So much has happened since I last put up a blog post, so I think I’ll just recap the weekend…
Friday:
Before I begin to tell you what happened on Friday, I have to give you a little background on our pet dog Pinky. Pinky was adopted into our family one of the first couple days we arrived in Conocota. (He was not welcomed by the host family with open arms) Since Vanessa grew up in Peru, she would keep saying “Pinky no mascota! Pinky es por comer…which means Pinky is not a pet, he is food. So, it took some time for them to warm up to the thought of having a pet dog. Now, Vanessa sets out a plate for Pinky every night with our leftovers and they don’t try to kick him anymore so I think we’ve made some progress. So anyway, Pinky is officially part of our family and has been our guard dog now for a long time. Even though I would bet that 90% of my 66 bug bites area actually flea bites from this dog, I still love him being around…most of the time.
So, on Friday, we almost had a tragedy in our Ecuadorian family. My team and I were having what you could call a parade (we were all singing Oh Happy Day from Sister Act and Lauren brought he guitar) Pinky was trotting along in front of us, as usual, dodging cars and practically playing chicken with them. Let’s just say Pinky picked the wrong car to play chicken with. Fortunately, I did not see what had actually happened because I was taking pictures of the mountains as we were walking (typical) but all I heard was screeching tires and Lauren shriek, “NOOOOO WHYYY???” I turned around, hoping to not see a dog lying in the middle of the street. When I did turn around, I saw the car drive away and no dog. I looked around and realized Pinky was running up the street back to our house. We joke about our parade of death now because Pinky appears to be ok. She was hit twice but nothing is broken and now, she is acting as normal as ever. She was spared to remain our protector.
Obviously, our spirits were a little down that night but we all soon realized it wasn’t really Pinky’s near death experience that was making us sick and bringing an eerie feeling into our home. But, more on that later…
Saturday:
Saturdays are normally our days off. This Saturday, we decided to go back to Old Quito and climb up to the top of the largest cathedral in Ecuador. We saw this cathedral last weekend when we went into the city but we never got a chance to go into it. It was beautiful! After we got off the elevator, we saw a huge stained glass window (of course it’s a cathedral) but it was so pretty. I was a little bummed at one point because it looked like you could only get to the top by walking on these wire steps on the OUTSIDE of the cathedral. Let me explain, I am not really afraid of heights, but I am scared to be walking on wire steps that have NOTHING underneath them. If there would have been a legit railing, I would have been fine. But the thought of being suspended in the air, walking over nothing, freaked me out. Fortunately, when we got back inside, we saw ladders and twirly staircases on the inside of the building that lead the entire way to the top of the bell tower. You could still see straight down, but at least we were on the inside of the building. Too bad I wasn’t tall enough to ring the bells at the top! When we were done with this adventure, we decided to go back to a market that we went to the other weekend. Most of us wanted to get feathers strung in our hair so we found a group of hippies selling them. They honestly made my day! One of them wanted to marry Kaitlyn, another one wanted me to be his “personal assistant.” and most of them could walk on some kind of tightrope thing and juggle. It was a good time. Overall, the day was great but there was some feeling of disconnect. At times, I felt frustrated for no reason and actually did not want to continue to be around my team. After we talked to our new friends at the market, I felt a lot better. I felt better pretty much all night until our team sat down together at the end of the night.
I was doing something in our room (I actually can’t remember at the moment) but I heard Lauren ask everyone if they knew why Kaitlyn ran out of the house. Apparently, all we knew was that Vanessa came running into our house with Milton, grabbed Kaitlyn and then left. They came back after a couple minutes and told us that Vanessa had been held at gunpoint in front of a shop right beside us. Half of our team had gone to that shop about a half an hour before to get some food for dinner since we didn’t eat at the market. When I heard about Vanessa, all these feelings of peace and safety left. I felt darkness and fear around me. Vanessa was fine but once again, I felt uneasy in our home.
Sunday:
For the most part, Sunday was a calm day. I got to go for a run in the morning alongside the beautiful mountains I see everyday. Mayra took Meg and I for a walk in the park and we performed a play we have been working on for a week. I was actually feeling peace again…until nighttime. I’ve come to the conclusion that is not only night that brings on these feelings of darkness and uneasiness (again, I will explain more in my next blog). Our team was playing a game around 10pm just to relax and have fun from our day. We all could feel the darkness in our house once again so for about an hour, we took a little break to pray about what was going on. After that, we decided to each take turns staying up for an hour to get us through the night. When we woke up, Amanda shared with us that during her hour, when she went out to the bathroom, she heard all these whispers that she could not understand. I have no doubt in my mind that there are unwanted, dark spirits in this house that are going to try to tear our family apart and keep us from helping these people out. While this is scary to recognize, it is cool to feel such a powerful presence of darkness and then feel it leave, and have completely peace.
