ESI begins

As many of you know we have been waiting for Equiping Servants (ESI) to begin and it finally has. Tomás and Nancy arrived last September from Bolivia and have spent some learning Ecuadorian culture and developing relationships with pastors and leaders in churches. We started the first ESI group  on Tuesday 7th February with 12 guys and it looks like the Thursday group will be 13 or 14 that will continue for the following three years.

I am really excited about this, please pray that this will be a group of men who will want to grow leaders for Christ. It's a pretty rigorous course, with homework each week including journal type work and readings. Punctuality is required...more than 10 minutes late counts as a no-show. Three no-shows over the semester puts you out of the course. The course includes a book set each semester.

It's been great to see so many people coming to use the library resources already to complete their work and also to talk through what they are learning with Tomás (pictured standing). There are Facebook messages flying around about ESI homework and that's also generating interest from others who might be future ESI potentials.

After what seems like a long lead time of getting a space ready that will be a multi-purpse training centre for people to grow in their understanding and maturity in their walk with the Lord, it is great to see it functioning in such a tangible way!

Kids at the Park

Had the kids to myself recently and made sure they got some good half-pipe action in.

Maybe not quiet a half-pipe, but they are certainly getting ready for it.

How do you know when mum's away?

This week Karine went on a little trip up to Quito to be with a friend. This left me to play dad and mum for the whole week.
You would think that everything would remain the same and the kids would behave like they do for mum, however there are a number of things that change while mum's away...

 Mattias becomes a budding puzzle expert, this being the 20th puzzle in four days, and yes that is a look of tiredness.

Evie decides that being a photographer would be really cool, and so starts with self-portraits... 

She then decides that Annalise would make a good model...

For both smiles and serious shots...

 Puzzles were her next genre...

and to top it off a new hairstyle...

Mattias finally finished his puzzle...

And dad prepared a quick tv dinner (I forgot that kids need to eat earlier than their bed time if anything is to go down the hatch, tv always helps)...

And thankfully  I managed a shop today as we were completely out of 'food'.

Come back Karine, we all miss you loads...