Guachapala

So we went to see the apartment & we met the coordinator and his wife at the Kingdom Hall.  They seemed like some of the nicest people you could ever meet!  This is the inside of the Kingdom Hall in Guachapala. It is a little bit smaller than what we are familiar with in Womelsdorf. But it was beautiful like all of Jehovah's houses!  

 

This is the view from the best apartment that this town had to offer.  In the meantime we also have received some further recommendations from the circuit overseer in this location. He has recommended a location not far from this town but a different congregation. Jehovah's organization continues to move at a fast pace! We love looking at these mountains. We went from mostly fields in P.A. to mostly mountains.  

 

 


Moving on............To Haircut Day in South America.  This is my new salon at Chad & Michele's house & yes it is outside!!!! It was a beautiful day to do haircuts! However as you can tell in the Photo's we had to relocate the chair due to some serious SUN issues!  Ha Ha!  Who would of thought you would need to wear sunglasses to cut hair in South America??!!  Never had that problem in Pa.   

 

 

 

 

 

Chow! 

Out & about

What have we been up to the past few days......

We had game night with Freddy, Ericka & Fernando. 

Dice anyone????



 



This is Chad & Michele's Hall.  They got new chairs since we were there last year! It seems like the standard in this area is now plastic chairs. They remind us of a normal lawn chair in the USA. We attended our second meeting this week. Our first meeting was on Sunday. We did prepare fairly well but only had simple comments that we translated which seemed like it would be a good start to commenting at the time. The problem was that when we were actually at the meeting those were basic comments like young ones would prepare. So we realized that we better let the kids have the easy ones. But while we were there it was a good reminder of what a privilege it is to be able to give praise to Jehovah at our meetings!  You really take that for granted until you can't speak well enough to say what you want to say! So we prepared much harder for our mid week meeting. We also used an app on the internet called google translate. What a gift! All you need to do is type in what you want to say in English and it translates it into Spanish! It also speaks it for you so that you know how to pronounce the words! And we were able to comment again! What a relief!

 Here we all are!

 

We went for lunch later in the week to the Chill & Grill which is a hamburger place.

 

Everyones food was so YUMMY! We all finished the food on our plates!

 

On a side note.......we are beginning to see how the Ecuadorian culture is.  We have come to the conclusion that if anything takes 1 day & is seemingly easy, there is a pretty good chance that somehow it will become a much bigger ordeal than you could ever first imagine!  A brief example is our efforts to try to begin the process to get our visas here. We were told that we need a bank account for numerous reasons. The main one is that it is required for the type of visa we are getting. So we went to the bank with Chad to open accounts. The bank then proceeded to tell us that we needed a Visa to open a bank account????  Another stipulation for a bank account is that you need to be registered in this country where the people vote for public figures. You pay a fee and even though we obviously don't vote we were told we had to pay the fee and just state that we are neutral. Then when we tried to do this the places we were sent seemed to keep changing the information and we were getting no where fast. The old catch 22 in these scenarios.  In the end we found what seems to be the equivalent of a credit union that was willing to open some accounts without a visa. These accounts will be sufficient for our needs. And it only took us a few days until we got to the bottom of this situation!

And now for our best news! We have traveled to Guachapala a few times now to look for housing. We spent a lot of time searching and speaking to the locals about any available options. It is a small town and clearly a modest area. We looked at a few places that were just not going to work. We don't want to be picky but one example is that there were apparently chickens living in the living room at one of the houses we looked at! Yikes! The feed was still in the room, and so was the smell! Chad had spoken to the coordinator of that Congregation last week and he informed some of the congregation members of our need. We just found out this morning that they found a two bedroom apartment that is brand new for $120.00 a month! It certainly makes us feel good to know that Jehovah and his people, our friends, are already helping us and we have not even met these brothers yet. What a privilege to be a part of an organization like this one!  We are going to look at it tomorrow. We will post some pictures later in the week!
Speaking of studying, we now have to begin our 4 hour study for the watchtower tomorrow!
Hasta Luego!

And we have arrived

Hello our good friends! After a few days in Cuenca Ecuador we have followed through with our plan to start a blog. We are certainly not experts so please forgive our mistakes. We had a successful journey and enjoyed our flights for the most part. We had a connecting flight in Miami Florida which was a bit of a challenge. We arrived in Miami at 11:13 pm and so we did not really get off the plane until about 11:30 pm which left us 20 minutes before our plane loading gate closed for our flight to Ecuador. Well that is a huge airport and even using the sky train left us at a speed walk and sweating until we got there. When we got to our departure gate our tickets were called as we were walking in. We were a bit worried but in the end all we could say is there was no wasted time.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

After making our flights we then had to lug all of bags through the airport.  Thankfully they had all made it! Seven checked bags, three carry on and three personal.

Our first motorcycle in South America. After looking at the congregations the branch recommended it seems clear that an off road vehicle will be a very useful tool to reach many areas of any of the territory that we might be working in.  

Our first piece of furniture that we bought! It is plastic shelving, but it is helping us to get ourselves organized. We bought a few of these! Easy to move at about 2 lbs each. Yup we got the cheap stuff!

We visited Guachapala today (Saturday 2/7/15) This is one area the branch recommended. Very pretty & country like. We drove around long enough to realize that there are many areas that are almost inaccessible with a car. For a while we thought we were lost! We had to wait for some cows and chickens to get off of the road. We thought the cows were going to charge us but we made it past.  Then some very friendly locals helped us get back off of a trail and onto the main road.  

 

Another picture of Guachapala.  

 

We of course had to see if we could find the kingdom hall & this is the kingdom hall in Guachapala. That was the first time all day we felt at home. We saw the Kingdom hall and immediately felt like we were in good hands! This is a very tiny hall with almost no parking. It seems clear that most of the brothers probably walk or take public transportation. The meetings are Thursday at 6:30 pm and Saturday at 6:00 pm. We loved it! A local directed us to Jehovah's house. The first stop we made, those locals knew where to send us!

Their landscaping says "JW.ORG" can you believe it?

 

We also visited Paute today! This is their Kingdom Hall. This is a larger town 10 minutes from Guachapala.

This is actually a piece of the park in the center of Paute. So very pretty! Flowers are blooming!

 

Now you know a little bit about what we have been doing. Traveling around & trying to get organized! Our Spanish is improving we think.  If not we are going to keep telling ourselves it is. We are still hoping Jehovah will treat us like he did at Pentecost 33C.E. and maybe tomorrow we will just wake up speaking Spanish and forget English. What can I say we have high hopes!

 

 

 

Until next time...... We miss you all!