paute

So we have had some exciting times at our new home here in Paute. We wanted to share some of these with you! We took a video of the excitement the morning that we didn't have any electric. We found their repair work very interesting!  We saw these guys working on the lines right across the street from our house. Apparently the process for working on power lines here does not involve a bucket truck. They have a rack that the ladder slides into on the back of a pickup truck. The top of the ladder is just swinging in the breeze as they climb it. When they get to the top they just climb onto the poles and eventually tie off. We thought for sure they were going to fall!  OSHA would shut them down in a minute in the USA.

 

 

 

 

Here are our dinner guests-- Mark & Beth, Chad & Michele & Fernando!

 We had them all over for dinner on a sunday since it is market day here so we had fresh steak and veggies and Beth made a delicious Lemon Tart! 

 

We went exploring around the top of Paute and got some really great pictures. If you look almost directly in the center of this picture you see a square of trees, that is where the town square is that I took a picture of in one of the first posts.  This town seems somewhat comparable to Myerstown in size. You cant see our house in this picture, we are outside further.  On a side note the right hand top corner is the area you would go to get to Guachapala (where our KH is.)

Another angle of the town and to the right you can see a stadium where they play soccer or "futbol" as they say here. 

So in this picture you can see our house! You can see a road that runs parallel in the picture. Our house is right on that road smack in the middle of the photo. 

This photo our house is on the left side of this picture about half way up.  This is the same road as in the previous picture. We are the first house you see and then there is a whole bunch of grass after it.  As you can tell by looking at the pictures we are kind-of in the middle of nothing.  We have two neighbors but there is a lot that is unoccupied between us on both sides.  There are no neighbors across the street except for the random cow or horse every now and then down by the river. To get to the town area where the market and little grocery stores are it is about a 10 minute walk.  

 

 

This angle is on the complete opposite end of town almost going towards Guachapala.  You can kind of see the stadium in the distance. 

 

So I have been trying to see how easy it is to grow things in South America.  My experience with growing things in PA didn't always go so well!  I started out with an onion that happened to sprout before I got to use it and have since planted it and it is growing quite well!  These here are carrots and apparently you can just cut off the tops and stick them in water, put them in the sun and they will start to sprout little green things.  Once they get so big, then you can plant them in the ground but who knows what will happen. Probably nothing bu t soon I will be transporting them to dirt.  I have tried the same thing with a pineapple and I'm not getting the same results! Nothing has happened other then the water turning funny colors and it stinks! I guess we will have to try that one again! 

 

This is a picture of Fanny and I out in the ministry, this 1 house had so many pretty flowers so we decided to take a picture of the 2 of us with a flower!  As you can tell I am not very good at taking pictures of us and that flower (which is a rose) is almost as big as our heads!

 

 

So this is our washing machine!  We bought our washer used and since we have had it, it seems to leak water.  Which is ok because it is outside, but is a nuisance because every time you do laundry there is water all over the floor & you have to walk through it to go do anything downstairs. We had an interesting day trying to find someone who works on washing machines to fix it.  Not speaking very good Spanish definitely contributed to it.  So in Spanish a washer is called a lavadora and we figured if we asked where a lavadora mecanico is we would be set!  Not the case AT ALL!  We started at a store where they sell new washing machines, well they just thought we wanted to buy one from them. Then after further conversation they pointed us in a direction. So we drove where we thought he was telling us and didn't see anything of the sort.  So we asked another guy in a dirt bike shop and he said "right around the corner to the right."  Easy enough right? Well that took us to a car wash place.  He must have saw how dirty our car was and thought we needed a car wash and a mechanic! Haha funny right! So while we were there we asked how much for a car wash? $8.00 can you believe it! & they do it by hand.  Don't tell Zakk, we only pay him $5.00 to wash the car.  We again then asked a guy on the street where we could find a washing machine mechanic & he told us somewhere else.  After not finding it or even seeing anything like it we decided to just drive around and see if we notice anything that says Lavadora Mecanico....  NOTHING!!  We finally decided we were just going to go home and forget about it.  Then we remembered the girls in our congregation who are also need greaters don't have a washer or dryer, they take their clothes to a Laundromat in Paute that a sister owns & they wash, dry & fold your clothes for you!  So we went straight to her and asked her where we could find a washing machine mechanic?  Would you believe she pulls out this book with a business card attached to it with OUR coordinators name on it and starts writing down his name and number! She was probably thinking that we are a bunch of idiots & our eyes almost popped out of our heads when we saw his name! Needless to say we called him & he came over and fixed our washing machine!  I had never seen a washing machine in so many pieces! The main drum seal was leaking. After watching a youtube video it was clear that I would have needed a few tools which probably would have cost more than paying someone here.  Every piece of that washing machine inside & out has been cleaned and greased!  Now we have a brand new washing machine!

