To keep you all updated, I finally got my censo ID card after waiting in a tiny crowded office in Quito by myself for four hours with a hundred guys named Jesus or Carlos and two transvestites with a better figure than Dolly Parton. (The five o’clock shadows were a dead give-away.)
Back at the ranch here in Tena, Eleanor has gone to Atlanta for a month to visit her daughter thus leaving me in charge of one of her best Bible studies. Her name is Leo and she's Ecuadorian. She’s about 29 and has a baby boy we call Gordito. (fatty). We meet for the study in the back of the furniture store where she works. We get in a paragraph or two between customers. She asks really thought-provoking questions to me instead of the other way around, for example “Why are there only three people getting resurrected in this picture when the Bible says many will come back to life?” Ummm. It’s just a 5x7 picture. Imagine there's millions more behind those bushes.
Gary, our one of only two elders, has had a kidney infection since Eleanor left, but word on the street is that he’s at the crib watching movies all day and drinking Club, the local beer, relaxing until she returns. He's Irish so he's allowed to do that. He also claims he’s on a diet but I ran into him Monday coming out of a local restaurant chewing on a toothpick. He missed the meeting last night, which is too bad because afterwards we went out to eat at Iguana with about 30 brothers and sisters. Even 90 year old “abuelita” came out for a beer and hot wings. She used a fork. Unfortunately, there was only one cook and one waitress, so it took like 3 hours for the food to come. By the time it did, they were out of the only item we had ordered: fries. So the owner went home and got some more potatoes for us. Meanwhile, I kept getting all sorts of stares from the teenage sisters sitting across from me. Today in service I found out through Jessamyn that it wasn’t me they were staring at. It was Pancho, the new 21 year old in the hall that has all the sisters drooling. Yes, he’s pretty cool because he speaks some English, he’s a kayak guide on the local rivers and he’s a super nice and spiritual brother, but other than that he’s your average goofy young boy. And him and Joe are best buds.
Today was finally sunny. It had been cool and rainy for the previous four days. When I say cool, I mean low eighties. Friends in the hall were complaining about how cold it was and shivered when they saw me wear a sleeveless blouse to the meeting. My laundry had been on the line that whole time getting rained on over and over. Finally I just gave up and scattered wet clothes all over the house to dry on backs of chairs or whatever. But today the sun was out full force and our service group only made it until about 9:45 when it hit the high 90s. I went home and hung some of the wet clothes out to finally dry, but now we’re having a bad storm and I’ll have to try again tomorrow. So goes life here in the Amazon rainforest.
I can’t really get into much detail right now mainly because many things are still up in the air, but to make a long story short our landlord knows a family who wants to rent our apartment and offered to pay $50 more a month for it than us. Our landlord saw dollar signs so she knocked on our door yesterday with a list of fake reasons why we’re bad tenants and wanted us to immediately move out. Needless to say it was a very stressful day for us, but Jehovah is taking care of the situation. This weekend we’re moving back in with Jessamyn and her son Aedyn until things pan out. She got us in contact with a witness couple from Spain who is moving back to Barcelona in three weeks. They own property and two homes right outside of Tena in the jungle boonies and needed to either quickly sell or rent it. And there we were homeless and desperate.
The houses are small, the first a tad over 1,000 sq. ft and the other even less. But they are amazing. The brother built them both with his own hands and it’s something I’d be proud to live in forever in the paradise. The larger home is what we will rent when they move on January 16th. (Yes, our lives will be in limbo for three whole weeks) It has two bedrooms, a tiny office/laundry room and one bathroom. Carlie’s room has a loft where her mattress will be and she’s super excited about that. The home has a covered front porch with hooks for a large hammock. The backyard has a small but inviting pool surrounded by acres of land flowing with pineapples, bananas, yucca, and things I don’t understand in Spanish. It will even come with a real cocker spaniel named Cookie that won’t be flying to Barcelona. The thing I’m excited about is the bathtub. Tubs are a true luxury here and 90% of the homes in Ecuador only have stand-up showers. So I’m thrilled. The home is down a dirt road right across the street from a clean river that the friends swim in on Sundays. Another cool thing is that behind our fence, adjoining our property are two homes that Gary and Eleanor have bought and are remodeling. So in a few months they’ll be our next-door neighbors along with their son and daughter-in-law Tim and Monica. Across the road is also another Ecuadorian witness. So soon we’ll have our own little JW colony and all the stress I’m going through this weekend will be a thing of the past.
For anyone interested in owning a piece of paradise, the smaller home is for sale for just $30,000. You’d have to come see it in person to see how adorable it is. Our home with the pool and gravel circular driveway is $70,000. We get to rent it for a year, but after that it’s back on the market. I’m really hoping to find 70K between now and then. Donations anyone?
