This is going to be a quick blog because I need to get some
sleep before we leave for our ministry site in a few hours, but I just wanted
to update everyone before I disappear. We are currently in Quito, Ecuador
staying at a house that a ministry called IncaLink owns. We traveled for 26
hours to get here from the Dominican Republic, and have been sightseeing and resting for
a couple days. Quito is incredibly beautiful, and I’m so excited that we’ll be
back here at the end of this month for debrief! If you want to see pictures of our adventure to the Equator and Quito’s colonial district, you can check out the Facebook album that I posted here. I made a video of our travel
day, and my teammate Joy also filmed a lot of the fire that happened the other
night in the DR, but the Internet here is not fast enough to post either of
those videos so they will have to wait until the end of the month.
This month Team Kaleo will be going to the village of El
Reten, which is about six hours southwest of Quito and about three hours east
of the Pacific coast of Ecuador. It is not on any map, so don’t bother trying
to Google Earth it. I don’t know many details, but here is what I do know.
There are between twenty and thirty houses in El Reten. We will be living in
two homes-one for the girls and one for Brent and Jeff. As far as we know, our
ministry will consist of children’s ministry, construction projects for the
school and church, and possibly speaking some in the church. Mostly, we are
there to build relationships since the village is so small. We are helping
IncaLink with the compassion ministries side of their ministry plan this month.
We have also been told that our shower will be the local waterfall, and that
the people tend to follow the gringos everywhere so we will need to shower with
bathing suits on. Yes, blogs and videos will be made of this adventure!
On that note, I should mention that we have also been told
that the nearest ATM and Internet are an hour and a half away, so don’t expect
to hear from me until the end of the month. Please keep our team in your
prayers this month. We are really excited for this challenge, and we know that
God is going to use us to do great things in El Reten, but we also anticipate
this being a very stretching month for us, individually and as a team. Please
pray for our safety, for the Spanish ability of my teammates because they
really want to be able to communicate and build relationships without relying
on Rosa and me, for opportunities with the people of El Reten, and for the
children who we will be working with. Thank you so much for your prayers and support,
and I promise there will be a great number of blogs detailing the entire
experience appearing at the end of the month!
