Last Nights in Cojimies and Guayaquil

These are all of the kids.

The Cojimies congregation had a lovely party for us to say thank you and goodbye.

We are heartbroken that we have to leave! 

We made so many friends and will miss them dearly.

The night we left, a dear family came to our window and

serenaded us with guitar. We were so surprised and really felt the love they

had for us!!

They all came with us to get on the bus and later went ahead of the bus in a car 

and stood by the road and waved goodbye to us!

It was truly overwhelming.

The red stripe on my foot was a surprise...you'll have

to ask me about it when you see me.

We reenacted a Bible story with the kids. 

Guayaquil has a bad reputation but has some beautiful areas.

We enjoyed going to the branch for the regional convention.

The Malecón area was beautiful.

The 444 step climb to the lighthouse proved itself worth

climb for the views.

Our friend enjoyed the iguana park. Jordan was there too 😋

The Food

So after awhile it is definitely the little things that you really notice. As our previous post mentioned there was a huge learning curve and adjustment to shopping for, preparing and eating food here. 

So after a few trips to Pedernales I started to find foods we were used to. As seen is the pictures, you probably recognize most of them. Super excited to get these treats. However when I got to the checkout I realized these are all come with a price. These items cost about $29 dollars. Ouch, especially compared to the more localized food. Then we opened the cereal and found out it was quite stale. One box expired by 2 months, the other by 9. Lesson learned, always check expiration. That lesson saved us later on other shopping trips.

The fruits, vegetables and rice in these 2 pictures only cost about $8. I'll leave it up to your imagination to decide if the watermelons are small or the carrots are enormous.

The best deals on fruits and vegetables came from trucks like this one. These vendors just drive down the street, usually with a giant speaker on there vehicle announcing what they have for the day and how much it is. You can buy vegetables, fruits, eggs, water, live chickens and beans from these vendors. We didn't have a regular one in the area we lived so usually stopped at one on the way home from service.

We have probably all read the experiences of the missionaries that run out of food and money. Somehow, Jehovah makes sure they are cared for. We planned for a long time for this trip to serve where the need is greater and are thankful we never faced a situation that severe when it came to food. We did though experience the joy of being cared for by Jehovah emotionally at times and the unexpected gifts, usually fruit or vegetables. One day though, a thankful Bible Student gave us some lobster. That was a good lunch!

The Bible student that gave us the lobster was a fisherman. He started to be our source for shrimp. As you can see by the pictures, some very large shrimp. They made great ceviche. 

Eggs were another mystery. In the states we buy refrigerated eggs that we store in our refrigerator. Here, the eggs are kept on a shelf with boxed goods in the stores and you store them on your counter without an problem. 

That's it for the food tour. 

Friends

'We are having a lot of fun making new friends! Since we have been here for a few weeks, we are now further immersed in the culture and everyone wants us to be with them all the time. Our house, their house, taking us places...its a lot of fun. (We are not using our names on the blog so...) Bunkin has made lots of new friends and they are eager to learn English while she is eager to learn Spanish so she can communicate with them. I find myself sitting and talking for hours in Spanish, which I previously thought would be an impossibility. They are patient with our Spanish😊

We were asked to give parts on the meeting last week. We were willing to help so we did so, but were very nervous.

The weather has been nice until yesterday. It is suddenly very hot and sunny. Since there is no air conditioning, we rely on the fans. They are great if you are sitting around doing nothing, but when you have to do housework, cooking over the stove, and laundry, it's sweaty. There is a washing machine we use for our clothes, and we hang them on the line to dry.

When you are outside, you have to have shade. In service we use umbrellas for shade, but it's still hot.

Last night we walked home in the rain after soccer. We were soaked and dirty, but we had fun.

It was already dark. Since we are on the equator, there is 12 hours light and 12 hours darkness. So  the sun rises about 6:30 am and it gets dark about 6:30 pm. I'm ready to go to bed at 8:00 since it's so dark! We are way out on a peninsula so there is not a lot of light from the city.

There have been a lot of visitors here to the Hostal from the bigger cities. Cojimies is a vacation town for Quito. There was a family from another city and we went on an all day boat ride with them to see the other little islands. We also hung out with them at the beach and had a lot of fun. There were two sisters here that were visiting Quito that were from California that spoke English. It was a nice break to speak English. We had fun with them. It made us feel better that they were fluent in Spanish and needed translation here because they use words here in Cojimies that the sisters did not know. One of them told me that the way we are taught Spanish at home is very formal and they don't speak that way here. So that adds another layer of difficulty but it's okay. If we ever go to Spain, we will be set😀

This is our friend Alejandro. He is going to school to be a cardiologist.

