My First Week There

People often talk about the "culture shock" that missionaries have when leaving the States and going to a foreign country. My worst culture shock of all came when I had to leave a foreign country. Our mission contracted with a language institute in San José, Costa Rica, so when we went to Spanish-speaking countries, we always had a year in Costa Rica before we reached our final destination.



San José is a beautiful city. The whole country is the most developed in Central America, it is a center of tourism, and a wonderful place to settle down. The food there was great, and the prices are low. The people, for the most part, are like us. While some might think the standard of living is lower than here in the US, it is higher there than in most of the countries of the world.



I fell in love with the food, the climate, and the ease in transportation (I went a year without driving a car), and the relative peacefulness of a small republic that has no standing army. So when I got to Ecuador, I expected more of the same. I was happy with my Spanish; the Costa Ricans spoke something musical and rhythmic, close to the "queen's Spanish," I would say.



In Ecuador, the Spanish of the coast where I lived was choppy and staccatto, with the omission of (I thought) crucial consonants. The poor, the lame, the deprived, are in public for everyone to see. The foods are different from San José, and the people are a little more desperate for help.



The first week I was there, I accompanied a fellow missionary to a "wake" of a church member who had died in childbirth. Ecuadorians don't embalm, and the body lies in state for only a very short time. Cotton balls in nostrils and mouth are common sights. The facial expression does not change from the moment of death. I was shocked to see the woman in her state, and looked away to what I thought would be a table with flowers. Only too late did I realize it was the infant, in the same condition.

That first few weeks in Ecuador was a series of shock waves. Water was scarce, gasoline was sporadic, stores had nothing I was familiar with, and people just basically did things differently. Mayonnaise is yellow in Ecuador, but cheese is white. I realized that there was nothing really bad about the culture; it was all just different.

One of my own achievements that I am most delighted in is that I was able to weather those changes and live. We stayed nearly ten years in that country, and I left with tears. I would not take anything for that decade of my life. Some of the posts that follow will explain why. The story of life in Ecuador was a story of learning that there are things to do everywhere we might go, and that it is possible to bloom wherever we are planted. Those years formed much of who I am, and the same can be said for the lives of my wife and children. We lived, we learned, we loved, and then, ultimately, we left, and I have learned from all these things.