Check Out- Lock In

Hola blogger-readers...

The past two days have been great! Praise the Lord... I'm learning a great deal, having a fair amount of down time, and just seeing God in new ways.

Yesterday (being Tuesday, the second or third day of the week, depending on what company supplies your calendar) I had another solid QT in 1 Peter and headed off to SMAC. The second hour was sweet because we all had a blast going over words that sound and/or are spelled alike, such as "like, look, lake, luck, Luke, lack, lick" etc. I was able to learn a bunch of new words for the personal Spanish-English dictionary I am creating, and the students had a blast listening to the pronunciation and trying to figure out what a word meant (through my vivid descriptions). Afterwards, I pretty much went back to mi casa and finished watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Quick history of this movie and my family: we weren't allowed to watch it growing up. The guy pulling the dude's heart out with his bare hand just didn't fly with my padres, and I can't blame them. After watching the whole movie, I have decided that it is by far the worst of the four Indy movies. It doesn't have too much of an Indy feel, the little Asian kid is annoying and unreal, the chick in the movie never has her character developed, and even for an Indiana Jones movie, it was WAY too unrealistic. After the movie, I watched another short, low-budget Christian-based movie called "Last Flight Out". It was enjoyable, very preachy (not a bad thing), and apparently the Ecuadorian people like it a lot!

I also started to "catalog" for myself some of my favorite portions in the books of Corinthians. This involves going through the book, finding a theme that I like (such as "Treasures in Jars of Clay") and copying down a few key verses from the passage. This will help with my being able to be "prepared for action" (1 Peter 1). The night cap was good, too, as I went for a run (after reading a chapter or two of "Mere Christianity") and stopped by the church where another missionary team had begun to serve. This missionary team basically gives free eye-check ups and glasses. The Maust family is doing a lot with them, as well, and it was a blessing to see them all serving there!

On my run home, though, I encountered an interesting set of circumstances. I passed one medium sized dog, and it just looked at me. I passed a second, much bigger dog, and it also just watched me run by. I passed a third rather large dog, and it, too, just let me run by. It's kinda like the anti-Good-Samaritan story... I didn't want any of them to stop me (as opposed to me, the hurt dude, being helped by one of them). But after passing all three, although I didn't see it, they MUST have looked at each other, non-verbally communicated, "Hey, this guy is running. We love to chase people that run." And then they all took off running after me. One dog? Piece of cake, I'm not too worried about that. Three dogs, with two of them being more than half my weight? Yes... I'm running faster now. They actually got within a foot or two of me before finally deciding that I wasn't meaty enough for a good meal and dropping back. Very soon afterwards, I encountered a similar circumstance with much smaller perros. Dejected, I went to the basketball court and started dunking. This lifted my spirits and apparently entertained some young teenagers on the side of the court.

I let them make jokes and pretended I didn't understand them for a while, then revealed that I do speak a good bit of Spanish (while still not understanding all of what they said- they spoke really fast). Kimberly, Laura, Luisa, Eduardo, Marcello, Eddy, and Guillermo were their names. Please pray for them! I then ate some pizza with the hard-working eye doctors and helpers and headed back to the casa. At the casa, I went inside the main house to help Caty with some English pronunciations (she's the Aunt in the house), and ended up being able to bless her through prayer. She's having a tough time with her nephew, Sebastian... please keep the whole family in prayer. The grandmother should be coming back soon!

I snatched up some food and clothing, etc, and headed off to the Coupes house! Have I previously mentioned that I will be house-sitting (and feeding the super-sweet dog and cat) until Saturday? Well... I arrived at the house, all was well. I couldn't get my computer to hook up to the internet, but the family is gracious enough to let me use their computer. So I watched some TV, went on the internet, ate cereal, was spooked out of my mind once due to the cat's footsteps sounding like someone trying to sneak around the house, did a bit of a work out, and went to bed.

This morning, woke up, spent a good bit of time trying to figure out their shower, had a quick QT and went to SMAC. At SMAC, we had a "reading" session where we read and I helped pronounce words and translated a bit for Philippians 2:1-13. This is a very special passage (14 and 15, too) and it was lovely hearing the new English speakers speak the Word of God out loud! After that, we attacked some "phrasal verbs" such as hang out, hang up, check on, and my favorite (to act out), check out (cat-call whistle in the background). After class, I was about to leave, and Andrea was there waiting for something. I sat down across from her and noticed that something wasn't quite right, and as she began talking some tears welled up in her eyes. I decided it best to walk with her a bit, and as we walked through Riobamba (and found a nice park to sit in and talk), she shared that she has stored up a lot of things in her heart for a long time, and it was now manifesting itself. The Lord provided a wonderful opportunity to share with her what I believe are some differences between Catholicism and Christianity, and to share more about my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I was also able to just be a blessing through being a friend.

