English Convention 09

The Bethel Grounds are really pretty...

Christian is a good friend who always finds us places to stay when we visit Guayaquil. Mom and Dad, he sends his greetings to you guys.

(Assembly hall grounds at Bethel)Well, I can’t believe we are back home already. After a year of anticipating the English Convention, I wish it lasted a bit longer than 3 days. This year was even better than last years, as the theme of the Convention fit in so well with the lifestyles of the audience. As mentioned before, about 90% of the attendance is made up of Bethelites, Missionaries, Special Pioneers, Regular Pioneers, Circuit Overseers, and people serving in foreign language. The rest are family members visiting the Bethelites, Missionaries, Special Pioneers, Regular Pioneers, Circuit Overseers and people serving in foreign language. :) Or people who are interested in doing so. The information on the program is tailored a bit to apply specifically to these people and these life styles. This is something we all appreciate very much. The experiences and interviews too are from people in our same circumstances and the advice they offer is super practical and helpful.

There is so much we’d like to share from the Trip, the Program and the Friends, I’m going to break it up in three parts, with pictures in between. 1. The trip. 2. The Program and experiences. 3. Other friends serving here.

THE TRIP:
...me waiting outside our new house with our luggage, on our way to the airport. It is garbage day as you can see…

Ok, so the trip there to Guayaquil was quite pleasant. We decided to use this as our luxury vacation, which we do once a year. So instead of taking a 10 hour chicken bus, we took a 30 minute plane ride. And instead of staying on cockroach infested floors with the local brothers and sisters, we saved up to stay at the Sheraton, at least a couple of the nights. As we walked out of the gate at the Airport, there was a man standing there from the Sheraton with our names on a board. He took our luggage and brought us to an air conditioned van waiting for us.

We got in at the Hotel around noon and decided to take advantage of the Hotel, went swimming, checked out the gym, walked across the highway via the bridge they built, connecting the mall to the hotel. There is a little café there where you can sit outside and watch the taxis go by. In the city, every other car is a taxi. That night, we slept in luxurious comfort like never before. The beds are amazing and the flat screen was pretty cool too. We never opened a single door ourselves, not even entering the pool area. After we got out of the pool, we were offered hot coffee, fruit and giant towels. It was pretty sweet…

The technology of the hotel, and security as well, was so advanced that once you got into the elevator, you had to swipe your room key before the elevator would activate. With your room key swiped, you could only choose your room floor, or the common floors with the pool, etc… you could not go to whatever floor you wanted. Once it wouldn’t recognize our key, so we went up and down and up and down with everyone else before it would finally let us go to our floor. Anyway, in the morning, we waited for our bus to take all of us to the Branch where the Convention was. There were a number of Witnesses staying there. We met a ton of families, retired couples, and newlyweds who had just moved here to Ecuador to serve. They were so excited; it reminded us of ourselves just a year ago.
...me and andrea on the bus.

THE PROGRAM AND EXPERIENCES:
So most of you I think have already had your Convention right? So you know how encouraging it was to stay focused like never before on how we are living our life and what is our top priority. The sense of urgency that we have toward the preaching work is so vital because people’s lives are at stake. Of course we already knew this, but didn’t the program make you think about it in a different light? It did for me. Mostly, we in the audience were encouraged to stick close to our assignments here and not let things from back home distract us or lure us away from full-time service. Also, how to keep our eye simple living here, because we tend to want to make our homes like they were back in the States or where ever we come from, but then we can easily lose focus of why we came here in the first place and get distracted by materialism, even in this country.

