Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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 The transition from Quito to Otavalo went smoothly for the most part- and I’ve got some more good news- we are now finally in our ministry site for the month!

Our site is a small village that is in a suburb of Otavalo. To get here from Quito, we drove up, around, through, and over the Andes Mountains. We finally got to Otavalo, and our contact for the month, Huberto, picked us up 10 minutes outside of Otavalo to drive us up to his village, Iluman. 

Here’s a little bit of what Iluman looks like:

One of the volcano’s we can see from where we’re staying.
The view from straight out of our “bedroom” window.
Here’s a little bit of what our site looks like: We are staying at a school building, which is right next door to the church.
Our “bedroom”. Yes, 7 tents, 1 room, 1 bathroom. LOTS of space! 😉

Our dining room.
This is how we take showers.  Welcome to “The World Race”.
 
Once we got here we went to pick up food for the week. While on the way, we talked about something I swore would never happen when we discussed the possibility of this happening at training camp. It involves my team, chickens, and cutting heads off- get it?
Yes I know, the absolute LAST thing anybody would ever guess that I’d be okay with. Unfortunately, I don’t have much of an option this month. Fortunately, we went to a grocery store and not a market; therefore, no live chickens. It’s going to happen many many many times this month regardless of the way I feel about it, but I’m happy that I didn’t have to be initiated the first night.

Once we got back from the market, we attempted our socialization with our contact and the church family, and struggled through the communication barrier. We don’t have any fluent Spanish speakers in our group, and the community we’re staying with doesn’t speak English. So far, we’ve been able to get by, but it has involved a lot of nervous laughter after you realize you just told the woman that “you are a big kitchen”– when you meant to say you are a good cook. (cough, ALYSA, cough!) It’s okay, it has provided excellent humor thus far.

When we wake up, we cook our breakfast in our conventional sided stoves, ha!

Once breakfast on our first day was done, we got our day assignment and went to a different lo location to “cultivate the land” (that’s what we got from them when we asked what we would be doing.) We were given ho’s, and we went to work out in the field with the potato farmers. Many weeds, and back aches later, we left to go eat lunch. We went to our contact Huberto’s house for lunch, where his wife cooked us a freshly chopped chicken, rice, potatoes, and a rice/potato/broth/bone/cartilage/rib stew. 

 

Now would be the time to start praying for my eating habits. Guinea pig is our next meal up. OH JOY! 🙂
On a more serious note: Other prayer requests are: for the language barrier to be not so much of a struggle, immune health as we are getting adjusted to the new altitudes and the different foods, and that the children we are playing with can see the light of Jesus in us, since we can’t tell them about our love with our languages.