Trip to the coast

I'm happy to say I returned safely yesterday (April 24) from a trip to the coast.  I went with a group/committee of pastors and other Christian leaders from Quito.  I went as the representative from OMS to see if/how OMS can partner with this group in providing relief to the areas affected by the earthquake. The OMS church-planting coordinator, Fabian Cortez, was also part of this group.  The purpose of this trip was to visit several locations along the coast and make contact with the local pastors in order to understand their current situation and to plan for how we can help them.

We left Thursday morning and made our way from Quito to Sua.



Our caravan included 16 men in 6 vehicles and 3 trucks that were loaded with supplies/provisions.  We had police escort all the way.  We had heard that some of the trucks arriving to the affected areas were not permitted to go in - instead they were required to leave their provisions with the police or other authorities and turn around.  We wanted to be sure we could go into the towns so we arranged for the police escorts.  The trip was very long: the police did not go very fast and every so many kilometers the police escort changed.  We would get to a town and different police would take over and take us to the next police.  Each time we had to stop several minutes and the "new" police would verify all the vehicles and drivers in our caravan.

We arrived after 6:00 PM at a church in Sua and unloaded 2 of the trucks.

                                          

After unloading the trucks, we went to Same, which wasn't too far.  Here we stopped at a Christian camp and unloaded the third truck.  We spent the night at the camp.

On Friday morning, we left the camp and went to Muisne.

This barge went back and forth taking provisions.

The first truck, sadly, is loaded with coffins.  The second truck is loaded with propane gas tanks.

Some of the pastors took the boat across to meet with a pastor.  The church is sort of in the center of this photo - the cream/yellow building.  I stayed with some of the others on this side of the river.

Those that went to the other side of the river said there was a lot more damage over there than where I stayed.

After Muisne, we went to Chamanga.



There was a lot of damage in Chamanga.

Some of the pastors started talking with some people of the town and then prayed with them.  

In Chamanga, we noticed a few people working to clean up the mess but we saw many people standing around, or just sitting down.  The Ecuadorians with me commented on this as well, saying that it's too bad they aren't helping, that they are just waiting for others to come and help.  With the effort of more people of the town, more could be done right now.

After Chamanga, we went to Pedernales.  Pedernales was really, really, damaged.

 

                                          

                                          

One of the reasons we went to Pedernales was so that the pastors could meet with and encourage a Christian doctor there.  She had a house and business there, pictured below.  While they were meeting with her, several of us walked around the town and saw the devastation.  After nearly an hour, we went back to her house, thinking that we were about to leave this town.  One of the pastors asked for some help to move some of her things into a car that was parked outside.  Well it turns out that "some" of her things ended up being her whole house! Moving trucks were on the way and she was getting out of there.  Fabian, the OMS worker, told me that she just couldn't take living there any more because of the problems she was having with security and I don't know what else.

I don't know if the moving decision was already made before we got there, or if it was made during the time the pastors were talking to her, but nothing had been packed up yet.  So we all started helping: making boxes, loading boxes, moving furniture, taking down her business sign, even taking out light fixtures that were in the ceiling.  She wanted to take as much as possible.  Some of the town had electricity back working but her house didn't, so we had to work with flashlights.

We put all of her stuff on the sidewalk in front of her house and waited for the trucks.  It started to rain so we covered the stuff with plastic and moved other things under the roof next door.  The trucks were delayed and some of the pastors were telling her that we had to be going, that we needed to make it to our next stop where we were going to spend the night.  She begged us to stay since there were so many of us to help, and she only had her 2 sons and another family member.  The decision was made to stay and wait for the trucks.

I had a bad attitude at this time - and now I feel guilty about it.  But this is a great example of helping out a fellow believer when it totally wasn't planned, and totally interrupts your schedule.  This doctor had a great need and we were capable of helping, so that's what we needed to do.  It was a great example of how Ecuadorians are willing to put their schedule aside and take care of others.  It's great that they are not so concerned about getting somewhere "on time" that they neglect a real opportunity to serve.  Was it convenient? Fun? Did I feel like doing it? No. But it needed to be done.  I hope I will have a better attitude in a situation like this in the future.

While we were waiting for the trucks, I sat down with my back against a pillar on the other side of the street. Suddenly, we all felt the earth shaking - a tremor! We quickly rushed to the center of the street, away from the building.

Finally the trucks arrived and we quickly loaded everything.

It was after 9:30 PM when we left Pedernales, and we drove until after 1:00 AM to the place in San Clemente where we were going to stay which had been arranged by Fabian.



