Sunday, May 18, 2014

We are very happy with Amanda and John's news however it has been a rather emotional week - due to visa and financial issues, they will not be able to come back to Ecuador to get married, so will be tying the knot in either Beijing or Hong Kong very soon. This means that neither us nor any of John's family will be able to attend. Heartbreaking! I know though that they are being very sensible and of course, want to carry on serving over there so it makes all the sense in the world to just stay there. My daughter is not one for fuss so she is not worried about having a big wedding. Not something she has dreamed of all her life - hehe. Of course me being wired the way I am (nothing better than being the hostess with the most-est) it's a bit gutting not to be able to even throw a kitchen tea!

It's a good job we are super busy as always. Here is some pictures of  my first turn on one of the
 carts. What an awesome privilege.

You can never tell who are the ones to be interested and what impressed me is the amount of young people who stopped. One young couple asked if we had anything to help them study the bible - "aah yeah!" And another asked for directions to where we have our meetings. A lot of success!

 

Surprisingly - these ladies just looked away

Another first coming up this week - my first Chinese talk. Really don't think I am ready for this but with the lack of other speakers, I have had to step up.

Of course we are getting super excited about our trip to the International Convention in 3 weeks time - can't believe it is nearly here!

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Zamora


Wendy and Alison

We've just spent an awesome few days in another part of Ecuador that we had not visited before: Zamora - it's about 6 hours by bus away from Cuenca and is situated in the Oriente (or Jungle), so consequently it is a lot warmer, greener and buggier (is that a word? What I am trying to say there are heaps more insects that bite down there). Alison (she lived with us last year) and Wendy, both previously in the Chinese group here in Cuenca, now serve down there. There are a lot of Chinese people in that area as they are building Hydroelectric dams etc,   so it a field ripe for harvesting and they are doing a great job.                                                   



While there, we went for a walk through the jungle to a beautiful waterfall - the scenery is just breathtaking (something else that was breathtaking was the uphill slogs)
Glorious flowers along the way
Fascinating butterflys

This photo I stole off  the internet cause there was no way we could capture them - they were really cool but really fast. 


Finally made it to the waterfall - only for brave souls - rather chilly!