Church

Today was quite the interesting day at church.  First of all, I left the house late and there wasn't any taxis for the first few blocks, but I finally saw one that was empty.  Normally it's not a big deal, but leaving the house late and then walking for 20-30 minutes tends to make one REALLY late for church. :)  When I got there there was a group from Canada, doing evangelism in Sucua, a town about 10-30 minutes from here (10 min if you drive your own car, 30 min by bus).  One of the men preached and it was as if I was back at Salem Alliance in my childhood.  We used to joke that the Canadians were taking over the church, since the head pastor, the worship pastor, their wives and all of the high school interns were from Canada. :)  Plus they're from 2 different Alliance churches in Canada, so it was cool to hear someone with a similar background, doesn't happen every day!  They even knew of Salem Alliance, I think, at least they appeared somewhat familiar with it when talking with them afterward.

At the end of  the service, the youth/worship pastor got up and made a few announcements, one of which to let everyone know that the Shuar Bible is now translated and at the end of the month there's going to be a big dedication service for it, in Macuma.  He invited everyone who wants to go to get together and form groups for traveling.  After the service was over, I was talking with a couple who are going with a group of Shuar to the dedication and invited me to go along.  I'd love to go!!!  The entertaining part is that there are only 2 ways to get to Macuma, the fast way and the slow way. :)  The fast way is by a 5 person plane.  The slow way is to take the bus for a couple hours and then walk 3 hours, they're no roads!  Lois, a retired missionary here, was telling us that part of the trail includes crossing rivers on logs and stuff like that.  I think it would be awesome!!  I just have to figure out if the timing will work out.  It's on a Saturday, but it's the Saturday in the middle of getting ready for the school year.  I think it would be absolutely amazing to be able to go! :)  To get to be at the ceremony dedicating the Bible in a new language.  I hope I can work it out.

Then after church, I went out to eat with a couple other "gringos" to a new restaurant.  It has the exact same name as another restaurant in town and serves the same type of foods, but the other place is still open, so I'm not sure what's up.  They're only a couple blocks apart, too, so I kinda doubt that it's a case of franchising or anything, but who knows.  What was really funny was when we got there it was semi full, mostly with Ecuadorians, but there was one table of what looked like gringo tourists.  That still throws me off, since I'm used to being the only blonde person around, it's almost as weird for me to see another blonde, as it is for the Ecuadorians!  I never did figure out if they were from the States or not, though, since I couldn't really hear them speaking, and when I did it was a Spanish with an accent, it wasn't Ecuadorian Spanish, but it didn't have the cadence of a native English speaker, either.  Then about 15 minutes later a group walked up, very obviously tourists, one girl even had an Ecuador guide book!  I'm not quite sure why she had the guide book, though, unless it was for useful phrases, because there's rarely anything on the Amazonian region in the guidebooks, and if there is, it's mostly full of things in the northern jungle, there'd be little to no information on Macas.  Hopefully she figured that out! :)  So, they walked in and were asking for chairs, so that they could all sit around the 1 table that was open.  Then the owner (I assume that's who it was, at least) walked out and had the other group of gringos move their table over (the 2 groups were next to each other).  I assumed they knew each other until I heard someone say, "but we don't know each other".  The guy told them that it didn't matter!  It was sooo hard not to laugh really loudly!! :)  The table next to us only had 1 guy and when he was done, the 2nd group moved over to his table, making me laugh even more.  Those poor people!  At least it provided  me with some amusement at lunch. :)  It was odd though, I think there were more gringos than Ecuadorians there, a first, I would imagine. :)  It's actually getting more common to see whiter people on the streets.  My first year down here, I don't think I saw anyone else, then the 2nd year I came, there were a few.  This year I've seen some, but not too many.  I don't usually see many gringos, unless I'm in Quito or Cuenca.  I probably would when I go to Guayaquil, but I don't hang out in the areas that they go to, so I don't think I have, other than the missionary family at the seminary.

I really need to do better at taking pictures, but I keep forgetting to pull out my camera in class, and I haven't done anything outside of class to take pictures of, maybe this week, I hope! :)