Carnival (Kah nee vahl) is finally over here. It started on Saturday and ended Tuesday night. One of the customs here is to throw water on people and or spray them with colored foam. People even drive their kids around in pick up trucks armed with water guns to soak pedestrians. It is all in good fun and they just view it as part of the celebration. But, in order to avoid making ourselves special targets for the festivities, the meetings for service and the Public talk are canceled. The stores and mercados close for 2 days, so you have to make sure you are stocked up on essentials. What do you do when you can't go out in service or attend meetings for 4 days? Chill out! We had a few friends over one night and played a few rounds of Mafia. The Ecuadorian friends really like that game. Monday we had a congregation picnic with an informal WT study. A sister in the hall has a family home about 45 minutes outside of the city that we all went to. We hiked up the hill and got a great view of the valley. It was a nice break from all the noise of the city! Tuesday Dave and I went on a road trip with Lasse ( pronounced Lah say). He is a brother from Denmark that has been living here for about 5 years. We had a beautiful drive through the countryside to where he is building a small workshop and weekend cabin. Then we decided to continue driving through the mountains taking in the scenery. Then we realized we were only another hour from the ocean. Of course, we kept driving. Only the guys decided to try to get to the ocean by way of a town that Lasse had never been to. On the map it just said PSM for the name. Sounds exciting and spontaneous, right? So, we punched in the location to the GPS and followed the course, even when it told us to turn off the main road onto a dirt road leading into banana fields. No worries, the GPS is always reliable and trustworthy! (insert a tone of sarcasm when reading that last sentence if you didn't already) Well we finally made it out of the banana fields, and as we bravely pressed on, we found ourselves zig zagging through a shrimp farm! Narrow, primitive, dirt roads outlining about a hundred enormous shallow pools of shrimp. We were sure we would see the ocean soon. We could hear it, smell it! What we found at the end of the shrimp farm was a very thick grove of mangrove trees, totally blocking our way to the Pacific! So the GPS had the last laugh. PSM was no real town! I'm pretty sure it wasn't even a real name. PSM probably just meant Private Shrimp Manufacturing! We had to turn around and wind our way out, back to main road that took us to the real town to get a real view of the ocean! Of course by the time we got there, it was dark. Nothing a beer and a delicious fish dinner didn't make up for.
Wednesday we were able to resume our normal routine. I went on a bible study with Dave that he is handling for a brother while he is back in the States for a few weeks. The man is Raoul and he is probably in his late 70's. His English is very good and he is very meek. He has been to the KH several times as well. He asked us at the beginning of the study why there were no images or statues in the KH. After we shared scriptures, including the ones in Exodus, he said, "Ok, I understand. It is right here in the bible, you are not to make carved images for worship. Now I know." Simple as that. Austin, Cleo and I all have promising calls with arrangements for returning and demonstrating the study program.
I will keep you posted as the details develop!
Hiking down to the picnic.
Who let the dog's out?
There were horses!
A very informal WT study.
After lunch, we went for a hike.
The view from the top.
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