The owner came and opened the gate for us and told us the bad news...they had no running water! The coast is so hot and humid all the time - sometimes just stepping outside, not doing anything, you start sweating - that we were all in need of showers.  He said that we could use the pool water to clean up if we wanted.  I don't want to know how nasty the pool water was, but I jumped in with my shorts on and then soaped up in an outdoor stall.  To rinse off I took a bucket and filled it with pool water and dumped it on myself.  I felt half-clean, better than nothing I guess.

We left by 8:00 AM on Saturday morning.  After breakfast, some of the group went to Manta to the OMS church there, and some of the group went to Portoviejo.



I went to Portoviejo with another guy (also named Esteban) whose wife's family lives there.  We stopped at their house and delivered some water and other things they needed.  The plan was for him and me to go from there to another place in Portoviejo where they were having a meeting.  That's where some of the other pastors from our group had gone.  The meeting was to talk about how to continue to provide aid to the victims in that area.  Police and other government officials were there.  Our pastors went so that they could ask to be the ones to provide emotional and spiritual help to the province.  My understanding is that they did receive the full support of "the powers that be" and are approved to do that.  The pastors in our group have many professional contacts in the area of counseling and I think I understood that a group of counselors will be going this week.

Esteban and I never found the location of the meeting.  We asked many different people and they all gave us different directions.  We ended up waiting at the Portoviejo airport, which is no longer in use, for someone to come and pick up some other provisions that we had in the pick-up truck.

While we waited, we walked inside the gates and saw many people that were using the airport as a temporary living space.  Many tents and tarps were set up, along with mattresses that were given out.

Since we didn't find the meeting place, we were told to go into Manta and meet up with the others that were at the church.  A lot of the roads and bridges were damaged so it took us a while to be able to figure out how to get where we needed to go.  We eventually were able to talk to a taxi driver and he drove us a few blocks in the right direction.

OMS Church in Manta.  Our Field Leader and other OMS missionaries delivered supplies/provisions here on Friday, the day before our group arrived.

We left Manta around 5:00 PM and headed towards Santo Domingo.



While we were waiting for some others in the group to meet up with us, we waited near the beach.  Across the main road was another area for people to sleep.

Huge "crack" in the highway as we were leaving Manta.

I drove from Manta to Santo Domingo.  It was a challenging drive through the mountains - it was dark, rainy, and very curvy.  We arrived about 10:00 PM.  Some of the group went ahead to Quito, some of the group stopped for supper at Santo Domingo before heading on to Quito, and I went with Fabian and 2 others to Fabian's mother's house.  We ate supper there and spent the night.

We left Santo Domingo Sunday morning after breakfast, around 10:00 AM.  I arrived back at the house around 2:00 PM.

Before we left, I didn't really know much about the plan - what we would see, what we would be doing, or where we would be eating or sleeping.  Turns out we slept on a bed each night and we only had to eat our "emergency" food one time.  Most of the places we stopped at or passed by had stores open, food and water, electricity, and were somewhat up and running.  That was great to see.  We saw a lot of destruction, but we didn't see any human suffering or loss.

Unfortunately, we could also tell that many people were taking advantage of this emergency situation.  They were standing on the side of the road asking and waiting for handouts when they had not suffered any loss. They could easily walk a few minutes to the nearby town and get what they needed.

The leadership of the committee will be planning the next steps.  As far as I know, the plan is to send trucks with supplies to the different churches that we visited so that the churches are the ones to provide to their communities.  The idea of setting up a soup kitchen (comedor) is still in the works, I think.  I don't know the timetable for any of this, obviously the sooner the better.

Here are a few more pictures, I'm not sure where along the way they were taken:

Please pray for this committee as they make their plans, and pray for OMS as we decide how/if we will partner with this committee.

Driver's license (Steve)

Today I FINALLY got my Ecuadorian driver's license!  Here is a summary of what it took to get this done:

Back in August, Hannah and I went to the license bureau with all of the necessary paperwork to do a "license exchange".  A license exchange basically means you are able to get an Ecuadorian license based on having a valid U.S. license.  Our friends from Minnesota did exactly this and they told us everything we would need in order to do it.  They had no problems and got their Ecuadorian licenses the same day.

These were the requirements: our Indiana license, certification from Indiana that our license was valid and our Indiana driving record (translated and notarized), blood-type card from the Ecuadorian Red Cross, and certification of passing certain tests done at a driving school (vision, reflexes, coordination).

