into the cavern! What an experience! We also visited a cane sugar plantation!

Another day after work at a school, we visited the historic site and museum of the indigenous in Tulipe that had preserved bathing or ritual shaped pools! I loved it!

 At the end of the week we went sight seeing through the historic district of Quito to see the president’s mansion, a golden church, the Basilica, and a huge angel statue overlooking the city. We went to a small market at the statue and I got an apron embroidered with a Cui recipe! Poor guineas! 

  For supper on Friday night, Marie Edith and I made Queso Fresco Empanadas, stuffing them and folding them before frying them up! I wanted to eat one but knew I would probably get sick because of my wheat intolerance I’ve been dealing with since I was 16. She heard this and decided to pray for me then and there- that the Lord would heal me once and for all from my intolerance- in the name of Jesus. When I looked up from the prayer, she, her daughter and son-in-law were around me, hands stretched out. Matthew 7:20 teaches you must have faith, and so I do. I eat wheat empanadas, sandwiches, cookies, and burritos. I have faith God has healed me and by his grace have no pain, no heat-flashes, no diarrhea. He is our Healer and I stand amazed.

I have been asking Eduardo many times if I could milk the cow out here at he meeting place and it finally came to fruition! I woke at 5:30 am to walk out to the pasture with our groundskeepers who are a darling Quechuan couple and learned how to milk! When we got back to Quito, Marie Edith and I made cheese- Queso fresco- out of it! Muy delicioso! 

The new team came in Saturday night and after church the yesterday morning, we visited the equator and a volcano crater on the road to the Meeting Place. We spent the rest of the day getting to know the new team and setting the game plan for our week- “game plan” being loosely used because we depend on God to make our plans here HEAVILY! Later last night when tucked up in bed, I felt it moving, as if someone was under my bed, shaking it just to freak me out. When it didn't stop for a while, I called to my friend Anne Marie and we went outside, gathering the rest of the team. Fifteen minutes later it happened again, but stronger. I cannot imagine the damage that tremor caused at its epicenter on the coast. The news reported it to be a 6.4 on the Richter scale. Tomorrow Eduardo is taking some of our team out to the coast to meet with pastors there to see what we can do about building back and encouraging our fellow saints living there.

Please be in prayer that the Lord will bless Ecuador’s coastal people. May the Lord lead the pastors and Eduardo to do his will in rebuilding and gathering his church. 

Pray for the rest our team as they continue to work here in Nanegalito on the houses of special needs families. Let them experience God in a way they never have. Pray all of our team will see the Lord this week, be brought close to him, and to hear him stir their hearts. Let us see what He wants us to see. Let him change us the way he wants us to be changed. 

Tonight we heard the testimony of one of our Peruvian team member. After his testimony he told us of times of sharing the Word with different friends and how the Lord taught him that no matter how much you know about God, his Word, or the church, if the Lord isn't moving in your heart, nothing will move it. I am amazed at the power of the Lord and how he works in his people's lives intimately and intentionally. He moves and designs his people's lives so that we may know him. As C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity, “the great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and therefore it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to him…” We are his, all in all. Give your life to him and seek him whole-heartedly. Make it your mission to know him and make him known. 

‘He who counts the stars and calls them by their names is in no danger of forgetting his own children” 

-Charles Spurgeon from Psalm 147:4

-My heart is not afraid