ITEC Ecuador 2012: Aqui se habla Quichua 17.06.12

Frequently, when I meet new people here, they will ask certain questions, like how many siblings I have, and how long I will be here for. Also, many people ask, what do you think of my country? Now, I have a little bit more to tell them.

On Monday night at 11 o’clock, my friend Gustabo and I were waiting for the bus from Shell to Ambato, about an hour ride, when the bus showed up at 12 o’clock, we boarded to begin our lengthy expedition. Gus (pronounced Gus), is a middle – aged Mexican man who came to Ecuador in recent years with his wife and two young daughters to be a missionary. Gus’ work is unique in that he has an effective mission to many people groups without having to learn extensively about each of their cultures and dialects.

Many indigenous people groups inhabit Ecuador; which speak about 23 variations in the Quichua language. Less than half of these have been reached with the Gospel. Gus takes trips to Ecuadorian cities, where he has been in contact with an indigenous believer. Gus helps the indigenous believer to record Bible stories including the Gospel message in this particular native language. He then returns home to Shell to make many disks with this recording.

I had the opportunity to accompany Gus on one of his return trips to distribute the recordings. After waiting for half an hour in Ambato, we went on to Riobamba, where we waited until 4:30 am for the next bus. After this, I watched the sunrise from the windows as we headed further west and south into the Andes and the mountainous Sierra region of Ecuador. At about 8:00 am Tuesday we arrived in Canar, a beautiful city at about 9,000 ft. I was panting just after walking up a flight of stairs for the lack of air.

Here, we met up with two Quichua men who work for a Christian radio in Canar. Both of these men were incredibly kind and very interested to hear about life in the States (I showed one where Grove City and Maine were on google earth). After talking for a while, Gus and I started walking towards the center of the city, where after breakfast, we begun to distribute the CD’s. These disks are in the particular dialect of Quichua for that region; Quichua speakers could be identified by the distinctive fedora – style hat and traditional dress which identifies these people. We approached these people to present these disks as a free gift. Unfortunately, many people did not wish to accept the gifts. In the past, colonial people groups that have moved into the area have given gifts to the Quichua, which were gladly received, only to request something in return later. Because of this unfortunate circumstance, many Quichua cannot accept these free gifts.

Gus has seen much fruit from his ministry. He told me a story about how he was on the bus traveling home from one of his trips when he struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to him. When the man asked Gus what he did, Gus began to tell him about his work with the disks. This man had not only heard of Gus’ work, but saw how it had personally affected people very close to him. Further discussion revealed that this man was a native of the Galapagos, which has its own version of Quichua. The man asked Gus if he could come out to do gospel recordings there as well. Gus intends to go to the Galapagos to record and distribute disks once the people from the Galapagos can support his trip. In the afternoon, from Canar, we took the bus to Cuenca for a brief stop before continuing on to Saraguro, another mountain city. We slept in a hostel that was very nice considering the low cost of 5$ for the night for both of us (they use USD here). Several Mexican telenovelas provided the entertainment before retiring for the evening. The following morning, we decided to leave all the disks with the radio station there to distribute because Gus’ contact was unable to arrive at the station that day due to transportation issues.

In the past several weeks, when I haven’t been traveling, we have spent our mornings at Mi Segundo Hogar Guardaria, or “My Second Home Daycare” helping out with two age groups of kids and teaching them some English words, like “rock”, “tree”, colors, animals, and the like. I think kids are pretty much the same everywhere that I have seen them; a bundle of joy to help out and play with, but also very tiring.

Another awesome opportunity we’ve had so far is to help out with the Young Life program here. For those of you unfamiliar with the program, there are weekly club meetings on Friday nights with many youth from Shell which are very fun, in which the leaders share a message, to share the Gospel with the teens and kids. The past three weeks, we’ve brought some of the kids back to ITEC to play ping-pong and foosball. Please pray that we can continue to get to know these kids better and be able to share Christ with them, whether in example or word, as some are not Christians, or at the most, only nominally Christian.

This past Monday, David, one of our friends from church, had us come to talk on his radio program for kids that broadcasts from Shell. It was so much fun! His program shares Bible stories and reaches an audience very far into the jungle. I believe that we will speak more on the program in the future.

Boice, Sandi, and I continue to spend significant time with Andres. It’s very much fun to be able to talk with him (he only speaks Spanish). Our discussion and sharing of music last night until 12 was not the first time that we have stayed up late talking. Andres and I have had some fairly deep discussions, which can become rather difficult, because I cannot express myself quite as easily in Spanish yet.

Thursday and Friday we helped out with a Christian school’s stay-away camp in the nearby town of Mera, which was a very good time to get to know some of the kids from the area. Saturday we had the opportunity to go on a tour of Pastaza, which was a very fun day. Some of the highlights included hiking in the jungle to a waterfall and shooting a blow gun.

Also, two men from Colombia are living with Boice and I for the next week and a half. They are training with Gus to be able to do what he does. Their accents are difficult to understand at times, but as Boice so eloquently described Jorge’s accent, “it’s like a song whenever he speaks.”

Please continue to pray for Steve’s health, I believe he is undergoing surgery on Tuesday. Please pray for all of our Spanish skills and that we can get to know the folks here rather well. We will start the training for the various programs of ITEC hopefully within this week and be doing our first outreach with these programs shortly afterwards.

God Bless,

Camden