At the end of January we participated in our second Annual Team Conference that our missions team does.  It's a time to build team community and reconnect with teammates who we don't work closely with, as well as a time for spiritual growth as we listen to speakers and do small group activities.  Knowing we would have a newborn this year, we weren't exactly sure how it would go!

This year it was a 3-day, 2-night event at Youth World's retreat center, about 45 minutes out of the city.  Of course even 2 nights requires hours of packing and planning when you have to bring everything involved for both a toddler and a newborn.  Two pack'n'plays, loads and loads of diapers, food for Canaan and so much more!

Youth World did an amazing job of accommodating us.  They gave us the nicest cabin, because it had two bedrooms and had a heater.  It gets really cold up in the mountains at night and the walls are thin.  I had been worried about how to keep Eden warm since we don't use blankets with her, but someone else had already thought about this!  A team who was ending a two-week missions trip did all of the childcare for the weekend, had activities planned and kids broken up by ages.  Canaan had a BLAST playing with two 3-year-old boys all day long ... and playing in all of the "Agua" (water) that was in little ponds and puddles (it rained a lot!) around the site.  In fact, the second morning he spotted his friend Jack and started jumping up and down and then tried to climb out the window to him (pictured below).  He didn't miss us at all and at the end one of his babysitters told us that she just loved him and he'd been the easiest, happiest kid!  

Eden was 100% spoiled the whole weekend.  She didn't really nap in the cabin because it was too loud with 4 toddlers around.  But there were so many arms willing and wanting to hold her constantly that she just dozed and lazed in people's arms.  Some of the older men of our organization just love little babies and acted as great fill-in Grandpas.  

I enjoyed reconnecting with people.  Since Canaan's nap schedule changed over the summer and particularly since Eden was born, I don't make it to the weekly team meetings.  It was nice to have a weekend where my kids were happy roaming free and being held and I could sit and talk with people and not have to think about dinner, laundry or anything else!  It was kind of nice being on someone else's schedule and nice being out in the fresh air and quite, country feel.  The downsides were that Eden slept HORRIBLY the first night, it was really cold all weekend and we lived in sweatshirts, and we didn't participate in some of the night activities because after the last meeting ended at 8:30 we were pretty much ready to get to bed, knowing we'd be woken up multiple times each night to feed and rock Eden.

I didn’t realize that the sports ministry aspect of what I would be doing here in Ecuador would involve chess. Is chess a sport? Kids at this school play chess. Not sure how it started, not sure why it continues, but kids play chess. So now I play chess. I’m not really good, but I play.

I run a study hall. The first few weeks nobody would talk to me. I started bringing a chessboard with me. Still nobody wanted to interact with me. As kids started warming up to me, one student would play me. Soon enough I can’t have enough chessboards in my classroom. Everybody is playing. And they’re talking…

I started an intramural chess tournament. Students are playing. People are talking. I’ve had more connections with students over chess than nearly any other method. I’m excited to see what God will do through chess. I certainly have more opportunities to talk to students then I ever have before. I’m become normal to students and friends with many. The more normal I become to them the more opportunities I have. The more opportunities God give me.

And I’m improving in chess… I made it to the final… where I got killed.

Just a little sample of some of Nate's work for Spiritual Emphasis Week.  This was the intro video from day one.  (Click link below)

McGod

Several ex-AAIers, both faculty and staff, were interested in seeing some of the changes and updates that have been done to our campus.  Nate made a little video tour of our campus for anyone interested in where we work.  Since it seems to be having trouble showing up here, I've got a link to the video:

http://youtu.be/Dk-4BSoFtnM

When you work with high schoolers, you have to be creative ALL the time.

Sometimes we jump straight into the deep end of conversation and life with a student.  And sometimes it takes a little bit more of a "hook" to get there.

Here's a small sample of what chapel looked like this morning.  Nate had 4 volunteers come to the front for a speed-eating pb&j contest.  The kids got into it, shoving half a sandwich into their mouth and then trying to choke the dry peanut butter down.  After a winner was announced this video was played for everyone.

Despite our lack of video skills, it definitely got the students full attention as they groaned and gagged.  And I think our son ended up being quite the little star!

But there was a point to the video besides the gross-factor.  Nate talked about how the enjoyment of eating a pb&j changed based on the perspective.  The more context the kids got, the less appealing the pb&j seemed.  He then talked about how our perspective of God changes how we relate and interact with him.  And often times our perspective is so small and narrow that we have really faulty views of who God is and how he works.  Following this our head chaplain began to talk about some of the attributes of who God really is.  

All of this is building foundational blocks and building toward the week-long Fall Spiritual Emphasis Week that will happen in early October.  The theme will be "Mythbusters," and each message will focus on a myth that people tend to believe about God that affects how excited they are about Him.

