First Impressions

Hello everyone! Well, we made it safe, although the travel was quite the ordeal, especially with as much luggage as we felt necessary to bring. But we are here and I can say some what established. The last week here has been a non stop roller coaster ride of meeting new people, running all over the city getting kinks worked out, preparing our apartment for living, and trying to get familiar with our congregation and territory. We would have written sooner, but that was just impossible. We as of yet still do not have easy access to the internet, which is why I am unable to load pictures this time around. As soon as we have internet in our apartment, we will be able to do so.

Some quick first impression:

Our congregation is awesome. Extremely welcoming and helpful. We´ve made a number of good friends already. The first three days we were in the country, we had three separate invitations for lunch (they do not eat dinner here, just a big lunch, thus the lunch invites, as opposed to dinner, which we are accustomed to.) Our bookstudy overseer (dear brother) has already made an informal "visit of encouragement" to us at our apartment the other night, stressing the importance of leaning on them (all 2 elders for a congregation of about 90) when we need help or encouragement, along with a number of suggestions for home sickness and physical sickenss, due to being in a new county. Any reservations we may have been having before then, disappeared. It´s a really loving hall, we are very glad to be part of it. And it appears that they are very glad to have us!

The service is like any other service in a developing country (although i should mention that the particular area we are living in, actually outside of our territory, is very comfortable. Quite dirty and poor to our standards, but our apartment is very comfortable and so is the kingdom hall. There are shopping malls and an import store where we can find peanut butter and other things from the states.) Anyway, service is walking on dirt roads. That is what we do the majority of our time is walk. Very long distances. It´s a very slow paced walk as you can imagine. It is informal in that you do what you have to do to get the message to people without having to worry about all the PC rules we have to follow in the states. If that means going in the back yard and helping a mother wash her clothes while preaching, so she doesn´t have to stop, so be it. Or if it means saying, ¨well I can understand that your not interested, but I need to tell you something anyway before I go.¨ And then share the most important scriptures you can think of. And they will usually allow you to get your witness in at least. The brothers and sisters here are so well equipped to give a good witness. They will actually ask the person what is on their mind and taylor an entire study right there for them and try to help them solve their particular problem with the bible. We preach to children for just as long as the adults no matter what their age.I think all the children of Tumbaco must know Jehovah´s name by now.

The street dogs are a hinderance and the heat and altitude have given me a head ache every day I`ve been here so far, but hopefully that will pass. The people are quite respectful, although I wouldn´t say friendly. The culture is very respectful and reserved. People don´t get into other people´s business and that includes greetings on the street. So it´s pretty typical to not be acknowledged on the streets, which is nice for foreigners I guess, not too much undue or unwanted attention. But they are respectful and hard working people.

The language. Wow, what a challenge we have here. There are a couple of people who speak limited, broken english, but even then, not many. We have found no one in the territory yet who speaks english yet either. It´s challenging, but immersion was the goal, so there we go. We have had to do many things in spanish that have made us feel a bit more confident in our abiblities... Service every day with the brothers and sisters, doing our apt contract with our landlord, purchasing certain appliances and arranging deliveries, daily things like that. Everyone is extremely patient and encouraging, praising our spanish as we botch it to pieces. They are excited to get to change our Mexican spanish into theirs though for sure.

The weather is warm, but not too hot yet. It will be in the months to come. It rains in the afternoons now, but that too is about to stop here shortly. It´s quite dusty and the air is dirty from exhaust. But the moutnains and the views are beautiful.

Anyway, more specifics and photos to come. Tonight, some friends are taking us into the city to see the historic sector. So we´ll be tourists tonight and then go back to being Tumbaco locals tomorrow.

Celeste and Fernando say hello to everyone back home. What a blessing to have had them to help us the first week here. They are now on a 3 weeks District Overseer sub visit on the coast. So we won´t see them for a bit. We are also off to Guayaquil on the coast to visit Bethel and introduce ourselves. Should be fun. We´ll keep you posted!

Hannah will be posting next with some field experiences and some photos.

Take care. Hasta Luego.
elsie

p.s. if you´ve access to a phone card, you can get our home phone number from my parents and give us a ring. hope to hear from you soon!