Back at the ranch here in Tena, Eleanor has gone to Atlanta for a month to visit her daughter thus leaving me in charge of one of her best Bible studies. Her name is Leo and she's Ecuadorian. She’s about 29 and has a baby boy we call Gordito. (fatty). We meet for the study in the back of the furniture store where she works. We get in a paragraph or two between customers. She asks really thought-provoking questions to me instead of the other way around, for example “Why are there only three people getting resurrected in this picture when the Bible says many will come back to life?” Ummm. It’s just a 5x7 picture. Imagine there's millions more behind those bushes.
Gary, our one of only two elders, has had a kidney infection since Eleanor left, but word on the street is that he’s at the crib watching movies all day and drinking Club, the local beer, relaxing until she returns. He's Irish so he's allowed to do that. He also claims he’s on a diet but I ran into him Monday coming out of a local restaurant chewing on a toothpick. He missed the meeting last night, which is too bad because afterwards we went out to eat at Iguana with about 30 brothers and sisters. Even 90 year old “abuelita” came out for a beer and hot wings. She used a fork. Unfortunately, there was only one cook and one waitress, so it took like 3 hours for the food to come. By the time it did, they were out of the only item we had ordered: fries. So the owner went home and got some more potatoes for us. Meanwhile, I kept getting all sorts of stares from the teenage sisters sitting across from me. Today in service I found out through Jessamyn that it wasn’t me they were staring at. It was Pancho, the new 21 year old in the hall that has all the sisters drooling. Yes, he’s pretty cool because he speaks some English, he’s a kayak guide on the local rivers and he’s a super nice and spiritual brother, but other than that he’s your average goofy young boy. And him and Joe are best buds.
Today was finally sunny. It had been cool and rainy for the previous four days. When I say cool, I mean low eighties. Friends in the hall were complaining about how cold it was and shivered when they saw me wear a sleeveless blouse to the meeting. My laundry had been on the line that whole time getting rained on over and over. Finally I just gave up and scattered wet clothes all over the house to dry on backs of chairs or whatever. But today the sun was out full force and our service group only made it until about 9:45 when it hit the high 90s. I went home and hung some of the wet clothes out to finally dry, but now we’re having a bad storm and I’ll have to try again tomorrow. So goes life here in the Amazon rainforest.
I can’t really get into much detail right now mainly because many things are still up in the air, but to make a long story short our landlord knows a family who wants to rent our apartment and offered to pay $50 more a month for it than us. Our landlord saw dollar signs so she knocked on our door yesterday with a list of fake reasons why we’re bad tenants and wanted us to immediately move out. Needless to say it was a very stressful day for us, but Jehovah is taking care of the situation. This weekend we’re moving back in with Jessamyn and her son Aedyn until things pan out. She got us in contact with a witness couple from Spain who is moving back to Barcelona in three weeks. They own property and two homes right outside of Tena in the jungle boonies and needed to either quickly sell or rent it. And there we were homeless and desperate.
The houses are small, the first a tad over 1,000 sq. ft and the other even less. But they are amazing. The brother built them both with his own hands and it’s something I’d be proud to live in forever in the paradise. The larger home is what we will rent when they move on January 16th. (Yes, our lives will be in limbo for three whole weeks) It has two bedrooms, a tiny office/laundry room and one bathroom. Carlie’s room has a loft where her mattress will be and she’s super excited about that. The home has a covered front porch with hooks for a large hammock. The backyard has a small but inviting pool surrounded by acres of land flowing with pineapples, bananas, yucca, and things I don’t understand in Spanish. It will even come with a real cocker spaniel named Cookie that won’t be flying to Barcelona. The thing I’m excited about is the bathtub. Tubs are a true luxury here and 90% of the homes in Ecuador only have stand-up showers. So I’m thrilled. The home is down a dirt road right across the street from a clean river that the friends swim in on Sundays. Another cool thing is that behind our fence, adjoining our property are two homes that Gary and Eleanor have bought and are remodeling. So in a few months they’ll be our next-door neighbors along with their son and daughter-in-law Tim and Monica. Across the road is also another Ecuadorian witness. So soon we’ll have our own little JW colony and all the stress I’m going through this weekend will be a thing of the past.
For anyone interested in owning a piece of paradise, the smaller home is for sale for just $30,000. You’d have to come see it in person to see how adorable it is. Our home with the pool and gravel circular driveway is $70,000. We get to rent it for a year, but after that it’s back on the market. I’m really hoping to find 70K between now and then. Donations anyone?
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