April Showers Bring May Flowers

The pictures didn't post last time! They should show up now!! :)


Hello again! The rainy season here is coming to a close and the weather here is beautiful. Josh and I have been very busy over the past month and I can't wait to update everyone!

First of all, we finally were able to get our Ecuadorian driver's licenses! After finishing the ANETA driving course and passing their exams, we had to wait 14 business days to get our documents from them that we had to take to Ecuador's equivalent of the DMV. I thought the DMV in NC was rough - we waited an hour and 45 minutes just to get in the door at the Comision de transito! Luckily we both brought a book to read :). Once we got inside, we turned in all of our paperwork, were entered into the system, took their computerized test, got our picture taken, and finally left 3 and a half hours later with our very own licenses! It is such a relief to have those.

Aside from getting our licenses in Quito, we were able to spend a lot of time in a town about 45 minutes away called Sangolqui. We have been working with the "jefe parrochial" (basically the leader of the county) to see if it is a city that would need medical services like the one that our clinic would provide. He and the members of the county board of directors took us on a tour of the area and helped us get to know some of the poorer areas around the city. They even took us to eat cuy (Guinea Pig) and it was actually really delicious! There is currently a hospital in Sangolqui, but many of the people from the small villages outside of Sangolqui don't get the medical attention that they need. We are definitely keeping it in mind as a possibility.

Yesterday, Josh and I arrive in a city called Riobamba in the province of Chimborazo. It was about a 3 hour drive from Quito and was suggested to us as a possible site for the clinic. We spent all this morning driving around to see a few clinics in the area to try to learn as much as possible. We arrived at Riobamba's public hospital and decided to ask if there was anyway we could meet with an administrator to learn about the available healthcare in Riobamba, and we just happened to arrive at the perfect time to have a meeting with the former head of public health for Chimborazo. God definitely made the meeting possible! This doctor currently works in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology at the public hospital, and he was a wealth of information for us. One thing we learned this morning was that we have a lot more investigating to do here before we draw any conclusions. This afternoon we have a meeting with the pastor of a local Baptist church. He has cooperated with MMI in the past on short-term mission trips and he knows a lot about the type of need that exists in the area. We plan on staying here at least another week and maybe more before moving on to our next city.

Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement! We miss home, but we are so blessed and happy to be here and pray that we can be used by the Lord in his work in Ecuador.

Here are some pictures of the tour that we got of Sangolqui. Enjoy!


We all met at the town square to start the tour




The church in the town square




Josh and I enjoying some Cuy!




We stopped to enjoy the beauty of a local ecological reserve




The Jefe Parrochial telling us about the healthcare needs of the local population




The whole group




Local transportation :)




A beautiful sunset at the end of the day


Love and God Bless,

Stephanie and Joshua

Quito!

Josh and I have been in Quito now for two weeks and I have to admit, I am loving the cooler weather! We enrolled at ANETA, the Ecuadorian driving school and have been in classes for the past week. It is a 9 day course, then we have to wait 12 business days for ANETA to send our approved paperwork and completed tests to the police station, and finally we can go to the police station, take another test and get our license. It's quite a process!

We spend 2 hours per day in the classroom learning theory and then 2 hours on the road practicing. Josh already knows how to drive a stick shift, but he's using the time to learn the layout of the city and the routes in and out. That way when we have medical teams fly into Quito, we'll be prepared. I'm slowly but surely learning how to drive a stick shift and my instructor said I should have no problem passing the driving test. Another good thing is that its 4 hours a day of Spanish practice because all of the teaching is in Spanish. We had a written test last Friday which Josh and I both aced :), and our driving test is on Wednesday.

One thing we've learned from this course is that there are penalties for EVERYTHING here. You even get penalized if you accidentally run out of gas! Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, we have yet to see the police actually pull someone over for anything. ANETA has talked a TON about seat belts which is great, but it kills me how many young kids I see in the backseats of cars crawling around without seat belts on, even though the parents are wearing theirs. We make sure that everybody in our car wears their seat belts all the time!

The week before we started classes, we stayed with our friends Larry and Amanda who live here in Quito. We met them at language school in Costa Rica and while we were staying with them they took us to HCJB to learn about their mission. HCJB is a Christian radio station and they also have a hospital. It's a wonderful organization. Amanda took us to the tutoring program where she works and she let us participate in her class that she teaches! Here are some pictures of our day in the classroom:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We played "Around the World" with the kids to help them with math and also help them learn their numbers in english. Here's a video of Josh leading the game:



The kids were SOOO cute!

