The view from my window…

When you look out my window about 5:30AM, if the sky is a purple shade of clear, you can see the volcano Cayambe (kah- yahm- be) clearly stretching up into the horizon over the other peaks nearby it. It stands there, silently capped with snow, posing behind a foreground full of streetlights and houses of all shapes and sizes and income levels. This is Quito. Each direction you look, and each time of day you look, everything is slightly different from the moment before. Our apartment here in the lower floor of an older house, is located on the side of the lower slopes of another volcano called Rucu Pichincha. From here we walk a flat 30 yards and then make a hard left turn downhill, dodging taxis and buses all the way to our international school. The trip back home is a whole other cardiovascular experience.

But more than what I see geographically, I see other things as well. I see a school community, composed of teachers and students from a variety of places and backgrounds. I see a diverse parent community, with hopes and dreams and fears just like families in Birmingham, who struggle with teenagers and marital issues and special needs kids, and every other thing under the sun.

Besides the multiple array of cultures represented in the school, there are multiple economic levels represented as well. Some families have been graced by God to be scholarship recipients for their kids to attend. Literally, some parents and students and siblings are sleeping in tiny apartments nearby on foam mattresses, while the parents travel to work an hour away each morning as their kids go to school.

I even know one case with a sibling group of young Ecuadorian kids who are being cared for and educated here at AAI, whose parents aren’t even truly identified at this point, because the person they were living with has multiple identities. Neither the courts or the school knows the ages of these kids, because the documents just plain don’t exist for the environment where they were born. There are parents who have chosen careers over their family. They make a really good living by being gone, and I mean gone all the time. They choose the school because they hear that it has good values, and a US style of teaching. Then we get to deal with the aftermath of missing discipline in the kid’s lives. So North American culture has no monopoly on interesting family situations. This is at least some of what I see.

Bottom line is this. The Gospel has power to save, and this I clearly see. I have been specifically asking in recent days for God to use AAI to save many women and men. So yesterday when I met and shared a word about disciple-making with a group of Latin American pastors who volunteer at the school, one of them told me how a lady came to the office in the last couple of days to meet for counseling. This parent shared that she was not a Christian, but her husband was a Christian. She continued by saying that after she came to AAI this year with her child, she saw that the Christianity that her husband claimed to have was nothing like the Christianity she was seeing from people at AAI, and she wanted to know Christ like that! My Latin American brother was able to share Gospel truth with her and see her trust in Jesus Christ to save her soul that day. So, as I looked out my window this morning in the chilly air, I didn't just see geography, but I saw clearly yet again how God answers our prayers that glorify His Son, even when we can’t see or imagine the end result.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(John 1:14 ESV)

The Gospel and S.E.W.

First, thank you for being patient with our blog post delay. We have just changed locations for our family to be more centrally located for ministry here in the city of Quito! But we will talk more about that in a few moments!

So what’s SEW? Here at the foot of Pichincha Volcano in Quito, Ecuador, at Alliance Academy International, it means Spiritual Emphasis Week at the school. This past week, the entire group of secondary students at our school from Ecuador, China, Japan, Indonesia, Jordan, Colombia, Korea, (and the list continues…) all got 5 straight daily segments of biblical proclamation just before lunchtime each day here at the school. A pastor from an Acts 29 church in Guatemala shared each day by “Busting Myths about God” which seems to be an incredibly needy thing in various cultures around the world, and not just in Ecuador.

We set up the week by having panel discussions several days beforehand in a variety of settings and times, where students asked basically any question they wanted to ask about God. Our team spent hours praying for God to speak to their hearts through His word. God does not disappoint when it comes to the glory of His Name because at mid-week, 20-25 students indicated that they have now placed their trust in Jesus Christ for the very first time! Please join us in thanking God for this response to His Gospel, and in asking Him for further opportunities to make disciples through their lives! We are humbled at His grace shown to us in this work.

