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!

Tres de Mayo

on some rare occasions... rumors are true ;P

If we were to leave Ecuador as we originally planned we'd be on a plane today :/ BUT as things don't always go as planned... WE GOT NEW VISAS AND CAN STAY TILL OCTOBER :D Looky looky that's real real nice ;) Less than a week here we were already talking about extending our stay then baddah bing baddah boom we got new visas! Hahaha it wasn't that instant lol. It took a lot of prayerful consideration and help from the friends but woah Jehovah is amazing then comes the baddah bing baddah boom :D We're so excited, absolutely love it here. And to the friends back home... its not that we don't like you, we just know you'd like us to stay here and continue to enjoy our service :)

More Canadian Awesomeness!!!!

F ~ R ~ I ~ E ~ N ~ D ~ S

One of the best parts of serving here in Ecuador is making friends from all over the world and knowing that we are all working towards the same goal of serving Jehovah fully. At the same time, this makes for one of the worst things about serving..saying goodbye to these new found friends :( Its interesting because Ariel and I have found we draw close to people much faster then back home, we attribute it to a combination of a few things. One were all away from friends and family...and really everything we know. Also we are all encouraging each other in this endeavor just by being here. We all are in a way forced to rely on each other for challenges and struggles we may have here. Its great to have each other and even though its the hardest thing saying goodbye we wouldn't change a thing about having these great friends...really a new family.

We have had an amazing time with a group of pioneer sisters form Canada, who are at this point some of the best friends we have made here. Girls we will truly miss your smiles, laughs and zealous spirit. Love you all and cant wait to hear about your next spiritual adventures. Maybe we can join you on the next one eh? :)

    Jaclyn ...QUITO!

"This isnt Kaimiloa!"

"WHERE ARE WE?"

 Here is another first for me! Being raised in Ewa Beach I have only attended Memorials at Kaimiloa with the Ewa Beach Congregation :) Today we had a wonderful night commemorating the Memorial with Quito English, 96 attended, which is almost double from last year. The friends who have been serving here long term were so excited to see the growth for the Congregation. Let us know how your Memorial went!

Thanks Karaan ;-)

S.A.D

We had the privilege of attending the Special Assembly Day on Sunday here in Quito. Friends came from all over Ecuador who are serving in the English groups and congregations. We made lots of new friends and delighted to see some friends we had meet from before. We had about 300 in attendance and had excellent speakers, a GREAT day! 
Take a look at the rest of our assembly pictures in Picasa :)

Onolicious :D

Panchito

Bubs

Adrian

One Friday evening a few of our friends came over for dinner. Very intrigued by us coming from Hawaii they wanted to know what kind of food we eat. Alyssa, the awesome cook that she is, decided to make loco mocos for everyone :) What? they say, crazy bugger??? But oh how they loved it!


Comments from the chef... "the gravy was a bit tricky but thanks to my sous chef Helen it was all good!" 

estamos bien!

after a 7:30am to 8:00pm service day we all get ready for a night out

Hi everyone so sorry we have been terrible with updating the blog! The good news about that is we have been keeping ourselves busy :)

We've been here a little over a month now and we're getting really comfortable here. The other day armed with a map of Quito and the knowledge the other brothers and sisters instilled in us we were able to go out in service all day with out any locals! I was quite proud of ourselves.

Oh and because many of the brothers and sisters are APing this month we're starting to do early mornings and evenings, which are my favorite! That reminds me, memorial invites start Saturday so get pumped people!!

Other than service we've been hanging out with the brothers and sisters and having so much fun. You can sample some of that from our slideshows ;)

Thanks to those who have been commenting and sending us emails we love hearing whats going on back home, keep um coming. We're also working on how to figure out Picasa so we can have all our pictures and videos up, will post the link soon!

**GUINEA PIG UPDATE.... I still would really like to try one but I'm hearing bad things. One, they are often not bled properly. Two, even if it is bled properly it can make you sick with amoebas. Two sisters and one brother that we met were in the hospital for amoebas, to be fair it could have been from either the guinea pig or lettuces, but we just can't be sure.

No words to explain

Because they're Norwegian!!

Going away party for Ole and Benjamin

Drama y Luz

 

Fabrizio, Gisela, Mary Beth, Israel, Vanessa, Benjamin, Alyssa, Ariel, Katherine, Ramiro

We love concerts! ...even if we don't understand any of the lyrics ;) Mana [n has the squigggle] is a Mexican rock band that is HUGE in Latin America. All our new buds were going and we love to jump around and yell so yay we go. Had the BEST time ever. We looked liked the biggest fans you'd of never guessed we didn't know the songs (actually Alys knew 1 song but still not real fans). Took FOREVER to start but ended with a bang, LITERALLY fireworks!!! And it was huge, as you can see, 15,000 to 20,000 people. 

