Goodbye Ecuador

So here it is, the last post for my Ecuador Adventure. I've spent the last 8 months in a beautiful country working along side a beautiful congregation. I've had ups and downs throughout but because of the friends here I can honestly say this has been a wonderful 8 months. I will miss so much the support, laughs, and love this congregation has, a truly special group of people. So THANK YOU Quito English for all that you have done for me and all that you have taught me, I can't wait till the next time we can all see each other again.

~With all my love, Alyssa~

Here are just a few pictures.. more to come :)

Drama- What Is True Love?

As some of you may know we had the privilege of helping in this years drama, here in Ecuador. Being that the English circuit is small and very widespread around Ecuador there aren't many brothers and sisters available for help in these kind of assignments. So that being the case the director of the drama asked a few of us sisters to help with the sage sets. Here is a video put together by Karaan, the assistant director. It highlights the fun we all had but also the hard work that went into it, truly a blessing to be a part of. Thanks Karaan for putting this together!

Tandapi

We went to visit two young couples that we really like here. Rony and Brittany and Bradley and Amanda They only live an hour and a half away in a small town called Tandapi. It was crazy! I can't believe how diverse this country is. Just a short bus ride away and we are in "the cloud forest" in the middle of jungle and towns so tiny they pretty much have one road and a few side streets. The meeting was full of bible studies and half the audience was children. This tiny little boy did the bible reading and an 8-year-old girl had a talk.. adorable. It was all in spanish so we didn't understand everything completely but since we already had that meeting in English it was easy to compare the two. Service the next day we met at the hall at 7:30 am and then drove an hour and a half on the highway and go off on this crazy little dirt road up into the mountains and worked the little houses on the way and a tiny town up top. It was amazing!!

 Jaclyn was working with a 19-year-old Ecuadorian sister named Evelyn.. she doesn't speak English. I think almost every house we read scriptures. Jaclyn was at one house for quite a while, the lady gave them each a couple little oranges, a piece of bread, and some juice or something. Jaclyn was too afraid to drink the drink in case it would make her sick so she signalled to Evelyn that she couldn't drink it and Evelyn gave it to someone else for her haha. I was working with Amanda; her and her husband are from San Diego and have been here 2 years now. It was super awesome to see her preaching in Spanish so fluently because when they moved here they didn't know any Spanish. About an hour up the mountain we came to a road with about 6 houses on it so we all were able to get out and do a couple of doors. Amanda and I went to a door, a man was walking out and she briefly explained why we were there.. he was very pleasant and told us to wait for him..He waked into the next house which had been converted into a little store.. we call them 'tiendas'. So about a minute later he signalled us to come in.. We walked in and he had already set up chairs for the other friends in our car group, gave me and Amanda chairs and then he and his wife sat down to listen to us.. So here we were, the two of them sitting and eagerly waiting to listen to the 7 of us :) Such an awesome experience!

The couples are super fun. In the afternoon, after preaching there was a going-away party for Bradley and Amanda because their 2-year visa is up and they have to go home. It was an experience too. They made ceviche (soup) for everyone. There was some dancing and weird games haha. Overall an awesome weekend! There are pictures in Picasa that you can take a look at.

Well thats all for now, hope all is well with you :)



Alyssa

English Convention

Hey All,

Im sure you have all been very busy like we have here. I want to get better about posting updates. So I figured I would start with our District Convention we had the last week of July. It was an amazing experience! Along with the wonderful spiritual food, this convention is very unique as far as who attends.

Ill give you some background information on this convention so you can see why it is so special. About 10 years ago when more need greaters started coming out to Ecuador the brothers saw the need for these friends, most of which English was there first language, to be encouraged by continuing to have the District Convention in English. So the program was not for a circuit but for the need greaters throughout Ecuador. So even though today English is now a foreign field that is being focused on here in Ecuador and that has become a circuit, the English District Convention is made up of mostly friends who are in the full time service: English speaking need greaters, pioneers, missionaries, ect. You can imagine how exciting this is, going to a convention of about 1000 in attendance, friends from all over the world, serving in full time service and in all parts and languages in Ecuador. A truly unique experience!

I hope you all enjoyed and benefited from this years program as much as we did!

Progress...

Hi everyone...

So first I should apologize for not posting too much recently..we've been keeping ourselves pretty busy. Also due to an unfortunate incident Ariel's camera is broken, hence the reason we haven't been posting pictures as well, don't worry though a back up camera is on its way! Alrighty now I wanted to share some encouraging things that were announced during a recent service meeting in The part "What Did We Accomplish?" When Ariel and I arrived here in Feburary our publisher count was 33. Our current publisher count is now 54! Its awesome to see so many people taking the invitation to serve in a foreign field. Our memorial attendance was 96 which was 44 people more than last year. Now for the best part...remember this is increases from the month prior so not total counts.

March- increases from February
- 3 publishers more
- 442 hours more
- 173 more mags.
- 69 more return visits
- 8 more Bible studies


April- increases from March
- 8 publishers more
- 1428 hours more
- 69 BIBLE STUDIES!!!

Amazing to see first hand the growth of a foreign language congregation!!! Hope you are doing good please keep us posted on how your doing! Miss you all

Field Experience

So I had a request to post a nice experience and decided to share this one with you all. A sister in my congregation was out of town so myself and another sister meet up to take over her study for the week. We had our study in a coffee shop which was pretty empty since we got there when it opened. We were just about done with a 2 hr study and a lady walked over to our table. She said "Excuse me, I overheard you talking, I have me own religion and faith but I feel like this is an opportunity for me to learn more about God, may I please join your lessons?" I was in a moment of shock trying to figure out if i heard correctly..I  did, we arranged for her to join the following study and she was excited when I gave her a personal copy of the Bible Teach Book. I look forward to hearing about her progress and hopefully seeing her at the meetings! Its very encouraging to experience these things and I hope you all are encouraged by it as well.

Also in the July study edition of the Watchtower there is a really nice article of serving in Ecuador, take a look at it when you get a chance I'm sure you'll find it interesting! Take care everyone and please let us know how you are all doing.

Gotta love Quito!