We have a meeting this coming week to determine what city we'll be going to after we get our licenses. We'll keep you posted!!

Love and God Bless,

Stephanie and Josh

Loja

Well, Josh and I have our car now and in the past month we have seen a LOT of Ecuador!!

We have been driving using our US driver's license and we have about 6 weeks left to drive on that, but we are still working on getting our Ecuadorian drivers license. We think that we can go to Quito and get it because the laws are different there than here in Guayaquil. We have some wonderful missionary friends in Quito who have said that we can stay with them and they are helping us out a TON. Even though its frustrating, we have to remember that God is in control - even of the little details.

This past weekend we went on a 1000 mile journey through the mountainous province of Loja, Ecuador. Jone and Abner (the MMI architects that we are living with) were nice enough to be our guides and took us to 8 different cities to see if any of them were possible locations for the new permanent center that we will be building.

Here is the map of the cities that we visited:


View Larger Map

We started on Friday, March 4th and planned to drive along the coast to Huaqiullas to stay the night. Unfortunately, about 2 1/2 hours into the journey we encountered a really bad wreck between a bus and a tractor trailer and we ended up turning around to go back to Guayaquil to spend the night. We started again on Saturday morning and drove to Machala (B) to eat lunch. From Machala we drove to Alamor (C) where we stayed the night. Alamor is a small town on top of a mountain - beautiful!! The next day we drove to Casanga (D) where we met a pastor and his family and attended a church service at his church. He told us the story of planting and growing the church in the midst of a lot of persecution. It was a beautiful service and from there a member of the church accompanied us to Catamayo (E) and on to Loja (F) where we spent the night.

After visiting Catamayo, Josh and I think that it could be a strong candidate for the medical center. It has the right population, limited access to medical services currently, and a wonderful mountain climate. We plan to spend at least a few more weeks in Catamayo this year to find out more about it.

From Loja, we drove to Amaluza (G) and visited with a man living there who does a lot of mission work in both southern Ecuador and northern Peru. He and his family live humbly, but they love the Lord so much and do the work they've been given with joy. It was very inspiring to meet them. Although it was too small to be considered for the permanent center, we think it would be a great location for future 2-week MMI projects.

We returned to Loja from Amaluza and then continued on to Balsas (H) to stay the night Monday night. Tuesday morning we drove to Piñas (I) and Zaruma (J) before heading back to Guayaquil.

It was an exhausting trip, but we made a lot of contacts and we also have at least one potential location for the hospital!

In the next few weeks we will be working more on getting our license and also planning our trips to other parts of the country. Things are definitely getting busy and with so many things on our plate we pray that we can be good stewards of our time and resources.

Please pray for us with regard to getting our driver's license. It seems like a small thing, but it is vital to our job here. Also, we realized quickly that traveling in Ecuador, while beautiful, is extremely challenging. Please pray for our safety as we begin to travel outside of Guayaquil more often.

Copy and paste this link to see pictures from our journey through the province of Loja:

https://picasaweb.google.com/105001353895748308133/Loja#

Enjoy!

Love and God Bless,

Stephanie and Josh

We have been in Ecuador for 25 days and they have been packed full!

This past Saturday, we finished working a two-week project with 4 medical professionals from Missouri. The team worked at the hospital in Milagro and Josh and I helped manage the trip and did some translation for them. There were two medical residents, their attending, and an ophthalmic tech and they had been working with the medical director from the hospital in Milagro for a year arranging the details of their trip. This was a different sort of trip because in addition to the team spending time seeing patients and doing surgeries, the medical director here in Ecuador taught the doctors a different technique for cataract surgeries. It was really inspiring to see the team-work that took place.

The team arrived on January 29th and we spent the 30th doing a little sight-seeing and introducing them to Ecuador.



We climbed almost 500 steps to reach this lighthouse in Guayaquil!

The evening of the 30th we went to the hospital and arranged all of the supplies that they were able to bring so that they could start work first thing on Monday morning. They all worked VERY hard throughout the past year to acquire an incredible amount of donations from hospitals and medical companies in the states and they were even able to leave a lot of donated supplies for the hospital's use after they left.