We really liked the point made that our conversations between doors should not hinder our conversations at the door, meaning that our conversation with our service partner should be upbuilding and easily interruptable, so as not to hurry along our presentation to get back to our “gossip.” We, as full timers are to take the lead in this area, as well as in our usage of cell phones and doing errands. Here the brothers will often answer their cell phones at the doors and stop service to do errands. The cell phone thing was weird at first, but we’ve found ourselves relaxing our habits due to this trend.
Our friend Jon from our congregation showing off the new brochure, “What is the Bible’s Message.” Awesome brochure…
(Bible study stats) I like listening to the experiences and interviews at the English Convention because they are unrehearsed and much more informal than the normal Conventions. The honest and crazy experiences and opinions of the ones interviewed would never be allowed back home. Makes for some pretty funny moments though. Add to that the Huge Iguana that slowly crawled in the rafters above the speaker, and the birds flying and singing all around us, it’s a pretty neat atmosphere to have an assembly in.

(Other language group stats) A Missionary brother, serving here in Ecuador for 45 years opened his talk by saying how grateful he was for all the donations that made possible the arrangement to send Missionaries to their home town to attend their own Convention. He is from Kansas City, and he said, “We were glad to go home this year for the Convention in Kansas City. The program was real nice, but Brothers, don’t nothing compare to the English Convention in Ecuador!"

Me and Andrea in the line for coffee.

There was a very elderly brother who gave a talk on Sunday who has been a Missionary for 50 years now! What a record! He was so cute because he couldn’t deliver his whole talk in English. He kept filling parts with words, phrases and sentences in Spanish without noticing. He would say please turn to Matthew capitulo five, verse ocho. It was so cute! A few other brothers had the same problem, sometimes not being able to express something well in English, even though it is their first language, so they would just say it in Spanish.
Hannah and kim
The baptism. There were two young ones baptized and an older sister baptized.
Another very nice interview was from a mother and son from the US serving here. It was about fathers taking the lead in the family. Well the son has Down Syndrome and is very animated. During his mothers interview, he kept fixing his hair, emphatically pretending to have a comb, he’d brush it, then with grand gestures put the invisible comb back in his pocket. Then he’d give the thumbs up sign to the audience. Well when it was his turn, the Brother asked him who helps him prepare his comments for the meeting and who reads the bible with him. He carefully scanned the audience, found his father, and threw his arm out, with an accusing finger point to his father and said, “HIM! THAT GUY. MY… OWN…. FATHER!” It was cute, then he gave his dad a thumbs up and left the stage.
The interviews with the husbands and wives went over quite well too, where the brothers were interviewed about the roles of their wives, and the wives about their husbands. There were tears all around as the brothers explained why they love their wives so much and how much they appreciate their spirit of willingness living here. Both of the interviews ended with the brothers turning to the audience and telling their wives how much they love and appreciate them.
Fausto from our congregation ran into the Missionary sister who had studied the bible with him and brought him into the truth. Look how cute she is. She gave an interview of what it was like being among the first missionaries in the country. Very nice…
As usual, there was information in the back, statistics of the preaching work and congregations here in Ecuador. We even learned that there is a Kichwa group in New York!

OTHER FRIENDS SERVING HERE…

Carlitos, our friend Christian and some Australian dude.
In front is the Sister who we stayed with last year, Solange. Also a sister serving here from Oregon.
A.J. and Jordan, a cute couple who just moved here from Ohio, serving in another mountain town called Cuenca. We have plans to visit them next month.
Riley, from Canada just graduated from School and is checking out the lay of the land to see if he wants to serve here. Nice face...
Some of you might know Jamaal, from Portland. He’s been serving on the Coast here for maybe 2 or 3 years I think. We met and became friends in New York. And last year were surprised to find out that we were both now serving in Ecuador. Small world.
The Tumbaco crowd came for the Sunday session. I think 4 of them speak English.
We had no idea Chris Isaak would be attending…
Carlos, Arden, Arden’s mom, (sorry, don’t remember your name…), and Jorge.

Night of the party…
I think I was practicing my sweet dance moves here.

We had to walk through the ghetto to get to the party with our luggage for reasons that are way too complicated to explain here. And of course, one of the bags handle broke and wouldn’t come out. Here is Christian trying to get it out.
And Nick trying…
And the final result.
Good times… Can’t wait for next year.