"Reunion Tour" Schedule

Hey friends & family,

This will be our last blog post from Ecuador!  Because in less than 72 hours, we'll be on an American Airlines flight bound for Miami, with a final destination in Indianapolis.  We wanted to give you all our schedule for where we're going to be and when, as we'll be touring several cities during the first few weeks of August to say many THANK YOUs and to give testimony to the work the Lord has done with and in us this past year.  So here's our schedule of where we'll be, and we truly hope to catch up with many, if not all, of you over the next few weeks:

July 30-Aug 1: INDY
Aug 2-7: BOURBONNAIS/MANTENO
     We're speaking at Manteno Nazarene Sunday morning, Aug. 4, in both services.
Aug 8-10: Moving weekend: INDY to WILMORE, KY
Aug 11-13: WILMORE
Aug 14: Speaking at Sciotoville Nazarene that Wed. night.
Aug 15-18: BELLE, WV
     Speaking at Belle Nazarene Sunday morning, Aug. 18.
Aug 18-19: FAIRMONT, WV
     Speaking at Fairmont Central Nazarene Sunday night, Aug. 18.

From there, we hope to be returning to Wilmore to settle into our new home before orientation for the first year of seminary begins the week of Aug 26-30.

Please shoot us a message on Facebook, email us, or give Ian a call or text at his number (which is the same as it used to be; Hillary's is changing) if you'd like to get together.  We know it'll be kind of a tight/rushed schedule, but we really hope to see many of you when we're in town.

Once again, we want to say a huge THANK YOU to all who have supported us this year.  It has been a wild ride, and we look forward to blessing you in our return as you've blessed us during our time abroad.  ¡Dios les bendiga!

Wrapping Up

Well, we've just wrapped up our last semester with the NILI (Nazarene International Language Institute) program here in Quito, dropping our last group of students off at the Quito airport yesterday morning at the slightly early hour of 3AM.  (See below for the highlights video from the semester.)  Much has transpired this last semester, which began in late May, and we'd love to tell you all a bit about it.

For starters, we had the unique experience of sort of switching places with the two other NILI staff members we've worked alongside of this year.  That is to say, Jen & Lucy--the two primary NILI staffers--spent about 3 weeks in Indianapolis for the Church of the Nazarene's General Assembly, while Hillary and I continued to operate the NILI Program here in Ecuador.  This meant quite a bit of extra responsibility for Hillary, especially, who oversaw weekend homestays for our students with Ecuadorian host families, taught a culture & ministry class in Jen's absence, and hosted a couple of fun girls' nights at our apartment.  (While Ecuadorian and American girls came over to watch movies and paint their nails, Ian went off to the NILI office to watch sci-fi shows by himself; it was a good compromise.)

Our NILI co-workers, Jen & Lucy, at General Assembly in Indy.

A fun anecdote about "switching places" with Jen & Lucy....  While Jen & Lucy were staying in Indianapolis, Ian's parents--who live in Indy--were able to hook up with them and have a meal together.  Lucy, who has never left Ecuador prior to this trip, apparently fell in love with Golden Corral, where they all ate together one night.  Ian's parents actually used our car, a little 1998 Ford Taurus, to transport Jen & Lucy to dinner.  So while we were here in Ecuador working with NILI, our Ecuadorian friends were in Indianapolis riding in our car and eating with our parents!  :-)

Hillary's whole family with us in Quito.

During the past few weeks, we also received a visit from Hillary's parents, Mark & Marcia.
It was a joy to have them hear in Ecuador with us, and with Hillary's sister, Lauren, who also lived here in Quito for 4 years before returning to the States with Hillary's parents at the beginning of July.  Together we had fun touring Quito, and a couple other nearby locations.  Their visit made home seem not quite so far away.

Celebrating our 5-year anniversary (& Hillary's parents'
31st also) at restaurante Vista Hermosa in Quito.

During their visit, Hillary and I also celebrated our 5 year anniversary!  We wouldn't have dreamed 5 years ago that we would be celebrating that anniversary in Quito, Ecuador, but we had a special night out in the colonial part of Quito with Hillary's family, celebrating 5 wonderful years of marriage.

Anniversary dinner in beautiful colonial Quito.

Well, our time as volunteers here in Ecuador is quickly coming to a close.  As a matter of fact, as of tomorrow morning we will be one week out from our return to the States!  Our flight back to Indianapolis begins Monday morning, July 29th.  We are excited to come back to family, friends, and a meaningful future in Wilmore, KY as Ian begins seminary at Asbury and Hillary returns to her work as a social worker.  Pray for us as we wrap up our time here, that things would end well, that we would have the time and opportunity to say goodbyes to everyone (goodbyes are a BIG deal here), and that the Lord would help us through this upcoming and probably challenging transition time.  We're looking forward to visiting many friends and family members back in the States in just a couple of weeks.  We'll be visiting Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia in a whirlwind "reunion tour" during the first half of August.  Stay tuned for our final post, when we'll list our schedule for where we'll be visiting upon our return home.

Once again, it seems appropriate to say a big THANK YOU at this time to all who have supported us through finances, prayers, and encouragement over this past year.  You have been used of God in our lives, and we look forward to seeing many of you very soon!

Video Tour of Seminary Campus

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 & Witness Projects

Work & Witness is 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.