Christmas Party at a City Dump

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Conversation, Invitation, Integration, Congregation

Cradling the bass on my lap, I peer across the top of the music stand to watch Analizbeth tuck her violin under her chin. Sliding across the strings, her bow releases from the instrument the strains of a beautiful melody.

Her sister, Jessica, is at the piano. On guitar, Beth leads the worship band, and with Gabriel also at guitar, the team consists of more than half Ecuadorians.

Pastor Len has publicly credited Spotlight Listeners´ Club with flinging open the English-speaking church’s doors to the Quito community. The face of the congregation has changed with regular English-conversation evenings at church.

Analizbeth, Jessica and Gabriel (also Jonathan and Juan Pablo, violinist and drummer respectively) all are under 30. Just like much of Ecuador and much of Latin America is under age 30. Is it any wonder then, that the EFC group, “20-Somethings”, is experiencing burgeoning growth? Gaining a life of its own, the group is changing the church’s body life.





I think of another Ecuadorian, William, and his involvement in the 20´s group, in discipleship and Bible study. I think of his participation in my conversation group many months ago at Spotlight. He has since moved on to other outreaches at the church. This is integration, even as Spotlight Listeners’ Club continues to stand welcoming new people at the church doors on alternate Wednesdays.

Other Spotlight Listeners' Club coordinators say:

We are meeting once per week (just completed our 7th today) and have an average of about 25 women, plus 8-10 conversation partners each week. We also have a childcare program that can accommodate 12+ babies/toddlers. Our population is primarily Japanese with a few Korean and Arabic women. -Michigan, USA

The Spotlight Club is going absolutely GREAT! It is truly amazing. We are going to have our 8th week tonight (we meet once a week. Of course some of the students have asked for more nights but for right now I think I am going to have to try to stay with just one. We have had some wonderful volunteers and each week we have any where from 8 to 16 "students" come to the club. We can see it gradually growing and it is wonderful. -North Carolina, USA

Those that volunteered did a great job. I had stressed speaking slowly and clearly and had two young women for the basic group that were very creative and excited about what they were doing. The one advanced group leader did a fantastic job as did the leaders (husband and wife about our age) in the middle group. We did the program on Thanksgiving celebrations. We had people at this Spotlight that were originally from Peru, Honduras and Mexico. -Georgia, USA

December?

Yes, it is December. But the signs here for the start of the Christmas month are different.

No bundled-up-in-scarf-and-mitten shoppers, no snow predicted in this century. Instead we do listen to the chiva buses making their evening rounds, and we have heard the traditional song "Chulla Quiteno* " a hundred times already!

The bull fights make some city streets unnavigable, and the blue and red flags of Quito are flying. Once the "founding of Quito" holiday is over, things will begin to seem a little more like December for this South Dakota girl.



I should be happy that our backyard has a blooming 7-foot poinsettia tree . . . but I long to walk into my family greenhouse and see my brother bending over his little potted poinsettias instead. I should be glad that our grass in very green and lush and there are blooming impatiens and marigolds 12 months a year, but just for a few hours a good blizzard would be better for me!!

May the month of December be a peaceful and blessed one for you!!

love,
Kathy

*Melodía - Pasacalle: Alfredo Carpio Flores

Letra: Luis Alberto Valencia

Yo soy el chullita quiteño,

la vida me paso encantado,

para mi, todo es un sueño

bajo este mi cielo amado.

Las lindas chiquillas quiteñas

son dueñas de mi corazón,

no hay mujeres en el mundo

como las de mi canción.

La Loma Grande y La Guaragua

son todos barrios tan queridos de mi gran ciudad;

El Panecillo, la Plaza Grande

ponen el sello inconfundible de su majestad.

Chulla quiteño, eres el dueño

de este precioso patrimonio nacional;

Chulla quiteño, tú constituyes

también, la joya de este Quito colonial.

What are they are singing on those open busses with live bands? Here's a
translation --done by Ralph-- that may help tell the story. A "chulla" had one
pair of shoes (nicely polished) and one suit and lived an existential, somewhat
Bohemain lifestyle. Please leave a comment if you have suggestions on improving
the translation.

I am Quito's high class bum
in my happy-go-lucky life
For me, it's all a dream
under this beloved sky.

Ah, the beautiful Quito ladies!
To them my heart belongs
No other women in the world compare
With those I sing of in this song

The Great Hill and the Guaragua
they're great barrios in my wonderful city
Bread Loaf Hill, Independence Plaza
Leave an undeniable seal of their majesty

High class hobo, you are the master
of this precious national treasure
living for the moment bum, you too belong
the jewel in fact, of colonial Quito

Football ! Not Futbol . . . At Least for A Day

Six hours of American football in South America.



The locals didn't know what to think. They stood on the bridge (a crosswalk for the 8 lanes of Pan American highway traffic underneath) gazing down at us.

"Futbol* Americano" they call it. One Saturday a year, the sophomore class hosts a day of fun. A day for North Americans and Canadians to pretend they are "home". Complete with imported soda pop, and a sloppy Joe for lunch, you almost think you're in your old hometown.




Before the first ball was snapped, the event's coordinator asked us to join him in a prayer. For clear skies we gave thanks, then begged for safety for the players. Previous years had been plagued with injuries, concussions, broken bones, stitches. This year the Lord gave us a perfect day, with no serious injuries and no lightning storms!!


