Sunday

I have been playing the guitar at youth group each Friday and getting some good practice. After two week of no instruments at church on Sundays, I was asked by one of the Sunday school teachers if I would play. Sure, I said. With two of the adolescents from youth group, we planned to practice on Saturday. Saturday came and one didn’t show up and the other was still in Christmas play rehearsal. So, Micah and I just practiced at the church. We’ll come early and practice. Sunday morning arrived and the four of us did practice. However, they only knew three Christmas songs from our eight options. So we sang those plus two other worship songs. Of course, the guy you usually plays the guitar showed up to church and joined us. Then, we thought everyone was going to have the words. The pastor informed us there weren’t enough for everyone and so didn’t pass any of them out. In the end, we led worship with what we had.

Merry Christmas

Listening to Christmas songs, we realize that regardless of how many songs sing about snow, we won’t have snow for our Christmas. More than that, with the weather not drastically different from when we arrived in September, Christmas really isn’t about the weather conditions. Rather, Christmas is about who we are remembering. And whether you are in ice cold Minnesota, rainy Washington (we hear there's snow!), warm sunny Arizona, or even rainy-one-moment-and-warm-sunny-the-next Loja, Ecuador, we pray you we reflect on the true meaning of Christmas; that “God sent His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16).

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

We're busy cooking for a Thanksgiving feast with other Americans as well as other missionaries from many countries along with local Ecuadorians. It should be a great time! Pictures to come...after the celebration!

Are you Hungry?

Eventually we'll post a picture of pig skin cooked in sauce and one of guinea pig to continue to whet your appetite. Both are Ecuadorian delicacies.

Well, are you hungry?

THOUGHT SO!

Our Tienda

We enjoy buying fresh fruits and vegetables from the tienda (little store) next door to our house. Very convenient. She carries delicious apples and ripe bananas, carrots and peppers, and a whole lot more. We purchase our filtered water from her, $1.25 for 20 liters. She also sells eggs, 8 cents each or 11 for a dollar. After doing the math, we prefer to buy 10… for 80 cents.

The Sounds of Loja

Loja is the music capital of Ecuador. Students study at music conservatories and concerts are held in the many plazas. However, the sounds of Loja have nothing to do with talent. Every time I hear sounds that typify Loja, I exclaim, “Oh, the sounds of Loja.” It could be the truck broadcasting the same short melody each morning and afternoon alerting everyone to the fact he has water and natural gas to sell. Or it could be in the evenings when the garbage truck comes by. Each evening there is once again a new melody transmitted from the garbage truck making sure you know when to put out our garbage can and when to pick it up to ensure it doesn’t get stolen.

The sounds of Loja are dogs barking all through the day and night. They are cars honking, not in frustration, but to warn another driving they are passing or that they have the right-a-way at the intersection.

The sounds of Loja are political parties driving by in decorating trucks with music blasting from loud speakers placed on top of their vehicle.

The sounds of Loja are fireworks going off at anytime of the day. There doesn’t need to be a reason to light them off, though sometimes there is. When we first arrived, beautiful fireworks scattered the sky and loud booms woke us up in the wee morning hours. The Virgin Mary, a small doll, was visiting Loja. The colors in the sky at night were to honor this doll while the booms in the morning intended to wake her up. Don’t they know even dolls and people need some sleep?

“Oh, the sounds of Loja!” ~Johanna

Messages from friends

We are so happy that we have been hearing from people and have even talked with a few friends on Skype. Check for us around 10:30pm or 6:30am or e-mail us and tell us when you would like to talk. Alison Bain made a cool stencil of us that I wanted to share. Thanks Alison!

We Finally Have Internet Access!!!

Have you ever tried living for a week without Internet access? How about 3 weeks? How about no Internet access or other means of contact with any of your friends? We did, and we didn't like it! We ordered Internet access more than two weeks ago and the equipment finally arrived from the far side of the country yesterday. We got the fastest Internet connection available in all of Ecuador. We get between 100kbs and 400kbs. Which is just fine with us since we only get 600MB of total Internet use per month, except between 11pm and 7am when it's free! (So look for us on Skype around 11pm or 6am EST.)

Since we haven't been able to use the Internet the following blog posts are journal entries from the last few weeks. They may not be in order or make much sense to you but enjoy them anyway. For a more official report of our adventures on a monthly basis read our website at http://micahadamson.googlepages.com/

Praise God with us for communication! Pray that we are able to make connections here and share Jesus with the people of Loja as well as with the missionary kids we get to spend time with every day. Chau for now!

-Micah

Earthquake!

