Our time in Ecuador so far has been amazing! Ecuador is a beautiful country with so many mountains and volcanos, but surprisingly very cold! It rains a lot and the weather is consistenly about 50 to 60 degrees fereingheit. The people here are incredible as well...there are about 12 different Indigenous groups still living around Ecuador with the biggest group called the Quichua. Almost 40 percent of people living in Ecuador are from an indigenous background and their customs are beautiful.
We hit the ground running the first week in Quito. We worked outside of Quito in a little village where they needed help fixing up their community center. It was a pretty poor community, just outside of south Quito. The whole week in the mornings we would help with the painting of the inside and outside of the building. Also, it rains a lot in Quito so we helped dig some ditches to irrigate the water so that it would not flood the fields, but flow away from properties. Next to the community center is a little building where we held children´s ministry. The first day we went around the community inviting children to the program for the week and from then on we had quite a few children constantly from the community with us. We did a sort of Vacation Bible school every afternoon after working in the mornings on painting and other projects fixing the area. The people there were incredibly hospitable and brought us food every day or drinks and were very thankful to us for our work. We invited the parents to come the last day of our Vacation Bible School and quite a few mothers came. We worked with a pastor from Campus Crusade who was working in this particular community and he shared the gospel with the parents that day. It was such a blessing to be in this community!
Well, I have finally made it to the Amazon (I realized how blessed I am to say that)! It is incredible here and we are learning so much from the Shuar people (the indigenous group we are living with and working with). We are learning a lot about thier customs as well as their language (we have language classes everyday). The village we are living in has about 500 people including men, women, children. We are staying in a church parsionage in the village and everyday we have some local people cooking for us. The food has been great and the people are so welcoming and kind there. We are the first North Americans to actually stay in their village...they have had others come and visit, but not actually stay so they are excited to have us. We constantly have visitors and we have become especially close to the youth there and many of the children. So far we have had chances to teach English in the school every day (my class is high school kids). We have made a lot of relationships with the people, visited many homes and are learning so much about this group´s past and their way of life. Their church services are both in Spanish and Shuar (their language) and it is so cool. I have so much to update, but not much time (we don´t have Internet where we are staying!).
We will be leaving this community in another week on the 11th of May and heading to Riobamba, where we will be working with an orphanage for one week. We are very excited to head there and work with the kids, but we know it will be so hard to leave this community.
A couple prayer requests=please pray for my health. I had a cold and it turned into an ear infection and so I had to go to the doctor and I now have medication for a throat and ear infection. Luckily here healthcare is free and pretty good in the big town nearby (20 minutes away from where we are staying). I have to go back this weekend to make sure it is gone, so please pray for that. Also, please pray for the ministry we are doing in this town...most of the people are open to the gospel, but the language barrier has been an issue (we only have one person fluent in Spanish and so I have had to do a lot of translating, so please pray for more Spanish!). God bless you all and can´t wait to talk with you soon again!
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