Deisal pricked my nose as I looked out of our fourth floor window and watched
a blond woman and two light skinned men stop in front of the Chuchucara
restaurant. They hoisted dark blue and deep green climbing backpacks. I don’t think I’d like to be a tourist,
everyone would watch me. The irony
of the thought hit me, and I started laughing. I had been the gringa all my life. People already
stared at me. It wouldn’t be any different during the European tour I dreamed
of.
I never used to
pay special attention to the darker skin or hair of the Ecuadorians. The Quichuas
were just the people my dad worked with. Dad’s students were normal people. They were different, they wore wool ponchos
and black dress pants. But it was normal that we were different. I didn't really understand how strange they would seem to Americans. Sometimes I hated my white skin
because sometimes it stopped the darker
Quichua kids from really talking with me, especially as I got older and simple
games like tag no longer helped us to understand each other as normal people.
I’ve been in America
for the last two years. (It’s been three years since I looked out the window
in our Latacunga apartment.) I came back for the summer before my senior
year in highschool, and except for a short visit, I haven’t been there
since. Memories were fading. I was
beginning to wonder if I was losing Ecuador, until Dad pulled out old videos
and we watched some of the Sundays he and I had taped. For the first time, I
saw my world from an American’s eyes. Dad looked like something from an old movie
with his blue checkered shirt, black mustache, and old round-squared glasses.
He stood behind a big white podium and preached. Quichua women might have come up before to sing
for a special occasion. Maybe one of the mothers had been nursing uncovered while
singing. The air would have been cold. There would have been no carpet, the
floor was either dirt or cement. The pews were unfinished-wooden benches. How
rustic that seems compared to the heated, polished churches in North America. How desolate and needy. No wonder I struggle with our sometimes careless attitude about money! Memories
of a life before American culture- shock slowly slipped into my mind as I
recognized my Spanish voice and then, when the camera turned to a white girl
standing amongst a crowd of dark haired people, I realized, God let me be part of
His miracle.
My parents are under
supported and have been slowed by the
inability to find housing. We are in a
time of transition, but I cannot help but wonder at the privilege we have been
given, and they still have. They are one
of the only missionaries reaching to the yet-to-mature Quichua church who is
still just emerging from hundreds of years in slavery. Many have come and gone,
but few have been able to last this special, rejected people. Nineteen years into the work, thirty years
into pursuing missions… my parents are looking to keep showing Christ’s love
the Quichua people by investing into the life of one pastor at a time. They're just two normal people, a link in the “telephone game,” that shares God’s love to hundreds.