Supplies the team brought

Everyone worked very hard that first week and it flew by. Before we knew it the weekend had arrived. The team decided they wanted to visit the mountains for their weekend excursion so we went to Cuenca. Cuenca is BEAUTIFUL! We stayed at a great little hotel, saw all the sites, and headed back to Milagro on Sunday in time to see the Super Bowl in Spanish at our hotel!

The second week of the trip went just as well as the first and the team left very happy last Saturday. We are so appreciative of their work and look forward to more MMI trips in the future!

Josh and I rested over the weekend and headed back to the hospital today. We were able to spend time observing the Social Worker and we also got to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the hospital:




Tomorrow we will be going to the transportation office to find out what we need to do to get our driver's license. Hopefully this process will be quick and painless but we are prepared for anything!

Oh, for all those who love T.J.Maxx and there incredible bargains, we found a "sister"-store (A.K.A. knock-off store) in Cuenca:




Happy Valentine's Day and God Bless,

Stephanie and Josh

Ecuador!

On Friday, January 21st at 2:00 am, Josh and I officially arrived in Guayaquil, Ecuador! We are so thrilled to be here after a year and a half of preparation. Thank you so much to everyone who supported us throughout this process!!!

We didn't waste any time getting down to business after we arrived. After a few hours of sleep, we got up and dressed and drove with our host Jone and our boss about an hour to the existing MMI permanent center in Milagro. We met the staff of the hospital and got a tour of the premises. Here are some pictures of the hospital:





Afterwards, we got some lunch and purchased a pre-payed cell phone so that we had a way to communicate with Jone. That evening we met again with the hospital staff and some members of the board of the hospital to discuss more details of our goals here in Ecuador. The meeting went very well and it was decided that we will spend most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the hospital to learn everything we can about how it is run.

We spent all day on Saturday in meetings with our boss planning out where we will travel and when, and also when we will begin to assist and direct short-term projects here in Ecuador. The plan is for us to live here in Guayaquil for about 2 months to learn the workings of the hospital and to take care of getting our visa registered, our censo (ID card), our license, and a car. Then we will travel around Ecuador doing site reports on multiple cities that are possible locations for the new permanent center. Throughout the year we will also assist the current project directors with short-term projects until we learn the ropes and can direct our own projects. Needless to say it will be a VERY busy year! After the meetings, we all went downtown and had dinner before our boss had to leave to go to Bolivia.

Yesterday, we attended a beautiful church:



and we finally got a chance to unpack! It is nice to feel settled in here and to begin working. Today we have been working through some of the documents from our meetings the past few days, and we spent about 3 hours at the Subdireccion General de Extranjeria starting the process of getting our Visa registered. We didn't quite have all of the papers we needed, but now we think we have everything, and we are planning to return to the office tomorrow to finish up with this part.

The past few days have been hectic, overwhelming and stressful, but also so exciting! We know that God is with us and that brings us comfort and the confidence that we need to begin this enormous job. Please pray that we are able to obtain all of the paperwork that we need so that we can get our censo and license as quickly as possible. That way we can focus 100% on our work in the hospital. We will keep everyone posted on how it goes!

Love and God Bless,

Stephanie and Joshua

Costa Rican Thanksgiving!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving everyone!

Josh and I have had an awesome couple of weeks celebrating with gringos and Ticos alike. We did have classes on Thanksgiving Day (I was so bummed to have to miss the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Dog Show!) but we got together with a group of friends that evening and had a fairly traditional Thanksgiving meal. Then on Saturday Josh and I cooked another Thanksgiving meal for our Tica family so that they could share that experience with us. It was delicious! We had chicken instead of turkey (the turkeys here cost $72 a piece!), but otherwise we had what a lot of you probably had on Thanksgiving - mashed potatoes, corn casserole, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, bread, salad and pumpkin pie. It was a lot of fun and our family really enjoyed and appreciated it.

Yesterday marked our being in Costa Rica for 7 months and we have 2 weeks left. It's definitely hard to believe. We took our "final exams" last Friday and found out today that we both did very well. The exam is more like a final evaluation and includes a 30 minute oral exam and a 2.5 hour written exam. It was very challenging but we are thrilled with our grades and how much we have progressed since we arrived here.

We will continue to have classes through next Thursday and then we will graduate from ILE on Friday and hop on a plane to good old NC on Sunday, December 12th. We cannot wait to see family, friends and of course pets :). We both know that the goodbyes that we say here will be incredibly difficult. The bonds formed here are so strong and I know a lot of tears will be shed, but we have the hope of seeing each other again - if not in this life then in heaven before our King!

