I just wanted to kind of give you guys a quick rundown of the last few days or so:
Saturday:
Two of our friends from church, Pamela and Juan Carlos, were nice enough to take us to Otovalo to the largest market in South America. It was really awesome and it was some great quality time spent with them. Our whole team loves these two people and really wish they could come on the whole race with us, but we’ve already been invited back to go to their wedding someday!
This is Pamela and Juan Carlos in Otovalo
Sunday:
We got to go to church and listen to my teammate Beth give the message and it was so great! After church, we went to our Pastor’s house for lunch and they are so good to us! They made us grilled pork chops, corn on the cob, grilled plantains, salad, and potatoes. They even give my mom a run for her money when it comes to cooking.
This is Pastor Juan and Pastora Ester. They are our amazing Ecuadorian contacts.
Monday:
On Monday we had our day off so some of my team went to the Historic District in Quito and some of us stayed at Casablanca and hung out. I stayed and got some stuff done for the week and had some time to myself and caught up on the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother (We’re really roughing it here can you tell?).
Here's a picture of Old Quito that one of my teammates took.
Tuesday:
My team started our day off at an orphanage called Para Sus Niño’s (For His Children). When we first decided to start going here a couple mornings a week, I was really nervous because I’m not great with kids whatsoever and they make me a little nervous because I’ve never really been around them much, but these kids would just melt anyone’s heart. They are so adorable! There are two groups of kids, one is called the “baby house” where all of them are under the age of 2 and then the “big kid house” where kids older than 2 live. I got to work with the older kids and since we go during the day, all the kids that aren’t in school are ages 2-3. These kids are so great and deserve all the attention they can get. It’s really hard though because we get attached and so do they and it’s even worse when they start calling you Mommy and you really don’t know how to explain to them that you can only spend a little bit of time with them, even though you would love to take them home and love on them all the time, but that’s not an option. The language barrier makes it even more difficult.
This is Alondra and Karen, two of the girls I got to play with, jumping on the trampoline.
After the orphanage, my team went to a leadership school at our church and I had the opportunity to speak for the first time and it was definitely a learning experience. It is not something that comes naturally to me and it will definitely be quite some time before I’m comfortable doing that on a regular basis, but it was definitely a good experience and I’m glad I did it.
Wednesday:
In the morning, we went to FunCap, which is a local drug and alcohol rehabilitation center for men, and we just spent a lot of quality time with them. We listened to all of their stories and they were all so open with us and I really enjoyed talking with them. Since only one person on my team speaks fluent Spanish, it was a little difficult to just hang out with them, so we ended up playing games we learned in elementary school. We played a game called “Tolla Tolla” with them that is like a hand clapping game, and if you mess up, you have a penalty thought up by the winners. It was pretty funny. I had to do the mermaid dance from Pitch Perfect, my teammate Alex had to sing “I’m a Little Teapot” Opera style with motions, and there were a ton of other good ones. We also played Pictionary and Telephone and Hangman together which was awesome because of the language barrier, but I’m excited to go back next week.
Our contacts took us to a member of the Church’s house for a Home Church meeting and it was so great. We went to the home of Iguana and Patty and they have become some of our favorite people here in Ecuador. Iguana is the Christian rapper that I mentioned in my previous blog and his family is such a great example to all of us and to everyone in their community. They have some of the most beautiful children I have ever met and my whole team wants to take them home with us. While we were at their house, they asked us to anoint their home with oil, which was also something that was new to me. It was so great to get to fellowship with them and get to know them a little bit better.
Thursday:
Thursday was a rough day. We went to the orphanage again, but instead of hanging out with the kids, we were given the task of pulling two huge tree stumps out of the ground so that a short term missions group can build them a sidewalk next month. After four hours, a broken pick-axe, a bent axe, seven pairs of jelly arms, and lots of sweat, we had only been able to dig out half of one of the stumps. It was a lot bigger task than we had anticipated. We hope that we’ll be able to get at least one of the stumps out when we go back on Tuesday morning, but we’re all still pretty sore from our first attempt.
Thursday night, we had another Church service where Beth and I shared our stories of how we came to be on the World Race. It has been really awesome to get to hear about my teammates’ stories of how they got to this point in their lives and I’m glad that it has been part of our ministry this month.
I can hardly believe that we only have a week left in Ecuador before we head out for Peru. This month has been so great and I’ve loved getting to know our contacts, Pastor Juan and Pastora Ester. They are so great and leaving them will be very difficult.