The teams were made up of quite a variety. One was mostly north American college/post college kids down here for a year of mission work. One team was composed of our kids' teachers, many of them reliving high school days of throwing the pigskin, but also some teachers who have lived in South America all their lives, either as MK's or nationals.

The student team our oldest was on had a junior from Asia who saw a football for the first time at practice the day before!!

It is known as the "Turkey Bowl". Our family goes to watch every year - a little taste of "Home" for Ralph and me.

*futbol means "soccer" in Spanish

An Economic System With Values

"It is important that Europe fight for its ideas and values to help
bring back confidence. We want capitalism based on entrepreneurs
and not speculators. We want morality and transparency. The world
needs Europe to show its stability." Oct. 08

Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France




"October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in
stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May,
March, June, December, August, and February."

Mark Twain
1835-1910

Worldwide Web of . . . . Martian Reports?

“Martians have landed and are quickly making their way to the capital!”

Is this true? Why of course not.

But people heard it and perceived as as a threat.

The October 1938 version of “War of the Worlds” is the classic. Another occasion was February 12, 1949, the eve that martians were said to have landed in Ecuador, as dramatized on Radio Quito. The panicked response of listeners paralleled that of nearly 11 years earlier on the Columbia radio network.

In the Ecuador episode, the Martians’ initial assault occurred at Latacunga, with the deadly sweep northward to Quito and Cotocollao, near the international airport. With growing panic in the streets, the actors at Radio Quito revealed the truth. Fear turned to anger which turned into a riot outside the building that housed the radio station and El Comercio newspaper. That night, the facilities were burned down, resulting in several deaths. Those who had authored the radio production fled the country.

Radio was relatively young and its power to inform, entertain and motivate listeners was still being discovered. In the 1940s, the martian takeover had also played out in Chile.

Consider the Internet today. Stories of foreboding still work, but in different venues, with different results. I-phone guru Steve Jobs was hospitalized with chest pains – or at least that was the report on CNN’s Ireport.

Apple stock dropped below its traditional price floor of $100, but recovered as the "news" was corrected. When Jobs gave a press conference to the traditional media, a big, bold banner behind him read, “The rumors of my death are highly exaggerated.”

Our modern population might be too sophisticated for panic at the sound of a field reporter’s last gasps of life as martian gasses asphyxiate him. But we’re not always saavy enough to determine the truth or error of today’s citizen journalists.

Collaborative efforts provide some notably good results, but damaging reports will still filter in. In his October 3 column, John C. Dvorak said of inaccuracies, disinformation and hoaxes we see with citizen journalism, “It’s like a bad forest fire: it can be contained but not controlled.”

He wrote that citizen journalists would be heavily criticized for false report on Jobs, but that we all need to “get over it. We’re stuck with what we have.” We have a world of information. Consume with care.

Xavier Almeida of Radio Quito wishes such a dramatization were possible again. Take a few minutes to listen to this 1998 interview and hear his description of the events of February 12, 1949.



An avid shortwave radio listener, Don Moore discovered the story about Radio Quito's version of War of the Worlds while at a university library in Michigan, USA. Listen to Don in this telephone interview.

Historic photo used with permission of El Comercio

Read the News and Look for Reasons to Smile

A different tack now, on news of the growing financial crisis.

Does a broadcast announcer ever get the giggles when talking about the “footsie 100” of Britain’s markets?

I used to work in radio news. Several years ago I queried my co-workers

on pronouncing the the Nikkei in Japan’s markets and came up varied different answers , with "NEE keh" winning out.

Amid reports of all the suffering of last spring’s Sichuan earthquake in China, why would a moment of amusement brighten my emotions as I read? Very simply, I liked the wordplay as a reporter's favorites -- “who” and “when” -- appeared quite literally in the story. President Hu Jintao urged all out rescue efforts, even as Premier Wen Jiabao was traveling to devastated Sichuan province.

As a “Ralph”, I am slow to poke fun of people’s names, for mine is no easy handle. Thankfully, it is much shorter than the one time foreign minister of Qatar – Sheikh Hamad bin Jassin bin Jabr al-Thani. As far as I can tell, he only got the “Sheikh” tacked onto his name. Micahel Zammit Cutajar worked harder at giving a radio announcer a fractured jaw, getting appointed as the (take a breath and then say it) Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Whew!

I logged a lot of hours editing Reuters newspaper reports to use as broadcast copy, and so little amusements quietly crept in. Did anyone else’s mind replay old “Smash!” and “Pow!” scenes from Batman when encountering the name, Susilo Bambang Yodhoyono, of Indonesia? Maybe just me.

Is there really religious teaching about “Our Lady of Unraveling Knots”?

What novelist would tag a Philippines Archbishop with the surname of Sin?

Life’s Author, that's who.

Life can be a “who’s on first?” comedy, ala Abbott and Costello routine. Or a tragedy of “I don’t know” even how to take up the first thread of string to try to unravel a knot. An unexpected death, great loss in a natural disaster, or a stock market slide that seems to not have found a bottom.

All make a lot more sense when we call on the Name that holds no irony, needs no earthly intermediary and bears nothing but goodwill and grace for us.