Bienvenido to our home!
Back in December we moved out of our fancy but teeny tiny down-town apartment into this large, spacious, bright gift from God. We now have about 3x the space we had in our little place and all for less rent! When God does things He does them well!
So if you are at all curious about where we live, or what a home in a different country looks like or how missionaries in Ecuador live, or if you are just a bit nosy… take a peek! We’d love to have you come for a real visit, by the way! Maybe this tour will convince you that we don’t live in a grass hut and that missionary life isn’t necessarily about roughing it!
Here we go on a virtual walk-through tour…
Front door to our split level house… to the left is our neighbor’s door, she and her boys live on the bottom level of the house leaving the 2nd and 3rd floor to us!
This is our Living Room. The best part about having such space is the ability to expand our ministry. We love that we now have space to host traveling friends overnight, as well as Baby Showers, Bible Studies, mentoring sessions and game nights. (ps: The tree on the right is a lemon tree and it actually produces fruit!)
Another view of the Living Room
Our Dining Room can fit this great table. We’ve shared lots of laughs, prayers, and stories as well as games of Settlers of Catan, Sequence and Hand and Foot, this is where Naomi studies Spanish most days and it’s where we will feed you a delicious meal when you come visit!
Standing with your back to the dining room window this is your view, the door leads to our little guest bathroom, they call it the “Social Bathroom” here, isn’t that cute?
“Baño Social”
When you walk through the doorway from the dining room into our kitchen, this is what you see. It’s about 6x bigger than our last kitchen, can you imagine!? It’s nice to not have to coordinate our movements when we are both cooking! And it’s nice to not have to use the dryer as a counter as well.
We both enjoy cooking, Josh’s specialty these days is brewing batches of kombucha which are in the crocks toward the far wall. To the left you can see the edge of the dryer, it’s handy to have washer and dryer on this main level, heck, it’s handy to HAVE a washer and dryer! (Thank you Jesus for the perks of city life)
The afternoon sun comes streaming in this window.
The water from the tap isn’t necessarily drinkable, so we filter our drinking/ cooking water in this handy contraption.
(These next four pics are for the women that are reading this post who are as nosy as I am and want to see details!!) I adore this bowl! And the pears are very nice too.
This ancient Joy of Cooking cookbook was left here by my Mother-in-Law who was a missionary here in Quito a few years ago. I love having a piece of Josh’s past here with us! The woven tray I believe is from an indigenous tribal group in the Amazon.
Repurposing!! Old instant coffee jars that were headed for the garbage, prettied up and given a new use! We have so many guests that I decided to have certain staples handy and labeled.
Since God gave me a bright kitchen I decided to embrace it and just add more bright colors!
Now for the upstairs.
Here you can see the landing and the first guest bedroom. We might as well hang a sign saying “Welcome to the Swenson Bed and Breakfast” , these extra bedrooms have gotten so much use just since we moved in 6 months ago. It has been such a gift to have space to host friends, missionaries, family. We love this hospitality side of our ministry! And again, we’d like to invite you to come visit Ecuador!
We even have a guest bathroom!
Guest bedroom #2 graced with a homemade quilt from Grandma.
This is our bedroom.
Surprisingly enough, many homes in Quito come with a bathroom in the master bedroom, such a luxury!
There you have it! It’s been a pleasure to show you around! Come again!