We can't wait to see you all in a few weeks!!

Love and God Bless,

Stephanie and Josh

P.S. Here are some pics from the past couple of weeks:


A game of touch football with friends - and that's AMERICAN football, not soccer!


Josh and I cooking up some American traditions (doesn't Josh look cute in his apron?!)


Our Tica family after a wonderful Thanksgiving meal


Thanksgiving Day meal with friends


A friend of ours (6'10") with a Kuna Indian from Panama. God created us in all shapes and sizes!

What a busy month we've had!! Josh and I are very involved both inside and outside the school and we are so thankful for the opportunities that God has provided. As an update from our last blog, the prayer cards that we ordered came in and we are so excited to be able to mail them to everyone when we get back to the states in December!

We had our mid-term evaluations from our teachers today and both of us received A's in all of our classes. :) Knowing that we only have 7 weeks left does add some pressure to our learning though. We are so thrilled with our progress over the past 6 months - it really is amazing - but we don't want to lose a moment of the time we have left here with these great teachers and our Tica family. This week is Spiritual Emphasis week at the Institute which means that they bring in a pastor/missionary to share with the students twice a day to "refill our spiritual tanks" since language learning can definitely be draining. To encourage everyone in the institute to attend the after-school sessions, the teachers cannot assign homework or give tests this week. It is undoubtedly refreshing and I trust that it will give everyone the break that they need to push through to the end of the trimester.

The past month has provided some challenges that are par for the course when living in another country and probably foreshadow issues that Josh and I will have in Ecuador. We have made some very close friends living here, two of whom are Jessica and Tim who are a couple who will be staying in Costa Rica and starting a business in the construction industry while sharing the gospel. Since they will be living here, they have purchased a car and we have made plans on about 3 different Saturdays now to take a day-trip to the coast (about 2 hours away) and see the beach. About a month ago on a Wednesday we decided that the next Saturday we would go to the coast in their car. Well, after huge downpours at the end of the week, all three of the routes to the beach were washed out. In place of the beach, we headed into the mountains to explore and ended up having a really nice day! Well, two weeks later, the roads were all fixed and we packed up the car at 7am Saturday morning and hit the road. We made it to the gas station on the corner and the attendant accidentally put diesel in their car instead of gasoline. Needless to say that put a kink in the plans and we had to get their poor car towed to the mechanic's shop so that the engine could be flushed. Again, that day we ended up visiting the market and cooking a great dinner together and had a great time even though we weren't at the beach. Finally last weekend we were bound and determined to make it to the coast and it turns out the fuel pump on the car has to be replaced. I feel so badly for Tim and Jess as they have had to make so many repairs to their only mode of transportation, and I am trying to mentally prepare myself for issues such as these to arise in Ecuador. Just as Tim and Jessica did we will be sure to purchase our car from a reliable source, but used cars in Latin America just aren't as reliable as in the states, not to mention that cars cost about twice as much in Latin America than in the US. But, as Teo Beato one of our MMI mentors famously says, "if you aren't flexible, you will break," so you just have to keep a sense of humor about it all. God willing, we will make it to the beach before we head back to the states. ;-)

We are continuing to teach English as a Second Language and it is such a wonderful experience. We have the beginners' class so we are trying hard to balance teaching them a lot of material but not going too fast. As the leaders of this ministry remind us though, the real point is to take advantage of opportunities to share God's word. We teach for 50 minutes, have a 20 minute time of sharing and Bible study, and then teach for 50 more minutes. We are so glad to have gotten involved in this ministry and feel like a lot of times we are learning just as much or more than the students are!

As we get closer to January when we head to Ecuador, we ask for your prayers about every aspect of the upcoming transition. We are beginning the process of obtaining our missionary visas and of course thinking much more concretely about our first steps once we get on the ground. God is putting some amazing contacts in our path including the head of the board of directors of Clinica Biblica, the largest private hospital in Costa Rica. He works with Latin American Missions in addition to his work with the hospital and we were able to meet with him this week. We spoke for about 2 hours and we are very excited about the insight that he can provide about the healthcare industry in Latin America. He will definitely be a valuable resource as we move forward.

It's hard to believe that after about a year and a half of preparation, we are almost there!!

As always, thank you so much for your love, support and prayers. We'll be sending out our quarterly update in November so keep an eye on the mailbox!

Love and God Bless,

Stephanie and Josh