this last week was a tough one. Monday morning, our team woke up at 4 am and headed toward our next ministry site. Along the way, we picked up another team from El Carmen and continued on our way. We headed to a small village named Valle del Sade, which is seriously 2 hours out a dirt road, in the middle of the Amazon jungle. We headed town the dirt road a long ways, and got to enjoy the beautiful sea of green all around us and the palm trees in rows like they were planted there by a farmer. We crossed river after river and saw wildlife everywhere. We waved as the locals starred at the site of white skin and the silliness of 14 people crammed in the bed of a truck. I even taught the team how to play “hey cow”. For anyone who doesnt know what that is, its a game where you are driving down the road and whenever you see cows, you roll the windows down(or in our case, get to the side of the truck bed closest to the cows) and scream “hey cow” as loud as possible. However many cows turn to look, thats how many points you get. A lot of fun! A couple hours in to our drive, we found ourselves staring down a big mountain and driving in to a little town. This was Valle del Sade. This is where we would be staying. We drove up to the church and parked. The town church their needed some help with finished the church construction and cleaning up the property. So after 9 hours of sitting in the bed of a pickup, we arrived there, the first foreign missionaries to this small village, to help finish the contruction. We got there and saw that the only thing that needed to be done was the roof. And when i say only, i mean what the crap, we are gonna kill ourselves. And I am not kidding, because im pretty sure the motto here in ecuador is “If its sketchy, its our first choice.” Cause we did some sketchy stuff. All our work was done with ropes, and at one point, as we were lifting the new frame up there, the bamboo that was holding it up in the air slipped, and it came swinging around, and at least half of us probably peed.
Also, I am pretty sure we brought superman with us this week. Ricardo was his name, and I didnt think superman would be ecuadorian, but this man brought the heat, and if he didnt come with us, we would all still be standing there scratching our butts in the middle of the jungle, wondering what to do. He built all the frames by himself, woke up before the sun to start working and worked way in to the night when we were swimming in the river to cool off.
Each day, we woke up at 7 and began construction. We would work for maybe an hour then stopped for breakfast. Here, I was sadly introduced to what is lovingly referred to as squeaky cheese. There is no refrigeration, so Im not sure how they keep it, but lets just say it was interesting. From breakfast, it was straight back to construction and we worked on that until mid afternoon. After construction, we would go to the river to cool off and play on the rope swing. After the river, we would come back and change for dinner. We would then chill around the town and wait for church at 8. This was our outline for the whole week there.
Friday, as we left, we all finally had a moment to breathe and just relax knowing we are on our way home and it would be a quiet, stress free ride back, or so we thought. We drove for about a half hour out in to the jungle, when we ran out of gas. Ricardo quickly decided to take some gas from the second truck and put it in ours. So, thats what we did. We then saw that the gasline was broken, so we had to stop filling it, fix it and then return to filling it. Once we got all the gas in, we noticed a tire was flat, so we had to change that as well. And we didnt have a legit jack, so guess what? We were the jack. holding the truck up while they rigged it up so they could change it. Elvis, one of the local guys from the youth group, kept referring to me as John Cena. A nice compliment, but I think its mostly cause I am white, not that Im jacked. So, after we got everything taken care of with the truck, we headed back to El Carmen. We quickly ate lunch, then hit the road for Portoviejo so we wouldnt miss church that night, but God apparently wanted us to miss church that night. About an hour after we dropped the other team off, the second truck broke down. We waited a good three hours for the mechanic to come out to us, just to figure out he had to fix it at his shop. So, we then all piled in the back of his truck and headed towards town. We finally got back to Portoviejo around midnight. A long day of traveling, but it was so good to be back.
And literally like an hour ago, we found out that our contact is leaving for two weeks, so we have to pack up and head to a different ministry site for the remainder of our time here in ecuador. We will be again heading out to the jungle where we will have no internet access for two weeks, so this is it until then! Thank you all for your prayers.
Me and Team Leader Nathan. Track the progress of our beards all year. We will also be making very serious world race workout videos, also known as wrw. Stay tuned!
