'Save me a spot for next year'...Preaching conference 2012

Carlos said to me at the end of the conference this year, 'After all these years of you inviting me to the conference I finally understand why you've been inviting me every time. Finally I've come along this year and it has been great, save me a place for next year.' This was one of a few comments along the same theme, and really, in my opinion, this year's conference was the best one yet.

The theme was Application in a sermon and those who attended had to work hard to get from the text to the application via a little work on worldview and the implication of the text at hand. Sounds technical, however the speaker for this year, Cristobal Ceron from Chile, did a fantastic job of walking people through this process in such a way that they can now go home knowing that they have a chance of making the application part of their sermons more applicable to their hearers. YAY!!!

One of the things that really impacted people was that Cristobal took people to the gospel time after time after time. In some areas of the world this is normal, yet in other areas it is not. He did a great job of showing us how necessary this is in every sermon we prepare.

Once again I am convinced that this is an event that must continue as more and more people are challenged to work hard to make sure the can explain the bible well to those they are teaching and to keep Christ and the gospel central in all they do.

A nice day off

After a long time of being involved in many things I decided to have today off. So as you do, I got up at 5.25am to play football, got home in time to send the kids off to school, went out and bought plants, mowed and trimmed the edges and finished off our garden. I love having days off to relax! Oh and here's a picture of the garden. I love it!

Tennis and a BBQ lunch

Thought we'd take the opportunity of a public holiday a while back for a bible study outing. What better place than the Loja Tennis Club! We put together the BBQ we'd bought 2 years ago in Quito but hadn't yet used as the house we rented here ended up having a built in BBQ out the back. And then we lugged it plus tennis racquets and a badminton set up the hill to the club.

Poor tennis and badminton skills didn't impede our laughter, and the BBQ worked out a treat. The kids rode around the court on their scooters and hung out with the girls. Such a peaceful place to spend the morning!

To Quito for visa renewals

We took a trip to Quito in order to renew our visas. The original plan was to drive up, seeing as we need to drive 3 hours anyway to get to Cuenca as the Loja airport is currently closed. Sick kids and sick Karine the previous week put an end to that idea - 3 hours by bus suddenly sounded a lot more appealing than 12 hours in the car. But of course the 'Loja-Quito' flight left from Cuenca at 8.30am which meant catching the bus at 4am.
We were able to do what we needed to do for our visa renewal, and left the rest of the process in the hands of our lawyer. We then got out to enjoy some nice things about being in Quito. Like going to the English Fellowship Church, playing on the train ride in Parque Carolina, having fun on great play equipment, and hanging out at El Ristretto cafe for lunch.
Thankfully the 8am flight back home meant we only needed to get up at 6am!

Visa renewal

Getting a visa in Ecuador is not that difficult, there are papers to get and forms to fill in, and like any government that has forms to fill in things take time. So every two years when we renew our visas I always like to have all things ready ahead of time to make sure that there are no hiccups.
Only trouble is we have three kids that like to be funny when it comes time to get the paperwork done. I thought I would let you in on what it's like to try and get paperwork ready in Ecuador.

400kms of driving

Once again it is time to find a place for the preaching conference this year.

Yesterday I drove almost 300kms after a 100km drive on Sunday to have a look at various locations.

I thought I would give you a bit of a look at what I saw. 

Let me know if you have a preference.

Randwick Presbyterian in Loja!

A team of 6 girls and 1 guy traipsed all the way across the globe from Randwick Presbyterian, our home church, to experience a bit of la vida loca in Loja for a week at the end of September. It was so great to be able to spend time with our church family and be loved and encouraged by them.

It was also fantastic to get these brave people involved in life and relationships here in Loja. Here's a snapshot of what we got up to over the week.

We had a cooking workshop in Nambacola, where our church here, Semilla de Mostaza have started a little church plant. We made bread - wholemeal and white, carrot cake and anzac biscuits (and gave a mini australian history lesson at the same time).

These girls were so lovely and really had fun cooking.

Getting involved in SIM's english ministry. Here Rob is helping out at Spotlight, an english conversation class that is held Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at El Sendero.

Painting the youth room at our church. The colours the youth chose were bold.

                                      

Putting on an 'australian' banquet for the SIM team in Loja - curries, thai pineapple rice, apple crumble, chocolate pots. The food was superb and looked fantastic!

Hanging out with Evie and Annalise.

Getting involved in kids ministry - sunday school and the mid-week kids club.

 We had morning tea with Oswaldo in the Words of Hope training centre, hearing his story and also what it's like to work in the bookshop.

Some great ideas were generated for the window display at the bookshop which has been looking a little bare over the last while. This one is about exercising your mind - to read the bible.

What a week! Busy but great fun. 

Evangelism Ecuador style

September was the month of the Bible and the local churches in Loja decided to hold an event in Plaza San Sebastian. All day they ran mini talks, music, a kid's stall, an opportunity for counselling, and information sessions about the bible. There were people handing out tracts on the gospel and talking to people about Jesus and many other things.

We were asked to come along too, as Words of Hope bookshop. Happily, the timing coincided with our short term team being here from Australia, so we had lots of hands to get boxes of books to the plaza. 

I know that Oswaldo had a great day, although being in a public setting as an evangelical after having been heavily involved in the Catholic Church certainly had it's challenges. Here is Oswaldo in the middle, with some friends that are not only regular clients at the shop, but becoming good friends with Oswaldo.  

Clases de natación

For the last month of school, Evie gets to go to swimming classes twice a week. I've been going along to check out how it's done here. Somewhat more chaotic than compared to the swimming classes the kids were in when in Sydney, they are definitely getting a lot of play time in. Evie is having a blast!
And afterwards there is time for a hot drink of herbal tea and a piece of fruit which is brought along by the school.