Nate here.  As Kelley mentioned I started a sports club this summer along with a buddy, Dave Gardeen. Right now we only have a soccer team for boys born from 1996 to 1998, basically 7th, 8th and 9th graders.

While the school year was finishing up, Dave and I would get together and try to put our ideas together. I had a lot of fun brainstorming what we wanted the club to look like, our goals, vision, etc. I'm a geek for these sort of things.

We decided to try and start something this summer, though we didn't have a lot of time to advertise and organize a team. Do to the lack of time before the program was to start and the fact that I am just starting to make connections here we currently only have 4-5 guys who show up consistently. Thankfully the guys we have coming out are truly talented. I think we have the makings of a great team in the future.

Our goals as a club our lofty. We know that. We know that its going to be hard to achieve what we are setting out to do. But if nobody ever did hard things, there would be little that would be considered great, and that is what we want to be.

Below are our club vision and core values. What do you think? If you were starting a sports club what would it be like?

Vision:

Become the most successful and biggest club in Ecuador, South America and the world, using sports as a vehicle to share Christ.

We believe that to have the biggest platform to share the gospel we have to be more successful. Without athletic success we lose our voice. The two are inextricably linked.

Core Values:

We value community. Our club is a family. We share life together. Our family has roots in a community. We want to help improve our community and its members. We want to continually grow our role in our community’s life.

We value the team. No individual person is greater than our team. We tirelessly work to improve our players so the team can excel. We will celebrate team achievements over individual achievements.

We value one person. We consider every person at our club as part of our family. Each person in our family reflects our club. As a club we strive to assist each family member towards excellence. The individual, the club and the community will prosper through excellence. We will go to extraordinary measures to bring the present and future hope of God’s kingdom to each one. Furthermore we will tirelessly work to improve each member of the club in all areas of life.

Always strive forward. We have a culture that does not permit us to rest on our laurels. We always want to be better. Always want to do better. We always want to win. We tolerate honest mistakes in the pursuit of excellence.

We value risk taking. Entrepreneurship and prudent risk taking is the only way to distinguish us from the crowd. Not only do we encourage risk taking but also we reward it. Risk taking creates innovation. Innovation helps the club progress.

Never having worked in education, this the first time that Nate and I have had the summer "off" from our regular jobs.  It's a strange feeling to have our whole little family of three in the house each day.  But despite not reporting for our regular job assignment, we are keeping plenty busy!

- Nate is running a summer soccer camp.  It is small this year, but has been an excellent way to spend hours pouring into a limited number of kids, most of whom attend the Alliance Academy during the school year.  He runs sessions, plans the next ones and has spent time connecting with various local churches and individuals to identify more kids.  I think he plans to write more details about this soon since Canaan and I accompanied him to practice yesterday and took a few pictures.

- One of our main "jobs" this summer is putting our house together.  We moved in during a very hectic part of the school year - and the beginning of my pregnancy - and nothing much happened with our home until June.  Going from zero belongings to setting up a functional house takes a LONG time, something we haven't done since our first day married.  And it takes even longer when there is no such thing as Target or Home Depot to run to, where we can pick up every day basics.  

We've spent hours of legwork looking for a microwave bigger than a toaster for less than $150 (still working on that one so we are learning to use the stove well!), made an unthinkable number of trips to different paint stores in an effort to find paint where one gallon of color matches the second one you buy (no calibrated, computerized dye machine!), and hours taking taxis to fabric stores that each have a very small selection in order to find fabric for our couches and pillows.  We've had some furniture made, as that seems to be the cheaper option here, but business is done in person instead of by phone.  So you travel to the furniture maker to tell him what you want and he gives you a delivery date.  That day comes and goes and of course no one answers phone calls so you make trips back and forth checking on your furniture.  In fact, today we are waiting for delivery of our office furniture.  This is the fourth delivery date we've been given but no signs of delivery yet!  Our house is now functional enough to host dinner and visitors but is a LONG way from done still!

- And finally, we are spending time prepping for the next school year.  Nate and I are reading potential bible study/devotional books in order to have a selection of materials available for interested students or adult leaders of small groups.  Nate is beginning to flesh out ideas for specific weeks of chapel based on the themes we picked and we've now secured our main speakers for the Spiritual Emphasis weeks the next two semesters.  

On this note, I am so excited to say that our head pastor of our church in Chicago, Pastor Mark Jobe, will be our Spiritual Emphasis Week main speaker in our Spring semester!!  We are thrilled to have him come down and see a little of what our new life is like.  But more than that we think he's going to be excellent with the kids.  He drew us to New Life from the first time we heard him 9 years ago.  With his background as a missionary kid in Spain and Chile and his ability to speak Spanish fluently and translate himself we think he'll connect.  And he's a pro at youth conferences, having led the largest annual Christian youth conference in Spain for years!

