Hola, from Ecuador!

  Our family has been in country for a few weeks now, we left Pennsylvania during a snowstorm and arrived in Ecuador where it’s basically summer year round. The girls are doing well, Winnie started crawling and pulling herself up into a standing position. Josie started potty training, she's not had an accident in about a week now. We are proud of both girlies, they’re growing fast. In this post, I will be sharing facts about Ecuador and what Ninawachi's mission is and how our family got connected here. In some ways it feels like our family is starting fresh, so I thought it would be a good chance to start fresh here and talk about where we serve. 

How we left Pennsylvania. 

A hike we did in Quito, great view of the city and mountains. 

  Ecuador got its name for being located on the equator, being on the equator means the weather remains the same year round. At Huaticocha where we live, it’s 80 degrees daily, with 90-99% humidity, depending on rainfall. It cools off in the 70's during the night, after 9pm it starts to feel nice. Ecuador is a little smaller than the state of Nevada, but it’s vast in landscape and climates. Ecuador is home of the Amazon jungle, Andean mountain highlands, coastal beaches, and the famous Galapagos Islands. Ecuador has 27 volcanos, one of which we can see from the church in Huaticocha. Ecuador is known for producing bananas, cocoa, palm oil, and cassava flour, along with being exporters of fish and shrimp. Ecuador's common language is Spanish but there is more than ten indigenous languages spoken. At Ninawachi, we have students and staff from at least four indigenous tribes and some have learned Spanish as a second language. 

  Ninawachi is a bible institute in the jungle region of Ecuador. It was founded by Mark and Cheryl Shaffer, from Washington state. They started in the mountain region of Ecuador and over the years, God called them to the jungle region. He opened doors for them to purchase land and to start building housing, an eating hall, and prayer hut. The vision was to disciple and train up nationals in the gospel, so they could return to the deeper parts of jungle communities to contextualize the gospel in their native language. The students move to Ninawachi for the two year program, taking classes Monday-Friday. Every Wednesday they travel to communities up to an hour away, to practice evangelizing. They have found over the years that adults don’t have much interest, kids are often neglected, making them willing to hear what you have to share. So the students each week prepare VBS style programs, get color pages together, a Bible verse, lesson, and a small game. Some will visit homes, others will meet at a local soccer field with a bunch of children. To paint a picture for you, from Quito to Huaticocha, there is one road in and one road out. Its a two lane paved road, (used to be dirt and gravel for hours), winding through the mountain terrain. Once you get to Ninawachi, it’s another few hour drive to the Amazon River, you then get into a boat and could travel anywhere from 12-24 hours to reach pockets of communities. It's remote, you can easily be cut off from the world and some are. One tribe of indigenous people remain hostile and unreached from the outside world. 

This is Mark & Cheryl Shaffer, the founders of Ninawachi Institute. They served in Ecuador from 2002-2019  

Gideon on a motorcycle, on a wooden bridge across a basen. He was traveling to a community for Wednesday ministry, they had to hike about an hour after parking the motorcycles. They shared personal testimony, the gospel, and the locals fed them.  

 A question we are often asked, is how we got connected to Ninawachi. Gideon was serving in Peru as an intern when he was asked to visit Ninawachi, while traveling he felt God tell him he will be a student there. Before leaving he was invited to study, Gideon ended up enrolling and studied at Ninawachi Bible Institute for two years and interned after graduating. Gideon had to return back to the US to support raise and apply for a visa to return, but was denied a visa. He was invited to attend a short-term mission trip to Paraguay, I also was on that trip. We were married a little over a year later, Josie came the following year, and the beginning of 2022, we were contacted about a position at Ninawachi. It can be a difficult place to live, being so remote, the enviroment can be difficult and the poverty can be overwhelming. We were asked to take 3 months in 2023 as a "test run" to see if myself and Josie would do okay. We came back after those 3 months and began support raising. 

  Our prayer from the beginning was that we would trust God with our finances/support raising & not hold people accountable or have expectations. This was God's ask, we prayed for the hearts and budgets of those who He would ask to support our family. That is still our prayer, it can be easy to take it personal if someone stops giving monthly, but we remind ourselves, God asked us to serve, he will provide the funds and the means necessary for our needs. We are always humbled and appreciative of the partnerships and prayer support we get. Recently, I've been convicted to shifting my perspective, we are living a dream and a blessing. As a kid I often thought about traveling or living internationally, imagining what it would be like, always interested in learning about new cultures and countries. I can't speak for Gideon, but I know he comes alive in South America, he loves the culture and the people. So thank you for being apart of this, through prayer, reading these updates & sharing them, and financially partnering with our family, so we can live a dream and the ask of God. 

If you would like to partner with our family financially, below is the link to do so,

https://giving.myamplify.io//app/giving/chur1300194

If you don't want to miss an update, use the link below to add your email to our mailing list, 

http://eepurl.com/hCggsH

Thank you again for being apart of this journey with us. Enjoy a few pictures of what the girls have been up to. 

Winnie is full on teething, anything and everything looks good to go in the mouth. Including a support beam on the coffee table. 

Josie was holding Gideon so he wouldn’t fall off the ladder. Gideon did some electrical work at Casablanca while we stayed there, because he likes to have a project.