We are on a journey. A journey that has taken us to the center of the world. We have received a calling to live in Ecuador this year, ministering with the staff of the Church of the Nazarene's Seminary in Quito. This is a record of our "life on the line."
So, for nearly a year now we've been living on the campus of the South American Nazarene Theological Seminary, and while we talked during our first week here about how we wanted to get some video of the campus to show everyone back home so y'all can visualize where we live... we're just getting around to that! Oops. Hope you enjoy this brief video tour of our campus; it truly is quite beautiful....
Work & Witnessis the great short-term missions branch of the Church of the Nazarene. The Work & Witness program brings teams to places of need all across the world to participate in construction projects for churches and communities, to minister to kids and the poor of those areas, and to give members of the church an opportunity to see how the church functions outside of their own culture.
Ecuador regularly brings in Work & Witness teams, usually from North America, to work on such projects in this country. Lately, Ian has been blessed with the opportunity to do quite a bit of work for and alongside of the Work & Witness Coordinators for the North Andean Field, Jon & Shirley Fischer. The work has been diverse, rewarding, and often outside of Ian's comfort zone. Here are some of the highlights!
Painting the walls of a mobile chapel.
Part of the work Ian was assigned included helping to construct and paint a mobile chapel building for a church plant here in Quito. There are over 20 of these simple metal structures being used by Nazarene church plants and small churches throughout the country who have, for whatever reasons, been unable to build a permanent church building for their congregations.
A picture of the outside of the mobile chapel structure.
The inside of the mobile chapel structure (no roof yet).
A view of the front door, from inside the mobile chapel.
The plasma cutter is awesome!
At times, Ian has just been handed tools he's never worked with--including this plasma cutter--and been asked, "Wanna learn how to use this?"
While this shot makes it look like he is doing hard work, Ian is in fact simply cutting his name into a piece of scrap metal for the purpose of learning how to use this new contraption.
A couple of the Point Loma girls and Jon Fischer, the
W&W Coordinator, gathered around a 5 ft. hole we dug
by hand for cement footers.
A couple weeks back, Ian actually traveled to a Shuar Indian village near the town of Palora, Ecuador to work alongside of a Work & Witness team from Point Loma Nazarene University. This group of about a dozen Californian college girls worked harder than many men digging holes for footers and pouring the concrete for the foundation of two buildings the Church of the Nazarene has partnered with Compassion International to build in this remote community. Ian worked with part of the team on the construction efforts, while others ministered to the children of the village.
Two Ecuadorian men, Harrison (a friend from the seminary)
and David, mix cement while a few of our Point Loma girls
prepare to wheel it over to the holes we dug for footers.
Recently, there's been quite a bit of welding that has needed to be done around the Work & Witness shop on the seminary campus (actually, to prepare the support structures for the building the Point Loma team was constructing in the Shuar Village near Palora). One day Ian was asked, "Do you wanna learn how to weld?" He said, "sure!"
The first day welding, I (Ian) remember turning to Harrison, an Ecuadorian friend who was teaching me how to weld, and I told him, "You know, if we were in the States right now, I wouldn't be able to touch this machine on my first day. In fact, we'd probably have to have people with special certifications talking to me about welding for several weeks before I ever picked up the electrode and started to weld." I remember that he looked at me, and with one word he summarized the difference between North American and Ecuadorian culture: With a perfectly straight face he asked me, "Why?"
Some of the welds Ian has made.
Ian welding... yeah, for real.
To a professional welder, these are probably not pretty welds.
But they've held together!
Ready to weld.
The work Ian has been asked to do as of late has been very rewarding. It's a blessing to be able to serve, not only in the ways we thought we would, but in exciting unexpected ways as well. Working alongside Work & Witness here in Ecuador--being on the receiving end of short term volunteer teams--has given us a more complete picture of how our church works around the world. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed... a mustard seed that includes a 26-year old learning how to weld in an Ecuadorian workshop.
