February Prayer Letter

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
Proverbs 16 v 9

El Corazon visit
In mid-January I visited the community of El Corazon with Martin Harrison and two visitors. El Corazon is located about an hour from Quito at the foot of the El Corazon mountain, it is a mestizo community with no church nor any Christians living there. Some attempts have been made in the past to capture the springs up in the mountain and bring the water down to the community using a hosepipe arrangement. We climbed up 1000m above the community along the pipeline to the spring capture, finding numerous pipe breaks and that the inlets were clogged with silt. The locals who accompanied us said that they had not had water for over two months. HCJB will commence design of a new system in the next few months which will bring water direct into every home. There will also be opportunities to carry out activities to share the gospel through words. I hope to return in June to help with a team of vets who will attend to the community’s animals and run a kids’ club.

Martin supervises the excavation of our pick-up during a “pause” in the mud on the way up the mountain!

Shell
I travelled down to Shell, on the edge of the jungle, at the end of January to take the Leadership course and to work for a time alongside Alex and Alfredo Leon. Alex (English, Isle of Wight) and Alfredo (Ecuadorian) are both water engineers. Together they form the Water Projects Shell office carrying out projects in a very different environment to our other projects in the Sierra (mountainous region) and Costa (coast). Almost all the communities in which they work can only be reached by air and by walking. The logistics of travel mean that they are away from their Shell home for a week at a time. Work has therefore been even more challenging since Benjamin, their first son, was born in September.
Our plans for January had been to fly into the jungle and walk to the community of Amazonas where we would work for a week. Unfortunately MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship – with whom we fly) have been struggling with new legislation which, so far, means that none of their non-Ecuadorian pilots are permitted to fly. At present, MAF have just one Ecuadorian pilot upon whom their full workload has fallen. Consequently, we were unable to make the trip as planned to Amazonas. Instead, I worked in the Shell office for nearly two weeks, completing drawings and designs for another project. It was very satisfying work. I stayed during that time with an Ecuadorian lady, Martha. Previously, Martha had worked as a maid to a missionary family but with the departure of that family last May, so her job departed also. It was a privilege to be able to help her financially for the 10 days I stayed with her.
I will be returning in March to Shell to stay until the end of May. I will be working in the office and in the jungle to construct a water system in the small community of Mutints. I hope to spend a lot of time in the community, working on the project and building relationships with the people there.

Wheaton College Folk Religions course
Last week I attended a course on Folk Religions at HCJB under the auspices of Wheaton College. Despite missing the first two days due to flu, I found it fascinating since it was a subject I had little explored before, especially coming from a Western, reformed background. The course emphasised the importance of exploring the culture first and understanding the origins of the traditions, rituals and customs in place before sharing the gospel. The oft-repeated phrase “Jesus came to save us from our sins” can completely intelligible in some cultures where the nature of sin and an all powerful God of love are utterly foreign. It has provided much food for thought as I prepare to stay in the jungle communities.

Parents
My parents arrived last week and have been enjoying getting to know Quito and the various areas of service in which I participate in here. They have volunteered at Spotlight Listeners Club where Ecuadorians come along to listen to a very clear English radio broadcast and hold discussion in groups. The discussion questions are presented so that an opportunity to share the Christian faith is afforded. My parents each ran a small group and had a great time doing it! On Sunday, my dad came along to chop vegetables and serve food at Pan de Vida. Pan de Vida is a food programme for the less fortunate of Quito. On Sunday, the programme includes a church service and provision of a hearty meal. Other programmes throughout the week include a clothes closet, sewing lessons and after-school help for children.

My parents and I at the HCJB compound in Quito

In the next month…
- taking time off work to travel and spend time with my parents before they leave 9th March.
- moving to Shell and starting work on water projects there
Prayer points
- Pray for wisdom as appropriate activities and studies are planned to coincide with the Water Projects work in El Corazon. Pray that God will be preparing hearts in that place for the time HCJB will be in the community.
- Pray for MAF who are struggling to complete their work and that enough flights can run to permit the Water Projects work in the jungle communities to continue unhindered. As you can imagine this is a frustrating time for MAF.
- Pray that my parents and I will have safe and enjoyable travels around Ecuador.
- Please continue to pray that I will be able to discern God’s will for my life in relation to longer term international mission service.

10 Ways to avoid becoming a missionary

I found this through a link on the OSCAR website...