Our retreat to Otavalo was two-fold.  It was a chance to reflect on this current school year and come together as a team that fell into place pretty quickly.  Half of our team arrived within days or after the start of this school year so we needed some time to step away from that.  

The second reason for the retreat is planning for next year.  That's right!  In April we were already starting to think about and plan for next August.  What will chapel speakers and themes be?  Who do we want to lead the Fall Spiritual Emphasis?  What should we keep doing that worked well this year?  What needs to be changed?  

Our team for next year is 40% smaller than the current team.  We also had to look at what we can accomplish, practically speaking, with a smaller team.  And what our new roles and responsibilities will be.  As part of this, Nate volunteered to take on the role of Middle School Coordinator for the next school year.  He has been heading up a lot of this already this year so it seemed like a natural solution.

The team had specific meetings times and agendas for each.  But that doesn't mean it was all work!  We ate meals together, played wet tennis on the flooded court, had time for board and had time for board games at night.  And families came so in between meetings the crew was big!

We did lunches in town at the Otavalo town center.  Otavalo is home to an indigenous tribe who are extremely proud that their blood lines were not mixed with the Europeans during the invasion.  They make beautiful textiles, mostly out of wool, and are known for their music.

Lunch overlooking the Otavalo market

A view of the market from above

These ladies were baby-wearing long before it became a trendy, yuppy past time!  And they don't need any instructions on how to wrap their baby in the moby wrap!

Selling a fruit traditional to Ecuador.  You can tell which people are Otavalen by their dress: embroidered white blouses, wool skirts and open-toed wool shoes.

Some of the artisanal wares you can find in the market weekly.

Over the Easter break, the chaplaincy team went on a planning retreat.  We are already thinking about and getting ready for the next school year, even as we finish this one up!  We traveled about two hours out of the city to a retreat center near Otavalo.

We got to our rooms about 9pm, after a rainy, traffic-filled trip and everyone got settled and crashed for the night.  Throughout the night I awoke several times because of the sound of machines.  I kept thinking that the place must have a generator that they use at night.

Our lovely little son woke us at about 5am and we opened our little balcony doors to this view.

That is Lago (Lake) San Pablo and a barely snow-capped Imbabura (mountain).  Beautiful even at 5am.  

But then we started looking around a little more closely and realized the entire resort had flooded over night!  

It rained and rained through the whole night and that lovely lake just creeped right over the walls and onto the property.  The "generator" I had heard the night before was actually a water pump that employees were using to desperately try to minimize the damage.  They had worked through the night to fill bags of sand to line the walls and pump as much of the water as possible off to the side.

Our rooms were grouped in little cabanas, with 4 or 6 rooms in each.  When we opened the front door to our second-floor cabana we realized we were stuck.   Our cabana had become an island, with more than half our team on the other side of it!  Though we had planned to make breakfasts together, we decided to just eat whatever we had on either "side" of the water.  Within the hour the employees had built a bridge system using two by fours and the garden wall.  In their tall rain boots they gave us a hand.  One man took Canaan from my arms and walked him through the water while others escorted us one by one to dryer land across the bridge system.

Though it gave us a late start on our meetings and an interesting breakfast, I was so impressed with how hard and how long the entire staff worked.  By 2pm they had cleared most of the water, dealt with a bee problem in two rooms that was caused by the flooding, and we could now walk back  and forth to our cabin with minimal planks needed!

Once a year the school counseling department holds a half-day counseling summit.  This year the summit focused on "Taboo Topics," offering the kids a chance to hear information and a Christian perspective on topics not often addressed.  The counseling department asked the chaplaincy office to run the program for the middle schoolers.

Everyone started off the day with a "Pancake Breakfast" for all students, teachers, and seminar presenters.  From there the high schoolers went on to small group seminars on topics they had selected to hear about.  Our goal with the middle school students was to address some bullying and hurtful behavior that has been a recent problem.  But spending a half-day with middle schoolers means you have to get a lot more interactive than 45-minute seminars!

The students first sat through a presentation on Aspberger's Syndrome and Bullying.  The sister of one middle school student who is diagnosed with Aspberger's gave a powerful description of what it is like to interact with her sister and feel the frustration, while shedding awareness on how hard her sister tries to fit into social norms and to do every day activities that the students take for granted.

Following this seminar, the students broke up to attend various workshops.  We wanted to give the kids a chance to do something they were interested in that would involve more movement, while practicing some new sensitivity skills with their peers.  The chaplaincy team pooled our collective skills and came up with the following workshops:

Photography 

A three-on-three soccer tournament (Nate ran this)

Dodgeball

Drumline

Cupcake Decorating (Ashley & I co-led this group)

Art

While this isn't a part of our daily routine, it was a great way for all of us to get to know some of the kids better and begin to build connections with them around shared interests.