Two things I never thought I would say while on the World Race: 1) I’ve been to the mall too many times this week. 2) No Mom (of the Ecuadorian variety) please don’t clean my room. One of the challenges my team has faced, which I have mentioned before, is that we feel incredibly blessed in our living situations…almost too blessed, if that’s possible. Conveniently our squad leader Cristie arrived just in time to help us figure out how to deal with being blessed and also allowing ourselves time to rest and enjoy where we are. She told us that not only where we doing ministry during the day, but that by living and being a part of a family we were ministering to them as well.
Now I’ll explain numbers 1 & 2. 1) We live in a metropolitan area in which there are at least a couple of malls within walking distance, so our families like to take us there for just about everything: eating, shopping, ice cream (which apparently is different from normal food and must be consumed in vast quantities pretty much everyday), and movies (Captain America, thanks for making me proud to be an American). 2) Soooo, as many of you know (Lauren and Moms esp.) know that I’m not exactly the neatest person, and add another person’s (Jessica) stuff to that mix and you have what was not the most organized room ever. (Moms, I promise its not as bad as at home). Well yesterday afternoon Jess and I arrived home to find that all our clothes had been washed, folded, and that our things had been cleaned and organized (it took us all night to figure out where everything was again). We told Mom, through our sister Andy, that she isn’t allowed to do that again, she just needs to make us do it.
Here are some pictures of the fam, they are pretty adorbs.
Luis and I, not my best pic, but at least he looks cute. Baby brother Daniel and Luis, eating macncheese.
Our very American night of Coke, Macncheese, and Phase 10.
We (Jess and I) have taught our Ecuadorian family a few catch phrases in English, and all are incredibly hilarious when they say them. So far we have: “Lata kid”, “Sup?”, “That’s not nice” (not amused look included), “Creeper”, “Sketch(y)”, “Punk”, “Jerk” and most importantly “Y’all”. In turn they are teaching me completely normal words in Spanish, personally I think what they are learning will be much more useful 
.
The title of this blog is dedicated to my baby Ecuadorian brother Daniel (yep ladies and gentlemen, I now have two brothers Daniel).
More blogs to come. Love y’all!!
Lindsey
