Begun in Faith

We have been living in Cali, Colombia for exactly a week now. Living together. For the first time. I am typing this in the living room of our apartment while Ethan, Isaiah, and Lucas are playing with cars on the floor. Aric is napping on the couch, and Jaci is clearing Hadasa's stuff off the table. I'm wondering if maybe I stepped back in time twenty years. I'm calling this "humidity chic." Junior, Jaci, and Hadasa are the newest members of our family. Junior and Jaci are our pastoral couple. They are the spiritual mentors of our team and the bold leaders of our new church. Although the rest of us will be moving back to our own homes in 2017, Junior and Jaci are committed to pastoring our new church in Cordoba for at least four years. Their daughter, Hadasa, is 5 years old and gets along great with our little Bidwell boys. Back in Quito, Lucas's favorite imaginary game was baking pancakes. Hadasa and I were playing restaurant one evening and I asked wh...

A week and a half ago, several of us visited a town called Mindo for the weekend. Mindo is a gorgeous town surrounded and infiltrated by a jungle that's not a jungle. Many of the trees have leaves spanning at least two feet across and flowers of various shades of yellow and red. Butterflies, hummingbirds, and lizards are everywhere. While we were there, it constantly rained this soft kind of rain that draws people to it rather than sending them indoors. It's the jungle. Unless you live there. Ecuadorians consider it a forest. Our best guess is they want to differentiate this section of the country (the sierra) from the jungle region. Two months ago, we actually went to the Ecuadorian "jungle." It did not look as jungly as Mindo. And yet, this jungle of Mindo is not a jungle. But it's definitely a jungle. Kensley, Matias, me, Ashley, and Rachel (Aric took the picture) When we arrived on Saturday, we were hoping the hotel would have an extra bed because we...