Our contact in Ecuador is Pastor Raphael, a humble old man, who accepted Christ as his Saviour 20 years ago, after struggling with a severe addiction to alcohol for 10 years (his testimony was shared through a translator and was very moving.) He and his wife live here in this little town called Conocoto, and have been sleeping in the tool shed off the church while we stay here. They have sectioned off a space in their church with some plastic and have generously provided us with mattresses on the ground to sleep on. Pastor Raphael and his wife have 5 children, 3 of which we see everyday and play in the church band. Milton is the oldest and plays the piano. Mayra who is so sweet and beautiful, plays the guitar and sings, and Paul (pronounced Paool) plays the drums and has a 2 year old boy Mataes with his wife Paola. Vanessa, a member of the church, serves us every day by cooking us breakfast, lunch and dinner, and blesses us with the opportunity to play with her 2 daughters, Jadira (9) and Karen (6). The love and affection these little girls have is truly amazing. It´s kind of ironic because we are here to bless these families by serving them, loving on them and helping them build the new church, but we often are the ones feeling blessed by these families. I know some Spanish, communication has been difficult, but LOVE is a universal language.
6:30 – 7:30 (This trip will make a morning person of me yet!)
Personal time with God: read the bible, pray, worship
7:30 – 8:00
Exercise, stretch
8:00 – 9:00
Breakfast (this is usually what lunch would look like in North America)
9:00 – 9:06
Stand in back of pick-up truck for ride down to new church terrain, while being chased and visciously barked at by multiple random dogs
9:06 – 12:00
Build New Church! Help Jose and the 2 Salvadore´s by unloading bricks, mixing cement, concreting the joints of the walls, digging a septic hole, making the rebar for the columns and pouring the footer for the columns (so far we are only on day 5 of construction) It´s amazing that literally EVERYTHING is done by hand! Jose proceeds to continuously ask me why I do not have un esposo (a husband) yet. He´s a jokester.
12:00 – 1:00
Lunch – The biggest meal of the day, consisting of the most random foods together you can imagine. Por ejemplo, today we had beef and yucca soup, popcorn, chips, strawberries and whipped milk, and watermelon juice?)
1:00 – 3:00
Siesta Time (aka Nap Time) though this time is usually spent either reading, blogging, journalling or at the internet cafe just down the street
3:00 – 6:00
We take turns, 3 of us will go back and continue building the new church, and 3 of us stay at the old church to play with and teach english to children who come from around town
6:00 – 7:00
Eat Dinner, share funny stories from the day, do dishes
7:00 – 8ish
Spend time with the families, the girls and Mataes, play music (through loss of translation Lauren, now Dory, is teaching me how to play the guitar), learn Spanish and teach English, Pastor Raphael shares a bible passage and we pray
8ish – 9 ish
Team time – each one of us has a day of the week that we get to do whatever we like together as a team
9 ish – 10 ish
Time with Kathy (lol aka. Feedback Time) We discuss the day and share positive and constructive feedback for one another
10ish
Sleep!…AND CUE our pet dog (and walking flea bag) Pinky having barking wars with all the other dogs in the neighborhood (a stray who has taken it upon himself to protect us and has made our home his home…some unknown person decided to paint his nails pink; hence the name Pinky)
Through a translator we discovered that Pastor Raphael does not have enough money to finish building the new church; therefore we were just going to work on it until the money ran out. We just found out a donation of $2000 has come in towards the new church…but we can´t tell him quite yet, it´s a surprise! Praise the Lord!
Mataes Pinky
