Over the next several years following the arrival of the nine new children to our home, our lives and ministry were marked by numerous challenges and changes which included the coming and going of not only more children but also various people who came to minister alongside of us. However, as He has shown us time after time, our plans and God’s are often very different. During this season, the school was only the first of several examples of God’s plans trumping our own.
In September of 2003, recognizing that we had to do something different if the children God had brought were going to get the kind of education we believed they needed, we hired a retired couple from the church we were attending to tutor the eleven Ecuadorian kids who were living with us (I was still homeschooling Emily). The smallest casita on the property (where the two-story secondary classroom building now stands) became our “homeschool”, where, using what was basically a national curriculum, along with me teaching English, the children began learning in an environment that allowed them to advance at their own pace. It wasn’t ideal, but we were certain it was better than what they had been receiving in the school they’d previously attended. This continued for an entire school year, and we had a measure of success, but it was becoming evident that while this couple had helped us in this transition, they were not ideal long-term. However, God already had a plan in place. A couple of years earlier, when our son Nathan was still living with us and struggling with physics, we had hired a teacher named Mario Vallejo to tutor him.
Now, when we found ourselves in need of new teachers for our kids, that’s where we looked once again for help. And that is how Mario and his wife Monica Neacato came to be a part of Montebello. As many of you know, Mario is now the rector of Montebello as well as the coordinator of the secondary grades, and Monica has been our Elementary A English teacher since Montebello first became an official school in our (then) guesthouse (the building that now houses our administrative offices). But their first “job” was to tutor our own eleven kids, and they were an incredible answer to prayer. After teaching in the little “one room schoolhouse” for a year, Mario and Monica and their students moved up to the guesthouse where they taught our growing school for the next several years.
However, school was not the only ball we were juggling at that time. We were also hosting summer teams (often back to back, especially during the summer months) and college age interns who would live with us for nine months to a year. I did have help with some basic things around the house, but I was still doing A LOT of cooking! Weekly grocery shopping for 14 people was always an adventure – the looks we would get as we loaded up at least two of Megamaxi’s large baskets each week were always amusing. But imagine what it was like when the summer teams of 15-25 joined us! Our line of carts at checkout would draw the eyes of customers all over the store! Over the weeks that would follow, many hours were spent in the kitchen preparing food for the multitudes (though I always made them wash the dishes—that’s my least favorite thing to do!) However, midway through one of those busy summers, on July 30, 2004, just a few days before our next team was scheduled to arrive (and while Ron was in the jungle for a bit of rest – the major stuff always seem to occur when he’s gone!– something happened that turned our plans upside down. On my way home from a Bible study that evening, just after sunset, I was cautiously passing a bus stopped to let off passengers when a young boy ran directly into the path of my Landcruiser. Though I was not going very fast, there was no time at all to stop; sadly, I ran over this poor little boy, who lived on the opposite side of the street and was playing unsupervised but had crossed to the other side for some unknown reason. It’s a long story, and I won’t go into all the details here, but most important, the child, though requiring surgery (which we paid for) for a broken leg and some internal injuries, recovered. Ron spent time with him in the hospital (even taking Emily’s Nintendo to him as a gift to keep him entertained there!) and was able to make sure he received the care he needed. As for me, I spent the next week in jail. Again, details would take more space to share than I’m able in this context, but what I can say is that the accommodations were not exactly comfortable (I was in a 3×4 meter room shared with two to six other women – the numbers fluctuated) with a set of bunk beds and one double mattress, a large metal office desk (which I used to climb into my top bunk) and a single bathroom. Unlike correctional facilities in the U.S. where meals and basic necessities are provided, food must be brought to the “inmates” in Ecuadorian jails (as well as bedding, toiletries, towels – pretty much everything). But despite the less than luxurious environment and the inconvenience for those back home who had to make daily treks to Quito to supply my needs, it was an experience I would not trade for anything. While there, I was able to minister to the various women who ended up in the cell with me, whether for one night or for the entire time. These ladies became so precious to me as I nursed wounds, prayed, shared God’s word and just encouraged however I was able. And believe it or not, when the day finally came for me to be released and go home, I actually cried! My departure was harder on me than my arrival!
During that same period of time, one of our children, Martha, also went through a very scary time. One day while she was suffering from what we thought was just a bad cold, we noticed that her lips and fingernails were turning a shade of blue. A trip to the hospital revealed a congenital heart defect that required open-heart surgery. The hardest part of this for me as her mom (I was so in love with this little girl who was so affectionate I always said “If she could crawl inside your skin to get closer, she would!) was that in order to get the help we needed from a local Ecuadorian foundation to pay for the surgery, we had to stay in the background, not letting them see us as her “parents”. The sad reality is that there is a stigma attached to being North American in a developing nation. We are all seen as “rich”, whether that is true or not. Because we did not have the resources to cover the cost of this very complicated surgery, we had to allow others to step in and work through the process for us. I still remember bursting into tears when I got the call that the surgery had gone well. I was still crying when I went to report the news to the rest of the family, and at first, they were sure something had gone wrong. I had to get past my tears to be able to get the words out that she would be fine. Soon, Martha was home and all was right with our world once again.
Over the next couple of years, there were a lot more comings and goings at Montebello. One of those was a couple, some friends from back home, who came to Ecuador with their young son, having sensed a “call” to come alongside of us to care for other children that God would bring. Well, God brought the children – Geanella, Valeria and Tony — but for reasons that are too complicated to explain in this context, this couple was not able to stay. While they have continued in mission related ministry, that was not to take place here with us. And so, these three children joined us in our home, bringing us up to a grand total of fourteen kids (Boris had left by this time). Ron’s office moved from our home to the guesthouse as we made room for three more kids. It was a very challenging time, as by this point, several of the older children were now entering adolescence. If it was tough to deal with three teenagers, how about seven? And that was just the beginning!
Shortly after this couple’s departure, some other old friends from California (a former pastor of ours and his wife) joined us on site, bringing their ministry of training mission minded young people with them. Over the next year or so, we all worked very hard to combine our two ministry visions, seeking to find ways to join what they were doing with what we had been called to (particularly with our interns). But in the end, it simply didn’t work – our visions were just too distinct. Like many of our “good ideas”, this was not necessarily a “God idea”, and once again, He began nudging us in a direction we still were not able to see or understand. Thankfully, both of these couples are still very good friends and one of them has a vital ministry here in Ecuador (curiously quite different from what they thought they came here for!)
However, something very interesting had sprung up on the grounds of Montebello as a result of these two couples coming to work with us, even for that brief time. The husband of the first couple, a man involved in city planning back home, helped us to design a large structure with classrooms, dorms and bathrooms intended to be used to house students for the missions’ training school that we hoped to create along with the second couple. But now these people were all gone, along with that vision. Now we had an unfinished building and no idea what we were going to do with it. During this same time, the economy in the U.S. had hit a recession, and support for our work here dropped significantly, so funding for its completion was not forthcoming. What in the world, we wondered, could God have in mind?