Extra fun for 'Día del niño'

At the kids club at church (awana's) and for sunday school this past week, we had special programs to celebrate Children's Day (June 1st). It involved circus tricks (my juggling act was something to behold really), food and songs where you have to stick out your tongue and turn around like a penguin.

Chu chu gua, chu chu gua......

The Country Club

To celebrate the 'Día del Niño' at Evie and Tijs' school there was an entire school outing to 'The Country Club' (must be said in a spanish accent) where one of the families has a house. Many families here have some sort of weekender or 'finca' nearby in the mountains where it's a little warmer than Loja. So off we trundle down south and down in altitude, escaping rainy Loja but entering windy Malacatos. After getting to Malacatos and asking a good number of times the direction to 'The Country Club' we arrived. 

The kids had a super day, running around on the play equipment, swimming in the pool and even having a go on the waterslide (probably my highlight). 

The automatic gate gets unexpectedly cleaned

Was in the middle of cooking lunch today when there was a ring on the bell. Out I go to see who it was...no one I knew. But he tells me he is here to clean the automatic gate and that he had spoken to John about it. Called John to see if that was actually true and yes, apparently so. In comes Jaime, and cleans away all the dirt, greasing up the gate so that it opens relatively smoothly. He then proceeds to weed my cactus garden, something I am quite glad for. Then he asks for some lunch, so out I bring a bowl full of soup, and some fruit. After that I give him the money owing. Then he asked for some clothes (which I declined to give seeing as I didn't think I had anything useful for him). We chat for a bit and off he goes, telling me he'll be back in 4 months.
So, John and I both get to tick something off our To do lists around the house and someone has a full belly and a bit of cash to hopefully be spent wisely!

The biker visits

We had a friend of my dad's, also his ex-business partner come stay with us for a few days. Geoff decided his 60's were the time for some serious adventure, so shipped his motorbike over to Buenos Aires, and has since travelled down to the tip of South America, now making his way up to Canada.
Was good to have him stay at our's for a couple of nights. We showed him some local Loja sights and John took him out for a bolon de verde and other tasty treats.
The kids enjoyed having him stay, and also the games on the ipad!

Out at Parque Jipiro on a busy Sunday afternoon

Is this their future mode of transport?!

The visit to the birds

Sometimes weird things just happen, and it happens wherever, whenever without expecting it.
And so yesterday I was walking home with Mattias and Annalise from buying milk and the kids stopped in front of a house up the road from us to gaze into the garden. There aren't that many front gardens to gaze into as mostly you meet concrete walls protecting privacy of homes.
This particular house had a car reversing out, so we stood gazing into the garden for a while longer to avoid getting squished by the car. The lady driving the car then proceeded to get out and ask Mattias and Annalise if they wanted to see some birds. Sure, why not.
So inside her house we go, to a little atrium full of tiny budgies. The kids are happy as ever to see something new. There were about 20 birds in this little nook, with little nests tucked into the wall and a tree for them to perch on. The kids glued their faces to the glass in fascination. And then the lady said she had to go to work but that we could stay as long as we wanted, go through the house, and the back garden, her cleaning guy would be around, and off she went! Weird! So we watched the birds for a while, checked out the house and back garden and then told the cleaning guy we were off. He was surprised, 'already?'. Not sure what else we would have done...but off we went anyways with the song of the cheep cheep in our heads and a little bit more of our neighbourhood known!

Car accident

Living in another country always provides challenges. Just the other day as I heard the beep of a horn and then a screech followed by a the contact of metal between two cars, it made me think again of the process of having an accident.

As any local here will do, I grabbed the camera and ran outside (it was while I was working on the garden for those who have seen my facebook post). 

This is at 10:23am

After this initial incident comes the discussion as to who is at fault or come to some sort of agreement between the two drivers. 

The problem with hitting a taxi is that it means that there will generally be many other taxis in the area real soon. I think that this brought many family members of the other driver, as soon there were heaps of cars in the area.

Not long after this the discussions began. As you will notice the Police came, and they took some photos, however were soon off to the side to let the two parties negotiate the incident. 

The thing with an incident like this is that if you car gets taken to the police impound, you have to work very hard to get it back in one piece and in fact it may never be given back. The solution, and that which even the police themselves suggest is that there is some agreement between parties and they can stay out of the incident altogether. If there is no resolution then the Police will take the cars away.

As you can see, there was agreement between the two parties here, the police left, the taxi left and the last car was towed away by one of their friend's ute. 

A great end to an unfortunate incident. 

A little trip to the council offices

For the bookshop I needed to get what they call a permission to function. I guess it's like a license to operate a shop or a public space where people will enter into.

It was something that I was very unaware of when we started the Bookshop so I was a little nervous diving into this process as there are usually fines and delays for a payment that hasn't been made.

There were a number of things that were involved in this process:

1. Our organisation didn't have everything up to date - I needed to get a special letter from tax office (took 2 weeks to obtain)
2. The council didn't have our records up to date (to one 1 week to rectify)
3. I had to go and pay at the fire station for fire services
4. There existed other payments for services provided on other properties in our organisations name that I had to make before I could make my payment (meaning a cost of $1400 instead of the $60 I had in my pocket)
5. I wrote a cheque and went to get it certified (necessary for council) and they said I filled it in wrong (I put 10/100 for the cents sometimes done here instead of .10) GO back and get another cheque.
6. I then went to the council where the lady had to enter in details for each 14cm long receipt. 
7. I then went back to the office where I sat down and said, "We're done". 

All of this took us from early December till now to complete and I can't believe it is done. 

Guess how many payments were necessary by looking at how it measures up to me!