On Wednesdays we have a Bible study with an Ecuadorian man named Jaime.
As usual, we arrived at his shop today, and found him talking in the doorway with a young man whom he introduced as his friend, Roberto.
We went inside the shop for the study and Roberto came too and sat with us.
It turns out that although he was introduced as Jaime’s “friend”, they had only met the day before when a friend of Jaime’s asked if he could pick up Roberto from the airport in Quito. (Roberto was born in Ecuador, has lived in Spain since he was 15, and is visiting Ecuador for a month.)
Jaime speaks pretty good English, and he said Roberto speaks and understands some English. We’ve been studying the Good News brochure in English with Jaime, assisted by the Spanish Good News brochure and Bible.
At the start of the study, I handed the Spanish Bible and brochure to Roberto so he could follow along as we read and discussed the information in English. We were discussing Chapter 6, about God’s Kingdom.
Normally after we read the scriptures in English, Jaime also reads them in Spanish to make sure he understands fully, so today after we had read the paragraphs from the brochure and the scriptural verses, Brendan asked Roberto to read them aloud in Spanish, which he happily did.
We’re not sure what his background is or his beliefs, but he seemed somewhat familiar with the Bible and to believe in it, as he was able to find the scriptures without too much help, and at one point when he had quickly read the paragraph from the brochure to himself, he went ahead and looked up the scripture mentioned in the paragraph, while Jaime was still reading the paragraph aloud in English.
We were struck by how he just joined in and read along and looked up the scriptures, and at times made comments on some things he had read. A couple of times he asked questions (in Spanish) about what we had just read, which Jaime translated into English for us, and then we read further scriptures in English and Spanish and we could see he understood.
Somewhere during the study, Jaime must have felt that Roberto would benefit from some background information on what we were studying, so he broke into Spanish and explained some of what he’d learnt.
At the end of the study, Roberto said he had a question, and asked what happened to unborn babies who had died. Jaime translated this for us, and Brendan suggested that he explain it to Roberto, as in the last month or two we had just studied what hope there is for those who have died.
It was hard to pick up most of the explanation, as understanding Español muy rapido (very fast Spanish) is not our speciality, so Jaime gave us the gist of it, and he’d understood it well. We were happy that he had an opportunity to explain it to his friend.
I asked Jaime if it would be okay to give his Spanish copy of the Good News brochure to Roberto (after promising to bring him another copy next time), and pointed out that there was a section discussing what happens after death. Roberto has his own Bible, so we encouraged him to read the information and to look up the scriptures.
We hope that this could be the planting of seeds of Truth for Roberto.
Another thing that is rather different in Ecuador from countries such as Australia is that many Bible students have their study while at work. At times we have passed a shop or a business and find the owner of the shop sitting down to have a Bible study. (Two of our three studies are conducted in a shop.) Sometimes the student will close up the shop for the duration of the study, but more often the study continues around the customers.
We have a study in English with a lady who runs an appliance shop. A few customers come in from time to time, and we can tell she would rather be going on with her study than having to go and help them spend money, which we find rather amusing.
We’d just been discussing the chapter with her about the family (also in the Good News brochure), and it was very encouraging to hear her comment that what the Bible said about families and its moral values was “very important”, and that she hadn’t been taught anything like that in the Catholic church.
The divorce rate in Ecuador is as high or higher than in Western countries, and she felt that if people read and did what the Bible said, then it would definitely help families to be happy and stay together.
Another man we started to study the Bible with was a bank guard named Marcelo.
A brother and sister who live at the other end of our territory had spoken with him while at the bank in their town and found that he spoke some English, and was interested in studying the Bible. Bank guards here are often rotated as to their place of work, so are not in the same place or town for long, and it can be hard to find them again.
It turned out that he lives in the same town as us, so the brother who first met him arranged for Brendan to call on him and try to start a study. We arranged to meet him outside the bank at the end of his shift. We waited … and waited … but he didn’t come.
So we contacted him by phone and made a similar arrangement. Again, same lack of result. In the meantime, another sister in our congregation said that she had also met Marcelo and was trying to find him again as he wanted to study, and another couple had also spoken to him about the Bible.
The third time we waited we had success, and went with him back to his house and had the first study and made arrangements to continue. It was another couple of weeks before we were able to have another study, as his work hours varied, and we couldn’t contact him by phone so we waited outside his house for an hour or more a few different times with no result.
Eventually we were able to have a second study, and sometime during it we all realised that with his not-so-good English and our not-so-good Spanish it was not the best way for him to learn about the Bible, so we asked him if he would prefer to study with someone who spoke Spanish. He quickly agreed, so on the way back to our house we stopped in at the apartment of a brother from the U.S. who speaks Spanish and asked him if he would like to study the Bible with Marcelo. He said he would, so we passed the study on to him.
The preaching work is definitely a team effort, and we were glad that between all of us we were able to eventually track Marcelo down, and find someone who could study the Bible with him in a language that would be best for him.
It’s interesting here in Ecuador that there isn’t the prejudice against the Bible or being seen to read or discuss it that there is in many other countries. And that a friendship of one day’s standing is sufficient to have someone join in on a Bible study.
We are constantly amazed at what people are prepared to do here, without batting an eyelid, to study the Bible. These are things that would rarely, if ever, happen in Australia, and from what we are told, in the US as well. Studying in a business environment, in shops, having friends sit in on studies, etc.
It’s a wonderful feeling and we would recommend to anyone that if they have the circumstances to serve where the need is greater, even for a short time, they will never regret it. Every day is an adventure for us.
