We are working for a ministry called Dios es Amor (God is Love).
Our days have been rather busy. We spent the mornings doing construction: we're helping to build a church, as the one we are currently serving is expanding. We started by digging holes and trenches to find the sewage connection on the property.
The exciting part of this job was finding the animals that were unearthed in digging. (Mom, stop reading 😉 )
Yes, that is a scorpion…and a poisonous spider that could kill you. We then laid the tubes for both the church's runoff and sewage, and covered them back in.
While the temperatures have been in the mid 60s, if you're not in the shade, it's HOT! On the equator, the sun seems stronger here. I may have gotten a little burnt. I relaxed from the heat by taking in the view of the Andes mountains, trying to invite as much oxygen into my lungs as the elevation would allow.
A few days I had off of construction to make breakfast and lunch for the team. Lunch itself often took 4 hours. Typically, we had soup, rice, chicken, fried bananas, and beans.
In the afternoons we taught English classes. Knowing English here is associated with success. If one wants to have a decent job, they must learn. I tested the children to put them in appropriate classes and learned a lot about thier education system. Teachers are not native English speakers, so the children are far better at writing English than speaking or understanding it.
I was paired with Steve, and we worked with about a dozen 7-10 year olds. Most of these children are on "scholarship" with the church, meaning they have poor families whose parents don't come home until 8pm and so they are left to care for themselves. Several of them wore the same clothes every single day of class. I taught them numbers, colors, body parts, and feelings through games of Jeopardy and Bingo. We played with the kids before and after the classes, just to share some love.
One one of my favorite days, a snotty-nosed child cried in my arms, unwillling to go home to her empty house, when a cow walked down the city street.
At night we had dinner at church members' homes.
Saturday nights were spent at the youth service. We performed skits, taught games, socialized, and sang worship songs in Spanish.
Sundays we worshipped for several hours in an energy filled church, then house visits, or an occasional soccer game with the youth.
A couple other random days I played with the children of the church. Another day I worked at a government run day care where parents pay $5/month for their children to be cared for. On the playground a 4 year old dropped her pants and took a dump, the teachers said nothing. A few minutes later, another girl went pee in the same place.
It's been busy.
For more pictures, click here