11:43pm
I don't think any of you will even have heard about our recent earthquake. We were online at the time so we wrote a note to a few people telling them we were okay incase they heard about it. But it only made a back page of CNN with list of earthquakes in the last week. It was a 5.9 which shook our house for about 30 seconds. Just long enough to get to the doorway and look onto our street before it stopped. All the neighbors were out in their doorways. A few car alarms went off and all the dogs in the city barked but we didn't have any damage and I don't know of anyone else who did either. The unique thing about this earthquake was that we were almost directly over the epicenter which was 10 miles North of us. We found the coordinates of the quake on google maps. 3.882°S, 79.171°W which is near a town called Jimbilla.
An Ecuadorian friend said that normally earthquakes feel like waves passing under you but this one felt like circular motion instead. I wonder if that is because we were so close to being on top of it. Another missionary said that this wasn't the longest earthquake he has felt here but that it was the strongest. May God protect us. Praise God that no one was hurt.
Check http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/ to find the latest greatest earthquakes!

The church in Loja

When I went to arrange for our Internet connection yesterday, a Lady at the Internet company asked what the foundation "Operation Hope" does exactly. I was surprised that an organization that has been in Loja for 10 years would be so unknown because Loja is a farely small town of only about 100,000-150,000 people, but then all evangelical Christians make up about only 1% of the population. I tried to articulate that we were doing medical ministry both here and out in the province, that we were teaching English, and that we were Evangelical Christians.

The current situation of the evangelical church in Ecuador isn't that different from the state of the church in the US except that they are facing their challenges as a 1% minority that is often persecuted. Biblical illiteracy is just as high here in Ecuador as in the US. Few evangelical pulpits are teaching from the Bible at all, preferring to minister only to felt needs rather than starting there and moving on to real spiritual needs. Even those who do teach from the Bible tend to use it morally preaching against the evils of dancing, smoking, and drinking instead of focusing on Christ and giving him the supremacy that the scriptures naturally give him and asking people to live righteously as a response to his sacrifice for us. We have been told that if you ask the average Ecuadorian what an evangelical is, they will tell you that they are moralists. Not that they are known for following their rules, just having a lot of rules.

The solution for the Ecuadorian evangelical church seems to be the same as for any church anywhere: They need to focus on Christ, treat the Bible as authoritative, and trust God to save them rather than relying on adherence to their own set of rules.

The Catholic church here in Loja (and out in the country side especially) has only stopped preaching within the last 5 years that evangelical Christians should be persecuted. The priest who encouraged the boycott of evangelical's businesses in Gonzonama as well as encouraging more extreme types of persecution is now the priest of the church in the plaza across from the SIM outreach café. I want to meet him and see what he thinks the points of disagreement are between Catholics and evangelicals. I would like to do a lot of asking this question of people in general. It seems that evangelicals and Catholics (as well as the average Ecuadorian youth who doesn't go to church at all) don't really know what the Christian faith is about at all. More on this later...

-Micah

New Things

We have been in Loja for almost a week now and we are beginning to settle in. There are many things that still seem strange to us, but having lived outside of the United States before, and even having lived in South America before, there are some things that I don't find different enough. May things I had expected to be the same as Bolivia are actually more similar to the US. I feel silly for telling Johanna to leave her hair dryer at home now that I know that Ecuador uses 110 volt electricity just like we do in the US. The distinct smell of floor polish and South American cleaning solutions hitting my nose in the airport made me feel at home. But even though the trucks that sell water and gas play a tune over their loud speakers that sounds like the first 6 notes of "Be it ever so hum-ble there's no place like home" it doesn't make them sound any less strange. (We will have to record this song and post it on our website.)

The taste of tree ripened bananas again for the first time in 2 years has done my heart well. But the apparent lack of similarity between Ecuadorian cooking and Bolivian cooking has left me sad. Various missionaries have fed us at least one meal a day so far and although they have joked about different Ecuadorian dishes no one has fed us any Ecuadorian food yet, and no one has admitted to liking it. I finally bought some fry bread from a street vender yesterday as my first Ecuadorian food. It was good and very much what I had expected so maybe the missionaries here just don't appreciate Ecuadorian food. The SIM team here is about 50% Australian, so maybe that is the problem. It will be fun to get to know and get picked on by the second most patriotic country on earth.

-Micah

Romans 11

I was thinking about Romans 11 and what true Israel is in regard to this topic of what the church is. I want to diagram the olive trees and see what they options are for "all Israel". It seems to me that there are two olive trees in Paul's metaphor. A wild one (the world or gentiles) and a cultivated one (God's tree or Israel) and to be a part of God's tree is to be saved. In the end gentiles and Israelite olive branches that have been cut of are treated the same. They are lost and the only solution is for them to be grafted into the one Israelite olive tree and so in that tree, "all Israel" will be saved. I e-mailed Rob Pierce about this and he had some good things to say. Maybe I'll share it some time. Romans 11 also sheds light on Romans 12:1-2 as we see sap running into us to renew us and conform us to Christ as we grow on his tree.