Look at our Fun. :D

 

See great times! YouTube them. I like Oye Mi amor, Alyssa likes Corazon Espinado, and Vanessa likes Mariposa Tracionera.

btw title of blog is name of the tour

Porta Quito & Mindo

Joed, Cathy, Diego, Ariel, Jose Luis, Jessa, Alys 

Since we were out there in the jungle we we went tubing! Oh man were we ecstatic :D For those who don't know what that is we get the inner tubes from tires, tie them together sit in them and ride down the river. The current was really strong but that made it more awesome. We saw a tucan and a snake. Woah that snake almost touched me so freaky, it was grey and blue, idk if that means poisonous or not but still, snakes are weird, I don't like them.

Vanessa, Alys, Ariel, Joed, Ramiro, Jose Luis, lady idk

On Monday we went to Mindo another small town out there but still in the Los Bancos' territory. This town is a major tourist attraction. You can do zip lining, waterfall repelling, and tubing. (We went to a local spot to do tubing so we were alone and the river was longer). We didn't have enough time to try waterfall repelling but did the Zip lining. Really neat stuff, its 10 long lines crossing the valley.  Amazing views and so much fun! Alyssa tried this trick called the 'superman' and I did the 'butterfly' cause we brave haha ;) We are defiantly going back before we leave.

Spanish Meetings...

The Los Bancos congregation at the Kingdom hall...(some of them)

Why did we leave Quito for the weekend??

Vanessa's friend Joed was giving his first public talk and like the good friends we are we gotta support him! Spanish congregation, so I have no clue if he did well or not but he looked very poised haha. We tried to follow along as much as possible looking up the scriptures and guessing the theme of the talk, good times. 

The Watchtower study was fun too. I do not enjoy commenting, just a fyi, but I made it a goal to comment at every meeting here in Ecuador... even in Spanish. Woot woot we both did it! The congregation was so cute after, they came up to us and said 'congratulations' instead of good job. BTW this guy reminds me so much of Keith!! Even his style right? Tell me not.

Los Bancos

Jessa, Alys, Vanessa, & Jose Luis

This past weekend we took a bus 2.5 hours down the mountain into the valleys and stopped in a small town called Los Bancos. We had a blast and so many stories that we have to tell in person because it's better with facial expressions!

In service Alyssa stayed with the congregation in town for service, btw its a Spanish congregation thats speaks NO ENGLISH. Such a trooper proud of that girl, she is so gonna be fluent way before me. Working door to door with a sister they started a couple studies! I went with Jessa, Vanessa, Joed, Jose Luis, and this other sister that we picked up and went off into the campos. Thats like isolated areas. We did studies and preached in one of the other small towns out there.

I joined Joed on this study above and they were so cool! Its two little kids and their mom (the mom was busy that day.) They all live and work on this farm but they don't go to school. So when Joed goes and studies with them he also teaches them to read and write. Super cute family I was trying to sneak pictures of them practicing their letters but the little girl saw me. She liked my camera so I took a picture with her. It was in Spanish so I didn't understand much but they read Jonah and in their answers they always used Jehovah's name :D 

The Ministry

So we have told you a lot about things happening here as far as culture but we wanted to share a bit more about the ministry we have been experiencing. We love our territory back home and have had good experiences there but those come by less often. Here they are a daily happening. The following experiences happened in one day...

- First thing in the morning 3 sisters broke off to check on a bible study that was turned over, they haven't seen or meet this women Cindy before. Looking for her with no house address, just the street name and the description of a "blue gate." They didn't find her and returned to work with the group. As the group continued census we worked our way down to that street and found this young women, Cindy at a house with a blue wall and green gate. Ariel started her presentation and was surprised when she said "I study." Ariel put the pieces together that she was the girl they were looking for in the morning. They sat down and studied for an hour, she had all her books, English and Spanish set out on her table ready to go. She asked many questions and commented in her own words, even opened up about her personal life to Ariel and another sister Helen, this being the first time they met. She is very excited to have her study resumed.

-We often do public witnessing at places like the mall to find english speakers, wether its people we see walking or we check with staff at the stores. During a short coffee break, a very zealous sister Helen (from England) stop a young women and asked her if she spoke English. She did and had a nice conversation. This women began to express herself a lot in Spanish and Helen was having a little trouble following everything she was saying so she called over Marilee a sister fluent in Spanish and English, she has been serving in Ecuador for over 10 years. The 3 of them spoke for about 20 minuets, talking about how she has been searching through various religions but has not been able to find satisfying answers to her questions. They explained to Bible Study arrangement which she readily accepted, exchanged contact information and arranged to study at a later time.

Marilee (wearing the hat), Helen on far right. 

-During census we work house to house, but continue to be observant for people walking that may speak English. This often leads to nice conversations and in our sister Becky's case Bible Studies! She stopped a young women who was American, studying in collage here in Ecuador. It was to Becky's surprise when she said she used to study in the states, and has been waiting for the Witnesses to contact her here. In fact the Witnesses did contact her during door to door but it was the Spanish congregation and she was sad that she could not express to them that she wanted to resume her study. Becky also invited her to meeting which she so conveniently lives within minuets walking distance to the Kingdom Hall! Contact information was exchanged and we all look forward to see how this study turns out.

