Chinese Preaching Outside of Cuenca

Last Sunday, a group of 14 left from Cuenca to try and locate a new project (a hydroelectric company near a dam) that had a rumored number of 20 Chinese people working on it. We left after the meeting in jeans because we did not want to draw too much attention to ourselves. There were 3 car groups that left the city together heading north for Azogues at about 12:30pm. 

We hit our first snag there when trying to get directions to the project. Getting directions here is one of the most confusing experiences that I have ever had. I never understand what people mean. They say down when we’re going up or vice versa or give a long series of turns that I would lose my way completely if I was the one trying to follow them.  We lost one of the cars (that happened to be the one that Ariel was in) while following those directions and had to wait nearly a half hour for them to find their way back to us. It didn't help that some of the roads were one giant pothole.

After we were all together again, we continued on our way towards Taday. "Somehow" our car group got ahead of everyone else and when we arrived in Taday, we were told that the Chinese were “in the next town.” We drove on for a while longer towards the dam and stopped for about a half hour (taking pictures) to see if the other cars were close behind us. They weren’t. 

Streets of Zhoray

We arrived in the town of Zhoray where we found the house that a new group of Chinese people were living in, but unfortunately they were not there. We left some literature and contact information with a local family at a restaurant that said they would pass it along to the Chinese workers. 

Chinese House

This town was almost in the Oriente (jungle) about 2 ½ hours from Mendez (where I harvested cacao last trip). We got to see quite a few interesting sites including this playful monkey:

But we had still not been about to speak with a Chinese person and it was now after 3 pm. I’m pretty sure that all five of us in the car group were praying so hard to speak with just one Chinese person.  We were so far out that we did not have any cell service, so we could not communicate with the other two car groups. We decided to head back to Taday, assuming that they had found the Chinese there that we had missed. Upon arrival we asked a different set of people where there were Chinese and they directed us to this house:

Liao

It had signs up in Chinese Characters so we knew that we had come to the right place. As we were parking the car, a Chinese man came out! Jehovah had answered our prayer! But he wasn’t done. We walked up to the house, because that man didn’t really want to talk to us at first, and as we were standing at the door knocking, a truck pulled up with 4 more Chinese people. One was dressed in a military uniform and was pretty wary of us, but a younger man name Liao (from Hunnan) and an older man Wu (from Beijing) both listened as Paola and Fernanda witnessed to them. I tried to take a discreet photo, but after talking for about 10 minutes everyone pulled out their cameras and even the military man had us pose for pictures with a smile on his face. We are sure that Jehovah had directed us there at that time (4:30-5:00) because we later learned that the other group had also stopped at that house, but only found the interpreter at home. 

Jehovah had answered our prayers beyond any of our expectations! New seeds have been planted, and if the soil is fertile, Jehovah will make them grow. :)