a tidbit about my life.....

So....here I am with two of my guides on my adventure in the jungle...I am wet as you can tell. The picture below is of a good friend and me after we played with eachother and ecuadorians in the mud and the river to celebrate Carnaval. I want to come to Ecuador every single year to simply play Carnaval. It is so much fun!!!!!!! One of the best times of my life. My white shirt will probably never be white again! Haha! The reason that our faces are painted is because we went to a an indigenous village....well it was a museum that the local Kichwa people have established to teach visitors and other Ecuadorians about their life before missionaries, Españoles...basically we learned about the way that they survived. Interesting stuff.


hope you are all well.


blessings,

rebecca c pedro

lil of this past week

Saturday I ate some most delicious ceviche de camerones. It is a typical dish here in Ecuador. This one was made with onions and some other yummy stuff! I highly recommend trying it! Then I made chocolate chip cookies with one of my good friends here. It is the first time that i have "made" them in awhile! Really my friend made them...i ate them. Haha! But it was good to have a little bit of home again. To be honest, I don't even wanna think about coming home right now. I am going to be so sad when May arrives. The time is flying by. The weeks seem like maybe two days long! Its crazy. And I have made some really good friends here...thank the Lord!
This weekend is Carnaval! yeah! I am going to the Jungle once again...this time only with the kids from my program. The jungle is pretty cool. Won't lie! I am not sure exactly what we will be doing but I do know that we are staying in a rather nice hotel! So that'll be fun!
Last Friday night I went to be my first soccer game here! I love soccer games. Won't lie. Anyways it was La Liga versus Manta (de la costa)....my friend loves La Liga so I cheered for them...we won 2-1 scoring in the last 2 or 3 minutes left in the game! La Liga is from Quito and Quito has another team called El Quito who won the championship last year after not going for the last 40 years. Kind of an accomplishment, huh? Yeah. La Liga is the dominater. I haven't decided yet who will be my team...I still have yet to watch El Quito play!

Love.

So today was Diá de San Valentín.

As the Día de Amor y Amistad comes to a close for this year I challenge you one thing:

1 John 4:18-20 (New International Version)

¹⁸There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

¹⁹We love because he first loved us. ²⁰If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

LOVE. Sometimes this is one of the hardest things that we are called to do as Followers of Jesus Christ. But we all know who is the perfect example of love: The One suffered on the Cross so that one day we might fellowship with HIM for eternity. This is the One called Jesus Christ, born of the Virgen Mary, of the Line of David. The One who walked on this earth for 33 years before being tortured for us. I think that the least that we can do this year is focusing on loving others. It doesn't always mean that we have to condone actions or even LIKE the person. We are called to love. For you know Who is Love? God. 1st John 4:16 says just this. So I challenge you love. At times I find it hard to love when I don't feel like I am loved in return. Does this make it right? But of course not! God doesn't say "Yeah, Rebs. Love only those who love you or who show you that they love you." Noooooo. He says to love my enemies and to pray for those who persecute me. Woah. But I know that I must. I cannot do it on my own. I constantly need to ask my Heavenly Father to help me do this! I really do. Because without Christ, I am jist a weak little Italian (and Swedish, Norwegian, & English) girl. Also, I challenge you to memorize the Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians. Good book with some great content and chapter 13 is one of the best. I challenge you to love, really love, somebody that you find difficult to love through, not only words but through actions as well. Remember the old saying: Actions speak louder than words. This is true. And did you know that love is not only a noun but also a verb? Well it is and a verb signifies action. You can tell someone that you love them, but they probably will not believe you until "they see it." Its the truth. So I challenge you love like our Lord loves. Obviously we are human and we can never be perfect but we are called to walk in HIS footsteps and with every footstep of HIS HE loves. He loves us.

Loved by HIM and working on loving through HIM,

the little rcp

i love my life here :)

Six Weeks Strong

Hmmm...well I have been here for..well this is week #6. I am so blessed being here. I live with an amazing Ecuadorian family and the school that I go to is so beautiful. I went white water rafting over this past weekend in a town called Tena. What a cool experience. I got to sit underneath a waterfall and the water jist pounded on my back...kinda like a back massage! I visited Mitad del Mundo which is the equator line. Pretty neat experience! The actual monument is off by about 100 meters so there is this little outdoor museum called "Anti-Nan" which is the ACTUAL line and it has some pretty cool experiments! You'll have to come visit me and we can go. I don't wanna ruin the surprise by telling you what they are! 

All of my classes are in Spanish. Its an adjustment not being able to talk half the class because I don't speak spanish perfectly...(Britt can attest to my talking half the class..and Julia..jist ask them). So that is an adjustment. But my spanish conversation is a cinch more or less. The profe is awesome. She is from Chile so she speaks a little extraño..but I love her anyways! 

I have found a really great church and it is about a ten minute walk from my house so that is a blessing not having to pay for a taxi to get to church! 

The food here is delicious. The bread=AMAZING. Thank the Lord, huh? :) And the fruit is really great. The other day I drank jugo de sanadilla (watermelon juice!) and it is tasty. I like the juice here for the most part. There is strawberry juice. I like this stuff. 

All in all, I have been blessed more than I could have ever imagined. The time jist is flying by here! I feel like I have been here for SO much longer than 6 weeks though. Its wierd how one really can adjust to a new lifestyle! I have for sure. Public transportation. The Jungle. Gelatina for breakfast. Taxis. 

I hope that everyone is doing well. The Lord bless you and keep you and make His face shine upon you and grant you peace.

In His Love,

Rebecca Christine