In August, we traveled to Quito to visit a couple from our home church who were here visiting. Our friend’s father had established an orphanage in the area many years before, and they were in Quito for the wedding of the daughter they had adopted from the foundation. Because we had to get our long-term visas for Colombia (we’d entered the country on tourist visas) outside the country, we decided to take advantage of our trip to get that taken care of. But like many things in Latin America, that didn’t turn out to be a simple undertaking and, much to our dismay, our plans for a weeklong visit turned into two. While Bogota certainly had its challenges, it had become home to us, and while Quito was a “nice place to visit”, we were not interested in staying any longer than we had to.
We had been invited us to stay in the foundation’s guest facilities, hosted by the national (Ecuadorian) couple who ran the orphanage. It was during that time that we fell in love with this couple and their two daughters. Responsible for 160 children, they were way over their heads without adding guests (and a visiting team from the U.S. who was there at the same time) to the equation, but they demonstrated such graciousness to us and an incredible trust in God’s provision and empowerment that we did not feel like the burden we probably were.
However, we did see the incredible amount of responsibility and work they were doing and the stress and health issues they were dealing with as a result, and as one week became two, we began to ask ourselves (much to our own surprise), “Could this possibly be a ministry we could come alongside of? Could God be calling us to work with this couple, at this orphanage, in Ecuador?” This, I think, was most difficult for me to consider. After all I had gone through as God made me ready to accept Bogota as a destination for our family! Was all that for nothing?
That began another chapter for us that would involve both lot of confusion and disillusionment as well as some hard won but very valuable lessons about trusting God in the dark. Over the next couple of months, we investigated the possibilities of returning to the foundation we had visited in Quito to come alongside this couple we had come to love and wanted so badly to help only to discover that once again, we were “not welcome here”. While this couple would have gladly accepted our presence and our help, the founders of this ministry reacted to the possibility in much the same way as many of the missionaries we had encountered in Bogota.
They even went so far as to suggest that we go back home (to California) and use our resources to support missionaries rather than being missionaries ourselves. It was a very painful, confusing time, especially for me and the kids. While the news of our “rejection” did not come as so much of a surprise to Ron (God had prepared him for it), I was crushed. I had felt such kinship with this woman who had become my friend, and I had fallen in love with the children at the foundation. I had seen my kids begin to adapt to the Latin culture we found there, even learning some Spanish from their new friends. As we flew back to Bogota after a second trip to Ecuador, I wondered more than ever if we had gotten it all wrong.
But God didn’t leave us in that place. Ever faithful, once again He met us in our questioning and through His Word and the counsel of some trusted friends back home, we soon determined that even though that particular ministry door was closed to us, God could still open others for us in Ecuador. He did that in some very surprising ways, and within a few weeks of our return to Colombia, Ron was back in Quito looking for a place for us to live. By the end of October, the four of us were back in Ecuador, living in a rented house in Valle de los Chillos. Still having no idea what God had planned for us, we’d simply followed Him, by faith, into this next chapter of our journey. And one of the first surprises He had for us there was a tiny little bundle of energy named Blanca, who would turn our home and our family upside down!