1. Ignore Jesus' request in John 4:35 that we take a long hard look at the fields. Seeing the needs of people can be depressing and very unsettling. It could lead to genuine missionary concern.
   (John 4:35 "Do you not say, `Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest."
2. Focus your energies on socially legitimate targets. Go after a bigger salary. Focus on getting a job promotion, a bigger home, a more luxurious car, or future financial security. Along the way, run up some big credit card debts.
3. Get married to somebody who thinks the “Great Commission” is what your employer gives you after you make a big sale. After marriage, embrace the socially accepted norms of settling down, establishing a respectable career trajectory and raising a picture-perfect family.
4. Stay away from missionaries. Their testimonies can be disturbing. The situations they describe will distract you from embracing whole-heartedly the materialistic lifestyle of your home country.
5. If you happen to think about missions, restrict your attention to countries where it's impossible to openly do missionary work. Think only about North Korea, Saudi Arabia, China and other closed countries. Forget the vast areas of our globe open to missionaries. Never, never listen to talk about creative access countries.
6. Think how bad a missionary you would be based on your own past failures. It is unreasonable to expect you will ever be any better. Don't even think about Moses, David, Jonah, Peter or Mark, all of whom overcame failures.
7. Always imagine missionaries as talented, super-spiritual people who stand on lofty pedestals. Maintaining this image of missionaries will heighten your own sense of inadequacy. Convincing yourself that God does not use ordinary people as missionaries will smother any guilt you may feel about refusing to even listen for a call from God.
8. Agree with the people who tell you that you are indispensable where you are. Listen when they tell you that your local church or home country can't do without you.
9. Worry incessantly about money.
10. If you still feel you must go, go out right away without any preparation or training. You'll soon be home again and no one can ever blame you for not trying!

You can see the full thing here:
http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/10ways.htm

January Prayer Letter

Happy New Year!

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not
consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3 v 21-24

Parasite Medicine trip
I travelled back to Chimborazo and Lupaxi Chico in mid-December to help our hygiene worker, Tannia Lascano, distribute parasite medicines. We were accompanied by a doctor from the Ministry of Health who turned out to be a Christian also. This was really encouraging as we were able to pray as a group before starting each day´s work. We visited four communities and enjoyed their hospitality also, I had ´caldo de pata´ for the first time – cow´s foot soup. It was very tasty. The work to distribute the medicines highlighted, once more, that to gain the benefits of clean water; good hygiene practices must be followed. Wash your hands, everybody!

Joining our hygiene promoters, Tannia and Gladys (far left and right), and the local doctor to distribute medicines.

Zambiza Dump Christmas Party
At the start of December I volunteered along with hundreds others to help at party held for the people who live near and work on one of Quito´s rubbish dumps. The event was run by Extreme Response, an organisation who works with these people throughout the year also. The party was attended by about 3,500 who played games, listened to live music and had their photograph taken with Santa! An evangelism team moved through the site taking opportunities to chat to people and share the gospel. I was in charge (don´t know how I managed that!) of a team to distribute lunch, a bag of toys for the children and a bag of staple foods for each family. It was great fun especially working together with mainly local Christians.

Fiestas!
December felt like a whole month of festivals in Quito! Quito Day was on 6th December and was
marked by Fiesta Brava (the Ferocious Festival!) of bullfighting, concerts and chiva rides. A chiva is an open-sided bus with a brass band on top which travels on trips around the city. Everyone blows whistles, waves flags, shouts ´Viva Quito!´ and gets out for a dance in the street halfway round!
Christmas Eve is the day that Ecuador celebrates Christmas and I was invited to spend the evening with Isabel, my Spanish teacher´s family. The evening involved karaoke, turkey and opening presents as midnight approached. I spent Christmas Day with a number of HCJB families. New Year´s Eve is all about burning the old year, año viejos (something like a Guy for 5th November) were on sale from Christmas. On one of the main streets in Quito large displays of these año viejos were set up, they were mainly on a political theme with Bush, Obama and Correa (Ecuadorian president) featuring heavily. Elsewhere the theme seemed to be Kung Fu Panda…I don´t know why!

Año Viejos for sale on the street

Work
I have been finding work in the office difficult in the past month. For various reasons the projects I´ve mentioned in previous prayer letters have, all but one, fallen through. Whilst this has been frustrating, the next few months will involve work on the water projects for 2009 and travelling to start work on a jungle water project out of Shell.