He hangs out with us a lot and he is going to take us next Sunday to another town to see a waterfall.

The two girls on the left side next to me are the girls from California. The sister in the green dress is our dear Nelvita whose Hostal we stay in. She takes very good care of us!! 

We also had a great visit with our good friend Jordan. We went out in service and ate at the beach with him. Our neighbor let us borrow his "dune buggy" and we had a fun ride on the beach as well.

Thank you so much for all the comments. They are really encouraging to us!! So please leave a message if you have time! 

Green olives

So now I know how the Survivor contestants feel when they get food. I am seriously starting to miss food from home. Since this is such a small town the little tiendas carry only the basics like eggs, rice, noodles and limited veggies and fruit. We bought hot dogs one night and we had hot dog stir fry which is a first. There is an open air meat place which We were scared to try at first, but after eating eggs and rice for four meals in a row, we decided to buy a chicken and boil it down for soup. It came with the feet. Not sure what to do with those yet. Found out when we bought the chicken that they are kept in a small refrigerator thing so we are okay with it now. We now take the bus for a half hour to a bigger town that has a supermarket with a wider variety of food. I have never been so happy to see a bottle of green olives in my life. It's the little things.

On Thursday, we went with 10 people and two large suitcases in a 7 passenger vehicle to Santo Domingo where the assembly hall is located. We went there to help clean for the regional convention. We thought we would be sweeping the auditorium or cleaning bathrooms. When we got there we were given the assignment of cleaning the parking lot after they had cut down huge branches off of the trees.

Here is the parking lot after we were done. We forgot to take a before picture since we got right to work and it was pouring rain.

Here is the beautiful baptism area.

On the way home we saw an animal in the road. It was moving in a strange way and we thought it had been hit and was trying to move. But when we got closer we saw that it was a Sloth (Perezoso)!! It was trying to cross the road. Very cool to see! We stopped to eat on the side of the road and went back to get a picture of the sloth, but by then someone had helped it back into the jungle.

We have been enjoying the beach. There are hundreds of sand dollars (Estrellas del mar) every time we go out. We also saw a Sea turtle shell washed up on the beach. The tides here are strange and we can't figure them out yet. 

Love to all back home😘

Pictures from first weeks

This is the man who sat down and talked with us for awhile.

The Kingdom Hall in Cojimies 

Public witnessing

Working in the countryside 

First weeks

Mosquito nets for sleeping 

Our landlady has two puppies...just a few weeks old.

The first weeks here have been great. We have been going in service every day and the congregation completed the entire city with the tract for the regional convention, which is this weekend. 

The brothers and sisters here are extremely nice and go out of their way to help. Since there are only 23 brothers and sisters here they are a close group like a family. They were very warm and welcoming. 

This is where we are staying.

We have gotten to do the cart witnessing several times at the bus stop. They call it the "coche."

One day we were manning the cart for the morning. A man came and sat down on the curb directly in front of us by the cart. He appeared to be very strong and healthy. We talked for a while and then he began taking books and magazines one at a time and reading articles out loud to us and discussing them with us. This went on for a long time. He began telling us that he was very sick. We eventually ascertained that he has HIV. He said it was because he had led an immoral life, but that he wanted better for his life. I asked him if he thought the bible can change lives. He said yes. I told him about the meetings and he said he would be at the next one. We will pray for him and hope to see him soon.

There is only one elder here in Cojimies so he is a very busy man. He also has a wife and little girl, as well as one on the way. He is very happy to work hard for Jehovah. Everyone here in town knows him, since he has always lived here. Almost every door we go to they ask us if we know Panchito. He has a really good reputation here in the town and surrounding area.

To go to the rural territory, we took a bus for 20 minutes and then walked another 20 minutes. They have several bible studies there, even though most of the people cannot read. They treasure the bible and it's message.

On Sunday's the congregation gets together and plays futbol on the beach. It's fun to play...they love to laugh at us! But it's all in good fun. Afterwards they have some food and dance.

Tomorrow we are going with them to Santo Domingo to clean the assembly hall for the convention. 

It's a two hour drive both ways. We are not going to the convention in Spanish, we are waiting a few more weeks for the one in English.

More pictures later of service and such...still figuring out how blog works!😄

Love to all back home😘

Pictures

I'm taking advantage of the wi-fi while I have it to post some pictures of the town we are going to be in for the rest of the time. The town is called Cojimies and it is on a peninsula. It is a small fishing town. The people are very nice but I think rarely see people that look like we do and are possibly a little suspicious. But since they have seen us in the ministry they know why we are here