-Micah

We made it to Loja

    We made it safely to Loja after only 62 hours of travel, and miracle of miracles we only missed 3 out of 4 of our flights! We got a free night at a hotel in Los Angeles, California and another free night in a hotel in Panama City courtesy of Copa Airlines. We are settling in a bit and getting used to the city, the altitude, and our house. We have now eaten a meal with every other SIM missionary in all of Loja except for the other new family that arrived the day before we did (on the same flight we were supposed to have arrived on 48 hours earlier.)

    Our delayed arrival to Loja also means that we missed Mouge by one day. Mouge is a Bolivian Spanish teacher and friend of mine from Cochabamaba. She was in town teaching a class to the Spanish teachers who will be teaching us Spanish. That was sad to have missed her but other than that no harm done by our delays.

-Micah and Johanna

Made it to Ecuador

September 6, 2007

    We are here in Ecuador and made it through customs and emigration without any problems! We made it as far as Quito along with all of our luggage! We are scheduled to complete the rest of our journey to Loja on Friday morning. We only lost 2 hours to time zones instead of 3 like we expected. So by the time we arrive in Loja our "24 hour" journey will turn out to only be "62 hours ". We are hanging out with the Greenwoods and staying at the HCJB guest house. Just wanted to let you all know and thank you for your prayers!

-Micah and Johanna

Sleepy Scribblings in the Sky

7:40pm

As I sit crammed into a United Airlines flight we almost didn't make it onto, 14 hours after waking up this morning and less than 2 hours into what promises to be at least a 24 hour journey from Seattle, Washington to Loja, Ecuador; I am contemplating a return to a coffee addiction that I haven't practiced while in the United States, but I have decided to take up writing run-on sentences as a new vice instead.

The night is falling over northern California outside the plane, and as it does, the United States fades into the distance for Johanna and I. We have faced some final challenges to following Christ in the United States through a stressful check in process during an emotional farewell. I hope that I held my temper well enough as the United Airlines employee moved us from the first class line they had erroneously sent us to. They made us wait in that line for 15 minutes before moving us to the end of the low class line at the far end of the 100 foot long counter. All this happened less than an hour before our flight took off. The one time I really had to hold my tongue was when the manager on duty not only told us we were in the wrong line but he also argued that no one had told us to stand in that line. My pride told me to stand my ground for truth, justice, and the American way, but the manager told me to move and with a cross as the symbol of Christ who I serve around my neck for all to see, I decided to follow Christ's example and give up some of my rights.

God provided for us so that even with a burst can of shaving cream in our carry on bag, we still made it through the security check point in time to walk directly onto our flight without all the tedious lounging around at the gate that one normally has to put up with. (If you ever want to repeat this shaving cream trick just pull the rubber stopper from the bottom of a can of shaving cream.)

Once on the plane, I got one last chance to avert my eyes or see women undress on American television courtesy of NBC on United. (Not that this won't be a challenge in Ecuador as well.) I was reminded again of the fact that we represent Christ where ever we are. Our actions should honor Christ at all times, but I especially hope that I don't shame him publicly. (God answer this plea with help from your spirit. Thank you Jesus for the example you set and the forgiveness you purchased.)

I don't think that being a missionary should really so different from being a Christian anywhere except perhaps that going into another culture we will stand out even more and so our lives must be that much more careful so as not to bring shame to Christ by our actions. (I guess people won't be staring so much this time in South America now that I don't have such a long beard.)

Well Johanna is sleeping and I think I would like to relax and listen to "The Man Who was Thursday" by GK Chesterton as performed by the Mercury Players with Orson Wells. I found it online as an MP3 last night while I was reading about this strange GK Chesterton play that deals with the problem of evil in the world in much the same way as the book of Job. Evil exists and we can fight it even though it hurts, but in overcoming evil we can have the peace of God. God's explanation to Job was to point to the creation and ask, "Do you even understand creation? If you don't understand that, how can you question my actions?" I am excited to hear it. I didn't even know that it existed as a radio drama much less that it was aired only 2 months before the infamous broadcast of the "War of the Worlds".

Well there is a stream of consciousness blog entry for you. Not sure if I will clean it up, or even post it, but it was fun to write.

-Micah

Hello World

Ecuador here we come! Please pray that we will be able to rent our house by the end of July and that 12 more families will support us at an average of $50 per month by the end of August.