In the next month…
- attending a seminar at HCJB on leadership
- some time in Shell to familiarise myself in advance of going to live there from March, also hopefully travelling to jungle communities to help with projects
- moving to another apartment this week

Prayer points
- Praise that I had a lovely Christmas and for the warmth and kindness of so many people who
invited me round during this time and those who posted cards and presents to me here.
- Please pray for work here, I really want to be of use and to learn too, pray that I will learn what God is teaching me through all these experiences.
- Pray that God will use the conversations held at the dump party and especially for the police
chief, William, who questioned why we were helping the people and wanted to accept Christ.

November Prayer Letter

Hello!

What a busy month-and-a-bit it´s been!

Trip to Esmeraldas
At the end of September I accompanied one of Water Projects´ engineers, Cesar Cortez, to Esmeraldas province to visit some of his projects. Esmeraldas is a coastal province where Cesar has worked for 10 years, mainly providing water through drilling wells in many of the communities.
Esmeraldas was very different from Quito, the temperature rose into the thirties and the vegetation changed to sugar cane and banana plantations as we made the 9,000 ft descent to the coast from the Andes.
This was my first trip out of Quito and I was struck by the poverty in these communities where the houses are mainly one or two room, timber structures. The communities we visited were centred around the football pitch, Esmeraldas province provides most of the players for the national football team. Alongside the community development work, Cesar also carries out pastor training and mentoring in this province.

Unfortunately I fell ill before we could travel up the Cayapas River to visit communities in which water projects are ongoing or in the planning stage. I will be involved in the design of the water supply network for San Miguel, one of those communities.

Community Development course
HCJB invited Dr Dick Crespo from Wheaton College in Illinois to facilitate the above course. Dr Crespo´s aim was to get us thinking about how truly gospel-integrated community development can be achieved. How can community development be thoroughly integrated rather than just doing community development with a gospel message ´tacked´ on the side? It was challenging and gave us a lot to think about. Please pray for Martin and Ruth Harrison who have just assumed the role as Director for Community Development for HCJB and will be endeavouring to implement what was learnt and discussed.

Harrogate Work Team

Mayfield Community Church in Harrogate, the Harrisons´ home church, sent a team of 10 to work on projects for two weeks and I went along to help. Our first stop was Carabuela where, for two days, we helped with concreting the top slab to the reservoir and backfilling some trenches where pipes had already been laid. The Carabuela project is a large one, work has been going on since March and is set to continue until well into next year.Placing concrete to the reservoir top slab in Carabuela

The second community visited was Lupaxi Chico in Chimborazo province, about 5 hours south of Quito. Here we stayed in an old church building and, in the mornings, helped with construction of concrete floor slabs for latrines at a number of houses. In the afternoons, the team ran a Bible club for the children (Children only attend school until 1pm in Ecuador). We played games, the team acted out a Bible story which was narrated in Spanish and then they did some colouring in. The children loved it and the adults were also eager to do some colouring in too! Each evening the church held special services, making the most of the team´s presence and also that of Efraim´s preaching, a technician with HCJB who is also a pastor. The members of the local Catholic church were invited to attend these services too. At the final evening´s service, the secretary of the community´s water committee was presented, with his family, to the church. He had been living apart from his family but, as a result of the week of services and preaching, he had been moved to come back to the Lord and be reconciled with his family. Other members of his family had also become Christians that week too and, on our last night, the church was able to pray for them and praise God for how he has worked.Chimborazo volcano

Despite the language barrier, the team felt that they were able to build relationships with the community and the community enjoyed having us visit them too. It is hard to describe everything that happened and that we experienced during our 5 days in Lupaxi Chico so here´s a very brief resumé: judging a singing competition, excitement of children in receiving half an apple after washing their hands, watching our dinner be slaughtered, watching the whole operation of the community cooking for 120 people for our last evening, finding a chicken claw in my soup, lowering the minibus down a mud track by ropes, baffling the locals by photographing everything (trains, worms, pig being killed), playing Duck, Duck, Goose with the kids, hail so hard that we had to shout to be heard in our tin-roofed house, Chimborazo volcano in the morning.

Huge portions at the community dinner

Before heading back to Quito, the team stopped for one night in Shell, on the edge of the Amazon jungle. HCJB have another base here with a hospital and Water Projects office. It was interesting to visit the town as there is a possibility that I might live and work there for a few months next year. We took a tour of the hospital, MAF hangar and Nate Saint´s house.

In the next month…
Later this week I will be attending another HCJB course, on mentoring for 2½ days. Then I should be based in Quito for the next few weeks. I will be mainly doing some structural design work of a water tower, school and church buildings. As the New Year approaches, next year´s water projects will move into the planning and feasibility stage and therefore I´ll be involved in that too.