 

 

This day we were out in service by ourselves & we decided to explore a road we were never on before and it goes right down beside the river. It was a beautiful. And yes this is a normal service shirt. Who would have thought?

 

This huge rock is really cool!

Some views of the river.

 

We drove a farther into our territory this day & got some really great views from the same river in the previous pictures. It is the same river that is across the street from our house.

 

Here is a picture of our congregations territory map.  There are 3 big black dots that mark the towns Guachapala, El Pan, & Sevilla De Oro.  Sevilla De Oro takes about 30 minutes to get to from the Kingdom Hall in Guachapala.  Those towns are the ones that are mainly worked.  As you can tell from the green outline those areas are a very small part of the territory. We have just implemented evening witnessing at 4:30 pm on Wednesdays and Fridays! My assignment is now to be the service overseer. I'm not even sure exactly where all of our territory is yet! Time to spend some time just driving it to understand it.  

 

 

So on Tuesdays the group for service goes out all day.  They meet at 8 am and stay out until 4pm.  They usually go farther into the territory sometimes even into the jungle areas.  Most tuesdays they say they usually have about 20 or more people.  This was the view from up on one of the mountains we walked.  If you can see the redish orange roof off in the distance we were there before we took this.  That's why I said we walked 3 whole mountains!  What happens is they drop you off and assign you a partner and you preach the whole morning until the truck comes back to pick you up when it is time for lunch.  So we walked this day from about 9:30 til almost 12:30. And of course it rained.

So remember when I said you work until the truck comes to pick you up?  This is the truck.  There is a bench in the front & then they lay down 2 mattresses folded up on the sides for people to sit on.  There were 4 on the bench, and 4 on each side on mattresses. There were also two more of us on a bench in the back. There was no where to put your feet. They had to go underneath you under the bench. It takes some skill to stay on that bench with the truck rounding all the mountain bends! Thank goodness we weren't going far!

So we came to this huge pavilion with a roof to eat lunch and after they play soccer.  The girls are better than you think! We stop preaching around noon because it is considered rude to interrupt peoples lunches. This is like family time for this culture. So we eat and then play soccer for two hours. Yup what a dream! A full day of speaking about Jehovah and a soccer game to go with it! They have these stadiums in every town here.

And after lunch and soccer is over, we all go back to preach some more!

Don't know if you can count them all but we had 9 with us again in the car with me taking the picture. Who is driving the car? Well pictures are more important.   

 

 So here we got some nice pictures of playing the " Why Study The Bible Video." I asked the lady of the house if I could play her a short video and she said yes and gathered the whole family to watch it. That is the most people I ever played that for at one time. My partner casually took some pictures.

 

This is a plant in our garden area downstairs at our house.

This is a picture of the flowers that are hanging on the tree.

 

This is how big it is next to regular sized pen! They also remind me of how a lilac smells. Everything just grows like crazy here!  Til next time...