So now back to the relocation to Quito for our family. Just to refresh everyone on our current family setup: We have an adopted son who is a senior in High School and is living with another family in the U.S. We also have two daughters currently studying at Mississippi State, working as RA’s in the University housing system. We also have one adopted son, who has graduated out of high school, and he is temporarily with us here in Ecuador. We are examining if obtaining a Visa might be an effective plan for him right now. In addition, we have another 18 year-old adopted son who is currently living in Ukraine, and we are praying and working toward helping him see the Gospel and ultimately gain independence in life. Obviously this leaves 4 more children here in Ecuador with us, specifically two biological and two adopted children, who are currently with us at AAI in grades 12,9, 8 and 7.

My role as Director of Spiritual Life here at Alliance Academy International is providing multiple avenues for ministry as God provides frequent disciple-making opportunities. The exciting part is that many of these are with bi-lingual nationals or through bi-lingual expatriates who have direct influence into the lives of nationals here! The Lord has clearly displayed His presence and power for multiplying the gospel through making disciples, and the immediate chance to have impact here despite the language barrier is a very significant part of this display.

Christ has continued to increase my desire, as part of the leadership team here, to invest more fully during the weekdays into this work here in the city. Our school CSO groups, which have adult leaders and High school students working together, meet on each Wednesday until around 6 PM. Their areas of ministry are numerous and widespread in scope (hospitals, street kids, English tutoring, orphanage work, etc.) By God’s amazing design, the ultimate shape and direction of these ministries at Alliance Academy International are a part of my responsibilities here. Also, our Counseling and Chaplaincy programs are extensive ministry areas at Alliance. The Chaplaincy program is one of the most exciting opportunities to engage a diverse student body with the gospel truth that I have ever seen. The Counseling team touches dozens of struggling parent and student relationships and issues with care and gospel influence on a weekly basis, not to mention the opportunity for upcoming Gospel based seminars and leader training. Our Lord has been so gracious to provide many “pastoral care moments” with staff members here that have only really been addressed during my time on campus, unless I stay in Quito well past our normal commute time.

As a Health and Guided Resource Class (for ESL students) teacher here, Vickie has opportunities daily to provide spiritual leadership and mentoring to students and adults. Several additional avenues for gospel influence have been presented to her because of her experience level in coaching, and the Lord has clearly given her a desire to invest in those ways more in the days ahead.

God has also given me personal opportunity to work with CAF (Centro de Apoyo Familiar), which is a small group of national pastors and wives from ministries across Quito and beyond. This group volunteers their time to help minister to families here at the school. This seems to be an incredible chance to grow a disciple-making network here in country, and to possibly even aid the DMP summer disciple-making camp process through developing all these relationships!

Finally, as we have prayed together, God has also shown us that the current logistical makeup of our 9 children’s life stages points to a need for a place for some of them (or all of them) to stay with us and/or work alongside us here in Ecuador periodically. With both Vickie and I working at Alliance Academy, our schedule and location in Conocoto has presented a variety of interesting issues for our family, including safety, space, adequate rest, family discipleship time, and meal prep and study times.

As a result, we believe that God has graciously led us to be able to relocate our family into rented space in the lower floor of a house about 10 blocks up the mountain from the school campus in order to pursue what we see as the maximum disciple-making opportunities at this time. So as God has given us clarity, we have decided to step away from the Camp Development roles with Disciple-Making Partners in order to invest ourselves fully into the disciple making opportunities that He has given right in front of us here in Quito at Alliance Academy International.

Now this location change for our family to focus on disciple-making here does not diminish our desire to see the DMP Camp ministry out in Conocoto grow and prosper in disciple making! In fact, we obviously want to maintain gospel centered relational and spiritual connections with our co-laborers Bob and Ann Coe who will remain there at the camp in the Los Chillos Valle. We plan to pray for them and their family consistently, to contribute relationally and financially, and to support the entire camp work there toward all gospel purposes. We thank God for the opportunity to be in the initial development roles of the ministry there, and look forward to partnering with DMP in multiple ways in the days ahead.

So continue praying for us as we continually discover the plans of God for using our lives for His glory in this spot at this time!

        

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

        

(Matthew 28:18-20 ESV)