Prayer points
- Praise for health and safety of the work team whilst we were the communities. One member, Ian, fell sick the day after arriving in Quito and had to be hospitalised. He, therefore, had a very different experience to the rest of the team but in spite of his illness he counted his time here as a great blessing.
- Pray for the ongoing impact of the witness the team had in Lupaxi Chico through their kids´ work and practical demonstration of love to the community, for the secretary´s family as they continue to be reconciled with each other and with God.
- Pray for my work in the office, for God´s help in clarity of mind and determination to complete this design work.
- Pray that the routine I settle into in the next few weeks back in Quito will be a spiritually healthy one.
- Pray against homesickness, I felt homesick for the first time as the team left to go back to England.

September Prayer Letter

Hello again from Quito, it feels like much more than a month has passed since my last prayer letter. Thankyou for your prayers which have supported and carried me through the past few weeks.

In General
I finished my structured Spanish learning at the start of September, finishing level 6 of 12, which means I got through the imperfect, perfect and pluperfect but escaped before the subjunctive tense.
I´ve decided to attend my local church, Iñaquito. The building holds approx. 800 people and there are three (soon to be four) Sunday morning services. The church was started by HCJB in the 1950s for their missionaries but is now organised and run by Ecuadorians.

Work
I started two weeks ago in the Water Projects office and have been getting reacquainted with the water engineering I studied at university. At present, I´ve started a study into the feasibility of chlorinating the water supply at Carabuela, a large community to the north of Quito where construction of a supply network is currently ongoing. I have also tentatively begun outline design of a community latrine block which we may have the chance to plan and implement for a community to the west of Quito amongst the Tsáchila (Colorado) people. The Tsáchila are regarded as an unreached people group. This is an area in which Water Projects has not worked before. Please pray for opportunities to improve physical and spiritual health through our work there.

My time in the Water Projects office won´t just be spent in engineering. HCJB are currently developing a programme aimed at encouraging people from Latin America into world mission. This year, I will be subject to the mobilisation programme as it is developed to give feedback. The programme will cover five areas; spiritual formation, theological education, vocational experience, cross cultural skills and experience, language acquisition. Amongst other things, I will be spending some of my week continuing Spanish learning and studying the theology of community development. I will also be learning some Quichua, the native language of the communities in which Water Projects work. It will be good to be able to speak some words of their first language but, as it is completely unlike any language I know, progress will be slow! I have also started to study “Celebration of Discipline” by Richard Foster, a book I was given at Christmas last year but haven´t had the guts to start until now! Please pray for me as I learn through all these activities. I´d be interested to hear your thoughts on the “Celebration of Discipline” book too if you have ever read it. We will be joined next month by two work teams who will stay with at least one community and participate in the construction of their water system. The New Zealand work team will head off to Carabuela on 29th September to work on that project. The Harrogate work team will arrive on 21st October and will be staying for two weeks. Please pray for the safety and health of both teams, their witness in the communities, that they will gain a clear understanding of Water Projects´ work and that they will be encouraged in their own walk with God.
Next week (29th Sept – 2nd Oct), I will accompany one of the Water Projects engineers on his visits to a number of communities in the Carchi and Esmeraldas provinces in the north and northeast of the country. It will be a great opportunity to see a number of different projects and cultures and experience a warmer climate!!

Ecuador
Sunday, 28th September will be the vote on the referendum in Ecuador to vote on a new national constitution. This topic was the subject of many heated debates between the teachers at my language school. As voting is compulsory for all, this week leading up to the referendum, both sides for “Sí” or “No” are bombarding the airwaves with arguments for and against the Constitution. The document is incredibly wide-ranging in that it is a blueprint for the operation of a country. Please pray for the continued stability of the country after the vote and for safety in our travels on the day of the result!

Spanish...Schmanish

Today I started Quichua lessons! Quichua is the first language of most people living in the highlands (everything is high here, but they live higher!) and in the areas where we will be working on water projects. It would be great to be able to communicate with people there in their first language but I don´t expect to learn too much. Whereas Spanish is fairly similar to French or at least is a Latin based language, Quichua is unlike anything!

Had a couple of days of gorgeous sunshine recently and so I got to see Cotopaxi and a few of the other volcanos for the first time. The mountains are beautiful, Cotopaxi is an almost perfect cone. Here´s one I drew earlier...

bog? bolg? blog??

Hi
So, I've decided to do a blog really just to make my prayer letters a bit more widely available. But who knows what else might appear here...I certainly don't, but I will try and make it interesting.
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