English teaching begins...

The day we had been waiting for arrives and school begins! Amazingly it is very openly Christian, but there are of course students from all walks of life who attend, and the low school fees enable those from poor backgrounds to be able to attend also. Here in Ecuador officially the school system is free and compulsory for all kids, but in practice it ends up that the parents have to pay some fees.

Financially it has been a hard Summer this 2007, as of course we had a summer without work for both of us, after we left Central America and flew down South to Ecuador. Due to the annoying nature of teaching that you have long summer holidays ( only joking of course this is delightful once you are in a teaching job !! ) but it has meant a long wait until September to commence teaching once again. Family and friends have been good to us though and God is faithful to provide. We love the verse "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all other things will be provided for you ." This is not an excuse to be lazy and we need to work hard, but we need to be prepared to do whatever we need to do to bring glory to God. Sometimes this will involve "taking up our cross and following him" and dying to our own selfish ambitions and desires. On the other hand there are dreams that our creator gives us, for example Rhoda felt we may be in Ecuador one day, before we had even arrived in Belize, and Daniel has always felt that this was a God-given dream because why in the physical should she think of such a thing when we at the time had not even begun our year in Belize.



Another amazing story happened after we had left Belize and were staying at a hotel in Mexico waiting for our permits to come to enable us to go to Ecuador. This was a very trying time for us as a few days wait turned into a few weeks and eventually we began to feel we had to return to England as it was very expensive waiting, with no certain assurance that our visas may even come through. We decided therefore we had no choice but to book flights that night and return to England. In our room that night we prayed that if God wanted us to be in Ecuador that we would receive email confirmation by the end of a football match we had decided to watch. At half time in the game we could´nt wait any longer and went to check the email but there was no news, however a couple of minutes before the end of the match an email did then arrive from the consulate saying we had permission to go to Ecuador to teach !! Some people might say the word ""coincidence"" about this story, but then others would also believe that the world coming into being is just pure luck. We strongly believe nothing happens just by chance.

We are continuing to enjoy thid very beautiful country and the people have been very open and friendly towards us. God has been richly blessing us and we have already had opportunities to visit some other places outside the city here..for example our Pastor from church and his family took us to stay with them at their lovely apprtment by the seaside..and we also enjoyed staying for a few nights at a hostel in the mountains..enabling us to go on many beautiful walks and the scenery was spectacular-we had a wonderful break just before school commenced.

Food is often different here but very interesting and (mostly) delicious. A popular snack is "choch chos" which is like a bean snack that people here tend to eat instead of junk food like crisps, and the seafood is totally amazing (they have many restaurants dedicated totally to it) and the national dish is CEVICHE which is a dish of shrimps, prawns, octopus, crab and fish in a tomato sauce served with a side of popcorn and banana chips! Below is a picture of Rhoda about to tuck into a seafood soup, topped off with a whole crab, for which you need a hammer to break the shell!!

Although Ecuador is a very poor developing nation, with many beggars and poor street children always trying to sell you anything and everything (even one sweet for 5cents!) as with all countries we always get to see the old and the new alongside each other as it is striving to become slowly but surely more developed. We are here at an exciting time of change and growth where people are looking to riches to make them happy (i.e. taking their model from the states and other western nations) we come to tell them that only Jesus can bring true lasting satisfaction and happiness which is everlasting and for all eternity.