Bible Studies and Visiting

One of the things that we are supposed to do in the first year here is to get to know the culture, language and not do too many things right away as we try to adjust to being here in Ecuador. Though these things are important we have realized pretty quickly that our adjustment time is not going to take as long as we thought it would. With Travis already knowing Spanish, speaking fluently (with  a few Portuguese words thrown in) and I already having a head start and being able to communicate decently for right now, we realize that we aren’t going to have to spend a lot of time on the language.

So one of the things that we are doing, that we usually wouldn’t do for awhile are some bible studies. We are meeting with two families right now and maybe soon a third. Jorge, Karina and their almost one year old daughter, Maria-Emilia have been going to church here for awhile and we are meeting with them on Tuesday nights along with members of both sides of their family. And last week a friend named Javier who is really open to hearing the Gospel joined the group.

On Wednesday nights we are meeting with Ivan, Betty and their daughter Angelica, and their sons, Christian and Jonathan. They actually live about three blocks away from our new house and their daughter is just about three years older than Ceara but they are already good friends. Ivan goes to the same gym as Travis and I am joining Betty at the park at nights doing Dance therapy. We hope that these things that we have in common with them will allow them to see God more clearly in their lives and how much He wants a relationship with them.

Another thing that we have done is join with Bolo and Jenny and hosted a meal after church on Sunday to visit with some members better. We invited Nelson and his wife the first meal we did. Nelson is a carpenter and at this time of year he has not had a lot of work so they have been struggling a bit with things. They have four kids and are originally from Esmeralda which is on the coast. We are thinking of hiring Nelson to make a few pieces of furniture for our place since he is really good at it. We have seen some of his work in Bolo and Jenny’s house. 

We hope to continue to have Bible studies and visit with more of the church members in the months and years to come. We are glad that this time around we can already be at work only one month into being in the country. We know that God has already been working on the lives of people here and we pray that He can continue to use us even now to make a difference in the lives of the people. Please be in prayer for these bible studies and the ones to come.