Leaving soon...

Leaving on Thursday for Ecuador: Bert Wilson, April Wilson, Jane Britnell, Olen Britnell

This is the week we have waited for! We are looking forward to traveling and spending time with our friends, Bert and April Wilson. We are excited about seeing new places, having new experiences, and meeting new friends; but above all, we are looking forward to spending time with some of our brothers and sisters in Christ who live in Ecuador.

It is not difficult to visit the Christians in Ecuador. The only thing U.S. citizens need in order to visit Ecuador is a passport (and of course a plane ticket and a few “tourist ” dollars!). The people in Ecuador use U.S. currency, and their electricity is 110 volts AC, thus eliminating the money-exchange problem and the adaptor-converter problem U.S. citizens face when visiting many countries. Also, the clocks in Ecuador are on ECT, which is the same as Eastern Standard Time in the U.S. (No “jet lag” excuses!)

None of the four of us are what you might refer to as “fluent” in Spanish. Bert is fairly conversational in the language, and is self-taught through his experiences working with Hispanic bricklayers who work for him. He claims he speaks “bricklayer-Spanish”. He with his bricklayer-Spanish will be our go-to man for translating during the next week. Jane took Spanish in high school, but most of her knowledge has slipped away over the 50 years since Lakeland High School.

Ecuador is the small country shown in blue on the west coast of South America.

Ecuador is located at the equator (latitude 0!) on the western coast of South America, and is about the same size as our state of Colorado. There are four major geographic regions: the coastal lowlands, which is an agricultural area; the highlands of the Andes Mountains with snowcapped peaks; the eastern lowlands that is made up of mostly tropical fain forests; and the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles off the coastline.

Ecuador has the greatest density of volcanoes in the world, many of which are near Quito, the capitol city. Because Ecuador is on the equator, the temperature averages 71-degrees year-round. The guidebook tells us that the “rainy” season is January through June, where the weather includes “heavy” tropical showers occurring “occasionally”. (We are packing umbrellas!)

So we have an exciting (and busy!) few days ahead of us. We are currently in the process of collecting teaching materials in Spanish, and even making some teaching aids ourselves. We are very grateful for several who have helped us such as Becky Munoz, Gary and Vicki Copeland, and others. We ask that you pray for us to have a safe and successful journey, and encourage you to check back with this blog to see photos and get more information about our visit with Christians in Ecuador.

Note: For those of you who in the past have followed our other travel blog, www.journeyswithjane.blogspot.com, we still use that blog when traveling for fun or educational reasons. However, we decided that his trip had a different mission and should be kept separate from the other travel blog we usually do. Hopefully, this is not too confusing.