Morcks Update: September 2009

Dear friends and family,

We concluded a busy summer, the girls are back in school, and we are back to our “normal” routine.

In the beginning of August, after the consecration of the new bishop, we had an excellent trip to Puyo with a short term group from the Seabury Deanery, Connecticut, their third time working and learning with the church, on the Diocesan farm which is being rehabilitated into a retreat center, and visiting Amazonian indigenous communities with whom the priest in Puyo has relationships. The retreat center is just about ready for the Diocese to use and to rent out as income, which is great news and a step towards sustainability.

At the end of August we spent a weekend visiting indigenous communities around Ambato and Riobamba. On August 29 we went to a wedding in La Hondonada, a joint wedding where two brothers got married and their children were baptized. We then experienced an indigenous reception, replete with potatoes, guinea pigs (for consumption), chicha, and hominy corn. On August 30 we traveled to Guamote, south of Riobamba, where we went with Bishop Luis Fernando to eight different indigenous communities. They were amazing visits, each community asking to be attended to by the Episcopal Church. Many have church buildings but no one to attend to them. The communities received the Bishop with processions, music, singing, dancing, and speeches. It was very special and humbling to be part of such a remarkable visit to these communities. Once again we were showered with potatoes, guinea pigs, cheese, fava beans, and drinks made with barley flour (máchica). Isabel that day probably ate an entire guinea pig all by herself between all the villages. It’s turned into her favorite meat, it seems!

The refugee project is also going well. Trish is in the process of seeking partners for the ministry for 2010. So she’ll be doing a lot of research and grant-writing in the next couple of months.

Chris is busy accompanying the new bishop and maintaining his responsibilities as deacon at Iglesia Cristo Liberador and at CLAI. He’s also working with the Episcopal daycare in the same neighborhood as our church as pastor and counselor for the parents, who are mostly single mothers, who come to drop their kids off before work.

As we near the end of our first three years here, we want to thank all of you for all your many prayers and generous support for us, the Diocese, and the ministry of the church in Ecuador. You have blessed us in so many ways. We will renew our contract with the Episcopal Church and we have been invited by the new Bishop and CLAI to continue our life and work here, which we are very excited about.

We will be making a visit in October to the Boston area, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York City, where the church headquarters are. During our visit we will be visiting some of the churches and people who have relationships with the Diocese. At the end of this letter is a brief schedule of some of those visits. If you are in the Boston area, please note the open house that you are invited to in Wakefield, Massachusetts, on Oct. 10. Barbara and A.J. Dwyer-Heidkamp have very generously offered their home as a gathering place for the evening so that we can see as many who are in the Boston area as possible.

We also want to ask for your continued prayer and financial support for the work here. We continue to need partners to accompany and collaborate with us. Please let us know if you are interested or if you know of others who might be interested. Please do continue to keep us in your prayers, and rejoice with us that we may continue living and working here.

Much peace,

Trish, Chris, Claire and Isabel Morck

Oct. 2    Chris arrives in Boston

Oct. 4    St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church, Marion, MA, 8am and 10am

              Watershed, First Presbyterian Church, Waltham, MA, 7pm

Oct. 9    Trish and the girls arrive in Boston

Oct. 10  Open house at Barbara and A.J. Dwyer-Heidkamp’s home, 5pm

      5 Lakeview Ave, Wakefield, MA. Phone 781-245-8012            

Oct. 11   St. James’s Episcopal Church, Cambridge, MA, 10:30am

Oct. 11   St. James Episcopal Church, New London, CT, 5pm

From Oct. 14 and on   In New Jersey and NYC

Oct. 18    St. John on the Mountain Episcopal Church, Bernardsville, NJ, 10am

Oct. 23    Chris returns to Ecuador

Oct. 26     Trish and the girls return to Ecuador

…………….....

Our photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/morck

 www.stjames-cambridge.org/morcks  

Iglesia Episcopal del Ecuador

F. Sarmiento N39-54 y Portete

Quito

Ecuador