After she left, I caught the bus back home and ate lunch while starting "The Fellowship of the Ring". Lunch finished, and I went back to the Coupes to check up on all the things. At 2 I headed for a bus to catch to the grocery store, Akí, so I could meet with Andrea to discuss pronunciation things. I got there a little early, dropped off my bookbag and Bible with the security guard (in Ecuador, at grocery stores, they have a security guard who stores your bag until you leave so you can't steal stuff. Wal-mart, take note). He asked what I was reading, and when I told him, he said "Que bonita" or how beautiful. After grabbing a few quick things in the store, I came out to find the security guard READING my Bible! This opened the floodgates and he talked with me (at me) for about 30 minutes! But it was SO encouraging to find another believer in Riobamba... not from church but in the streets. Andrea arrived about 10 minutes into our conversation and was immediately taken by what he had to say. It was another one of those "WHAT?! God... how could you be any more AWESOME?!" But as soon as I say something like that, He blows me away even more again. Our God is SO great, for this guy had accepted Jesus into His heart three years ago and I believe his testimony provided a lot more clarification for Andrea.

We spent some time working on pronunciation by going through the Word of God, and different verses, such as Luke 10:27, seem to have a positive impact on her. Right before I left, I asked if we could pray, and she began. But not 10 seconds into her prayer, she broke down into tears and, through the tears, began begging God's forgiveness for the sin in her life. It was a truly phenomenal experience... I had previously thought that she had Jesus in her heart, but I really believe that now she is starting to understand what it means to live the life of a believer in Jesus. She wrote to me later in the day: "I'm going to follow in Jesus' footsteps". Wow.

Teaching at UNACH was fun, like usual, and John Mark did most of the teaching. He did a great job, especially going quickly through the phrases. We each would help the other when the professors had trouble understanding things. We then headed off to church and then to Paul's house! We had dinner with the family (a decorated pizza- I had to undress mine a bit before eating it) and then proceeded to watch Liga CRUSH Fluminanse 4-2. I will give it to Fluminanse, though, for one of their players had one of the prettiest free-kick goals I have ever seen: opposite upper-90. It was sick.

Upon finishing watching the domination, to Paul's dismay, and having a blast practicing my "gooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll" whenever Liga scored, we headed back to the house. I grabbed some stuff from mi casa and went to the Coupes! Once at the house, I found that the dog had eaten all of his food, so I went inside, took care of some things, and when I was ready to head back out the door to feed Buddy, I twisted the key in the lock and, well, it broke. This was the barred security door right outside the front door. So I was more or less locked inside the house. By the glorious grace of God, upon calling the Coupe family, I discovered an extra set of keys, so I'm ok now, but for about 12 or so hours it was interesting being locked inside a house. Last night I talked with my family, traveling home from visiting my beautiful sister Abby in Gatlinburg, TN, and then had a delightfully encouraging skype call with Cat Ong. She is SUCH a cool person, has a true heart after the Lord, and is just so passionate about Him and His work. Oh, and she's from Australia, so through the miracle that is video-skyping, we were able to communicate, face-to-face, half-way around the world from each other. I praise the Lord for the blessing of a friend that I am able to have a very encouraging, God-centered conversation from across the world. Pray for her as she serves Him in Sydney for the next few days...

OK. I'm good now. That is all.

God is great and His praise fills the earth, fills the heavens and Your name will be praise through all the world! God is great, sing His praise all the earth, all the heavens 'cause we're living for the glory of Your name!

In His strength alone...

Luke

PS Please continue to pray for patience, unconditional love, and humility. I appreciate it!

PSS Just for clarification purposes, and in case you couldn't see through my ostentatious descriptions, John Mark did NOT go into the woman's bathroom. First of all, many bathrooms here are unisex, and second of all, he went into the bathroom that is open. The first door he chose had urinals (sorry- TMI), and the second door he went into actually was the same size as the first, although I didn't notice it at the time of the shoot (the camera angle threw me off). Also, I have to give Mr. JM credit, for I would most certainly be lost somewhere in Ecuador right now if it weren't for his careful map-reading abilities and Spanish-fluency.

He's a super-smart dude, you can pick his brain on most subjects and he'll give the CORRECT answer, and I think he would make an excellent tour guide, but the humongous size of his brain won't allow for it (ie it should be used elsewhere- no offense to tour guides). I thank you, John Mark, for helping me see some of the weaknesses in my life I need to work on and for bearing with me, even when I'm being a jerk. John Mark Maust is a cool dude. You should add him as a facebook friend. Although on facebook, search for JohnMark Maust (don't separate the first two names). And ladies, the info given in the video blog is true- this guy IS single (hard to believe, eh?!) and IS really that smart. I would give his phone number out, but for fear of the international phone line companies not having enough people to work all of the calls that will be made, I shall refrain. It may or may not be posted on facebook, though...

Thanks, God, for blessing me with John Mark as a friend and companion. May we glorify You through encouraging each other, admitting when we're wrong, and always speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Also, may we glorify God through loving each other deeply... from the heart (1 Peter 1:22).