-In the afternoon a sister and her mom were done for the day so they decided to have some lunch. Being that a lot of restaurants are small and cozy they were able to talk to the restaurant owner about the Bible, in Spanish. As the conversation continued they sister Monica asked if she spoke English, she didn't but her two sons did. Guess who walked into the restaurant just then? Yes her sons! They talked with Monica and her mom for over an hour, she invited them to meeting and they were excited for this invitation even asked if they could bring their friends. We were out of town but look forward to hearing who came to meeting on Saturday. 

Monster City

Map of Qutio Territory

Follow the link above to see the size of our territory. With the city and the valleys included the territory population is just under 3 million people. The English congregation here in Quito covers this territory with an average of 35-40 publishers. The brothers and sisters will do census work in an area about 1 time a year if not longer. The large territory can be intimidating but is extremely fruitful and in our first week here we have had many encouraging experiences.

Fun Facts!

• On the computer, if you look next to the L they have 2 extra keys a N with a squiggle and a C with a tail!
• We are 10,000 feet above sea level, makes breathing a little bit difficult.
• Bus ride costs 25 cents.
• Staying in the lanes while driving is optional, and you must honk your horn at least twice every minute.
• Imported goods like clothing, food, and make up are 3x as much. Local goods and services, dirt cheap! (Ariel's getting eye lash extensions for $10 SCORE! and Alyssa is getting her hair trimmed $5 Oh Yeah)
• Our bathroom light and room light can't be on at the same time hahaha one of them will turn off.
• No such thing as a door step study, everyone here invites you in and we sit, fantastic!
• Ariel does the dishes every night cause she don't cook ;)

Listen to This

Nothing to do with why we're in Ecuador but I love these guys!! Vanessa invited some people over to our apartment for dinner and we were watching videos on youtube and one of them showed us Walk of The Earth and now I'm OBSESSED :D go look at their channel. Here is the link http://www.youtube.com/user/walkofftheearth feel what I feel.

Security??

Most of us have gates, alarms, or even dogs as security. The Ecuadorians like to take a different route in feeling safe. As you can see in the pictures they build their high walls and as the cement from the final layer is drying they shove shards of glass into the top. The first picture you see is our wall so now you can all rest easy knowing we have top notch security :)

First day in service

There we are in our boots! Being in the foreign language congregation is very different for field service. We do  a census and we go house to house asking if anyone speaks English. this is my presentation... "Hola, Hay alguien que hable Ingles?" They only gave me a one sentence presentation because I have a terrible accent :( Alyssa's was a longer and sounded awesome. The people here keep talking to her in Spanish and assume she's fluent, she keeps getting earked cause her parents never talked to her in Spanish hahaha so salty. Anyway today was super fun we pulled a 10 hour day and we both found someone to talk to, good stuff. Vanessa had 2 awesome studies and they are just so grateful that we visit them. One of her studies kept wanting to make sure she was coming back soon :D. Bedtime now, we have another long day in service tomorrow more posts to come.

Meet Vanessa!

So she's the one on the left if you couldn't tell ;) Very cool girl been here for 3 years, served in various parts of Ecuador and has put her tri-lingual skills to good use. She speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese told ya she was cool! Any way I read the articles on social networking so to protect my new bud from stalkers and predators I shall keep all other personal information about her to myself :)  

lame flights and layovers

Thank you Brittani and Casey! 

We left Oregon Monday 7pm got into San Francisco had a 2 hour layover then went to Chicago had another 2 hour layover then to Miami had another 2 hour layover then finally landed in Quito Tuesday 6:20pm! Arggg to plane rides :/  Loved all the goodies, snackage was necessary the only airline that fed us was the last one to Quito. We have so much left over our new roommate loves us instantly for filling the cabinet.

Quito!

Hi All,
Just wanted to let everyone know that we got into Ecuador safe and sound! We had 22 hours of travel but it is thankfully over. Today our roommate Vanessa had to work so we took the opportunity to unpack and adjust our bodies to the very high altitude. Really it was an excuse to be bums for the day. We had our first meeting with our new congregation. Everyone was very friendly and we are so excited to make new friends from all over the world. During the meeting a brother came up to Vanessa and asked her to sit with 2 new girls who had no publications. After the meeting they explained that someone had left a meeting invitation at their house while the friends were doing census last week. Vanessa gave them Bibles and Bible Teach books and explained the Bible study program which they accepted. Being super sweet and wanting to help us out Vanessa arranged for Ariel and I to take one study each :) The easiest studies of our lives! Sorry no pictures yet, we shall post some soon!

Alyssa & Ariel

SNOW DAY :D

Our adventures begin here in Oregon at Mount Hood! There were a few firsts for us..first time Ariel visited Oregon, first time she saw snow..and first time we both tried snow boarding. How did we do you ask?...In Ariel's words "Awesome, I'm impressed with ourselves." Today was a fun day but now we get back to work, packing for Ecuador. Please keep in touch and let us know what other "firsts" you want us to try.