 

 

Visita Superintendente de Circuito

So we have just had our circuit overseer visit the week of March 24-29 which was exciting and encouraging.  We have found out that things are a bit different for the week the circuit overseer visits.  Lunch for example, if you sign up to do lunch you are also signing up to have everyone who goes in field service that day for lunch also.  Lunch for them here is there biggest meal of the day. Lunch with the C.O. is about a 2 hour time frame. It is very nice and encouraging to spend that time with the congregation. The brothers and sisters make sure that you are well fed. We went out a couple of the days and got to experience this first hand.  We had no idea that is how things work here and we were hesitant to go to lunch at first because we thought we would be intruding or that they might not have enough prepared because we knew we did not tell them we would be out in service ahead of time.  We asked the brother in charge the first day and we were informed that it is almost disrespectful to not go to lunch. They said it is their custom. The pioneer meeting was on Wednesday evening in a brothers house. We counted the chairs and there were close to 40 filled! Pretty good with only 57 publishers. The C.O. told us that Zakk could come with us so he got to attend his first pioneer meeting ever.  After the meeting they had a little BBQ party for everyone!  We are also learning that when they have a party they have 3 or 4 main dishes and they serve everyone the same thing and the same amount.  They make your plate for you and bring it to you. Anything left on your plate seems to be saved for the animals they have. They also had a party or fiesta on Friday night for the circuit overseer because this was his last visit.  After to talking to them we found out that they used to be special pioneers for 20 years while raising their daughter! It seems like then after she was grown they became a Circuit Overseer. They know everyone really well because they pioneered in this area. It's almost like family to them.  The congregation had a whole bunch of things prepared for them.  First they had the little kids sing song 120 "Listen Obey And Be Blessed." Then some of the adults sang song 85 "A full Reward From Jehovah". Some lines just the men sang and others just the women. A few verses were done all together.  Oh and that wasn't all, they were just getting started.  Then they performed a drama.  After that there was a dance in the traditional Ecuadorian clothing.  Then we ate and they had cake. 

So here are some pictures from the party and some from the week of activity.

Here is a picture of the circuit overseer and his wife and daughter.  The Congregation made them 2 bouquet's of flowers for the women and a little boutonnière for him.   

 

 We had some difficulties loading the videos so we hope you enjoy them.  They for some reason can not be played on a phone or tablet but laptop or computer they work. 

 

 

 Here are the kids singing song #120.  It takes the kids almost 1 minute just to come out and get lined up so be patient they do sing after they are all ready.

 

 

Now the adults singing song #85.

 

 

 

 

and now the drama--- 

We do believe the drama was a portion of Noah's ark given the little animals. It was about a 20 minute drama. But we only gave you a few minutes here and there.  Enjoy!

 

 

And that was the end of the drama! 

Here are some photos from the same Drama. 



Here is the whole cast!

This is the Sepeda Family, the husband is the one in blue, he is an elder and they have 3 boys.  They are a really nice family & they even speak some English!  The oldest boy in the middle is doing like a  home school program during the week and then he goes to school on Saturday.  It's pretty cool and he is able to regular pioneer.  The middle brother is going to do the same thing next year he said.

Here is everyone that participated in the traditional Ecuadorian dancing and the Circuit overseer and his wife and daughter.  

 

They all line up almost like line dancing or square dancing.

 

 

We had to laugh because as everything was going on with the entertainment the little kids kept getting closer and closer to the cake.  Finally there were like 3 girls surrounding the cake and took a swipe of the icing! haha....we laughed! Of course they were scolded and told not to touch the cake.  But when it was time to cut and serve the cake they were the first in line!!!

They cut the cake in small pieces that I have never seen before, I guess so everyone could have some.  But they saved the picture part of them and gave it to them as a gift.  How nice!

Here is a limon tree at a brothers house that we went to for lunch this week.

Don't know if you can see or not but the little dark red balls you see in this plant are coffee beans! These were at the same brothers house.  They had all kinds of fruit trees and plants growing here!

They also had dahlias which are my favorite flower! I've never seen so many flowers on one plant before, they are so pretty!  One lady told me that this area has really good soil for growing things!

 

 

 

We handed in our time and we had a real time with it trying to figure out what was what!  We had always emailed our time at the end of the month, so it had been quite some time since we actually filled out a time slip.  We figured out Libros real quick!  Folletos are broschures and tracts.  Horas de servicio en el campo is simple enough.  But the revistas sueltas and the revisitas were a bit tricky! How in the world magazines and return visits translate so similarly we don't know! Revistas are magazines and Revisitas are return visits.  Now were going to send some home to use so you can thoroughly confuse your group overseers!