We got all of these things and went to the license bureau.  There is a bank inside the building and we went there to pay the fees for the license.  When we were able to talk to someone, we presented all of our paperwork and told her we wanted to do the license exchange.  She looked through everything and we weren't missing anything.  However, there was a problem when she saw that our driver's licenses were from the state of Indiana.  She looked in their system the states that have been approved for the license exchange, and wouldn't you know it, Indiana was not approved.  Our friends, that I mentioned before, are from Minnesota, and their state had been approved.  She said that we couldn't do the license exchange and that she would make a request to have Indiana approved.  She said it would be about 20 days.

I knew it would be longer than 20 days, but I never imagined that by today (April 11, 2016) it still would not have been approved.  Almost every week since we left the license bureau I called to ask about the approval status of Indiana. I wasn't able to talk to someone every time, but when I was able to, I was told that it was still in process.  On one of my calls in February, I was told that the process to approve Indiana had never even been started and that it was just now going to be submitted for approval, which could take up to 3 months. Unbelievable!

During all of this waiting, we went ahead and purchased International Driver's Permits so we could drive here legally.  All of these months we have been hopeful that Indiana would be approved so that we could do the license exchange.  We did not want to have to go to the driver's school because we already know how to drive, plus we didn't want to have to pay the money for it (about $200 per person).

After hearing that the approval for Indiana could take another 3 months, I decided to look into the driving school.  My International Driver's permit was close to being 6 months old - and even though it is supposedly good for 1 year, I had my doubts after being stopped by traffic police on the way to our retreat in January. The officer told me I could drive with that permit for 6 months.  I didn't really want to take any chances, even though another officer may say it is good for 1 year.

In March I went to a driving school to ask about their course.  As I was talking with the lady, she told me there was a new option for getting an Ecuadorian driver's license.  I could take the full course or I could skip the course and take only the driving test and the vision/reflex/coordination test.  She said if I didn't pass the 2 tests on the first attempt, I would be required to take the full course.

I opted for the the 2 tests instead of the full course; I went back the next day (March 23) to take them.  I passed them both and received my copy of the certification; they said they would submit/upload the results into the main system within 72 hours.  And once those results were in the system I could go to the license bureau and take the written test and get my license.

A terrible thing happened when I left the driving school office.  I crashed our car into a pole!

When I parked the car, I definitely noticed this pole directly behind one of the parking spaces.  There were no other open spaces so I had to park there.  Ironically, after having just passed the driving test, I backed the car into the pole.  Fortunately the instructor was not around, and fortunately no one came out to see what happened.  I can't believe I didn't see the pole when I backed out, but I certainly did feel it! I looked for cars and pedestrians - when I saw neither I went in reverse and BAM! hit the pole.  I couldn't believe it - my first accident EVER and it happened like this.  The car is currently at the body shop getting fixed.


On the website for the license bureau, there is a link to obtain a turn/number in order to get your license.  I entered my information to get a turn, and the date I was given was April 11, approximately 2 weeks later.  I didn't want to wait that long, and I didn't think I should have to wait that long, so I went to the license bureau on Tuesday, March 29.  I went to the information desk and showed my paperwork and told them I wanted to get my driver's license - he said I had to have a turn! Which meant waiting until April 11.  I stepped outside for a couple minutes, then decided to just go straight to the clerks that handle the paperwork for the new licenses.  Surprisingly, I was able to walk right to one of the desks and start speaking with a lady.  She didn't ask me for my turn/number; she told me to have a seat and started looking through my paperwork. I thought I was going to be able to take the written test and get my license. Everything was good, except my results from the 2 tests had not been submitted yet!  It had been almost a week and they still weren't in the system.  I drove from the license bureau to the school and asked about my results.  I was told they were still working on the results from March 22 - my results were from March 23!

I waited 2 days and went back on Thursday.  Again, I was able to go immediately to one of the clerks and show my paperwork...but he said I had to have a turn! He looked in the system and my test results were there, but I couldn't take the test because my turn wasn't until April 11.

So now, today, April 11, I had my turn and was able to get my license.

For Hannah, we are still waiting.  She would be able to do the 2 tests like I did, instead of taking the full course.  However, she doesn't know how to drive a stick shift, and the driving tests are only done with stick shift vehicles.  We are still hopeful that Indiana will be approved so that she can do the license exchange. She is definitely legal for a couple more months on her International Permit, possibly until December if the permit is in fact good for a full year.