An Ecuadorian Mission Experience

Grace and peace, my friends!

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Rob Bowers can cook up one heck of a breakfast! We are even way into the trip and he hasn't let up. Every morning, we have had some really stellar food. This morning, we woke up to hashbrowns with cheese and onions along with eggs. And Janet has been his side kick, and she can cook some awesome eggs! Prior to this, though, we woke up with cold showers because we were out of propane gas. Ooooo, not fun. This was remedied before dinner!

We went by Youth World briefly this morning to learn about La Red. La Red means: The Net. It is a ministry for training youth ministers in Ecuador. The crazy thing about youth ministry in Ecuador is that most of the time, the youth minister is one of the peers within the group. So a youth minister could be anywhere from 14 years old to 25. It is a cutting edge ministry in Latin America.

After our orientation (and the purchasing of swag), we headed over to Catedral de el Senor, the Cathedral for the Episcopal Diocese of Central Ecuador. It was a really neat place with strikingly beautiful stained glass. Walking in the sanctuary we were greeted by a dove flying around. Hmmm...was God giving us a sign? Was this a physical sign that the Holy Spirit was amongst us? We sure thought so!

Just yesterday at General Convention, the election of the new Bishop for their Diocese was confirmed. The new Bishop will be consecrated the first week of Augusta by the Presiding Bishop Katharine Schori. We are helping with preparations for the consecration. Pretty cool! We sanded down pews so that they can be refinished, and we painted the wrought iron gates and fence. We didn't finish today, but we made great progess. We will be continuing that work tomorrow.

Sanding the pews was tough work and all of us who were sanding were covered in orange dust. It was pretty funny! The paint for the iron was oil based, and few people learned that it didn't come off their skin easy. Lunch was an incredible meal of soup, fried chicken and the best fries you have ever eaten (I need to do a separate post on all the food we have eaten...awesome!!). Apparently, the locals use all the parts of the chicken, so the soup had the other chicken parts in it. I'm pretty sure I had some heart and some liver today. Yum.

After finishing up work in the afternoon, we went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. It was really, really good, but Chinese food here is very different than Chinese food back home. Don't know how to describe the difference, though, but it was really good. On the way to dinner, we saw some fire breathing street performers, and some really neat graffiti.

After dinner, we had a really deep and powerful debrief. We did an affirmation circle or encouragement circle, where we went around and shared something really cool about someone else. It was one of the most powerful spiritual moments of the week.

There is so much else I would like to share, but I am starting to fade...so off to bed I go. See you soon!

blessings,
dorian