three weeks in...

Well, I’ll be honest, I’m exhausted. It’s a good tired, though. Our group mission trip was really great. I feel really good about the things that were accomplished while the team was here.

The first thing we did when we got here was to take some members of the church on a leadership retreat. It was awesome. The campground we went to was in the middle of a jungle. There were insects the size of giant insects everywhere! The first night we were there, I couldn’t sleep at all, I kept feeling things crawling all over me in my bed. I did not ever open my eyes to check and see if I was imagining the crawly things or if they were actually there…but I didn’t sleep, that’s for sure. Besides the bugs, it was so beautiful. I really enjoyed the time we spent there. And the retreat went so well. I was really proud of my team and everything that everyone did to help. Trevor, Trent and Paddy all spoke really great messages about prayer, solitude and stewardship, respectively (notice the trademark Smith Claw being used by Trevor). And based on the feedback I heard, their messages spoke deeply to a lot of people on the retreat. I’m really proud of how willing they were to share their experiences and how they did so with eloquence and grace. We did our drama and Solomon spoke a message of the importance of transformation which was really good. Also, the hammocks were awesome.

We got a ton of work done on the church property when we came back, including but not limited to: plastering walls, sanding walls, painting walls, building walls, stuccoing walls, digging trenches, removing giant rocks from trenches, filling in said trenches and re-digging them in a different place (this is a sore subject for some of our team haha), building fences, building rebar footing for the walls, mixing concrete, pouring concrete…the list really does go on and on. It was a lot of hard work, but the progress is pretty neat. I remember the first year we came to Ecuador, the Sunday church service took place in the street outside of Marcelo and Sandra’s house. Now they have enough space to build a larger building for church services, and they can use the existing building as a school, an internet café, and whatever other plans they come up with. They are also planning on building a cancha (soccer/basketball/volleyball court) on the back of the church lot, which I think will be pretty cool as well.

We went to visit some people in their houses, to try and get to know the parents of the church leaders a little better, we had some church services, did some skits and some dances, we did some kids programs, and we slept in cramped quarters and got lots of bug bites.

One of the neat things we got to do this year that we’ve not been able to do before was go visit children in the hospital outside of Guayaquil. Francisco and Magali, a couple in the church had a child who was sick with meningitis and he was in the hospital during our entire stay in El Recreo. A few of us had the opportunity to go see him and take some balloons to make balloon animals. There were about 20 other kids in the same wing (which was really just one big room) and so we had the chance to visit with them as well and give them some balloon animals. My favorite part of that was the moment that I said, “where’s Gianna?” and I looked around and there she was, in the far corner of the room sitting with Elsie, a girl who had been having extreme back pain, and talking and laughing with her. I loved that. I would never have been so bold my first time on this trip. I’m still not that bold. I have loved the way everyone on this trip has really tried and succeeded at communicating, even through a difficult language barrier. Everyone made friends, and I am so proud of what a great job everybody did at making an effort to talk to people they don’t know in a language that’s not their own.

My team went home on Monday, and now things are different. The house is quiet (and clean. Haha), there are only a few people working at the church during the day, and there’s a sense of calm here that’s very relaxing. I haven’t started to freak out yet. I feel comfortable so far. Sandra and Marcelo have gone way out of their way to make me feel at home. They put a mattress and a dresser in my room which was very nice…except I’m pretty sure there are bed bugs in the mattress. I woke up this morning with about 20 new bites on my back. Ann, what do I do to get rid of them? Anyway, it’s the thought that counts, right? Sandra took me with her to the grocery store which is about a 10-minute busride outside of El Recreo. You can buy things here in town, there are little corner stores all over the place…but the big supermarket is farther away. We walked down every aisle and in every aisle, without fail, she asked, “is there anything you want from here? If you see something you like to eat, just put it in the basket.”

Well, the meals are also different now that the group is gone. It’s a lot like it was in Peru. For breakfast, some toast or cereal, with some coffee or juice. Lunch is the big meal with soup, lots of rice, and some kind of meat ‘n sauce. And for dinner…bread and cheese and coffee. I like it. I went to bed feeling a little hungry last night after a couple slices of bread and cheese, but I’ll get used to it. Here’s the other difference with the group being gone…there’s always plenty of water for a shower. So, that’s excellent.

I thought that once all the missions teams left, I’d have to wait until church services and stuff to see my friends here, but I was wrong. There are people coming over to Marcelo and Sandra’s house all the time. One night, Marcelo wasn’t even home and Sandra was upstairs doing all the homework she needed to catch up on and people from the church just came over and hung out downstairs in the dining room. They asked if I brought any pictures with me of my family and my home and stuff so I brought out my photo album and they looked through it. It was fun. Some people came over the next morning too, just to hang out while I was washing dishes in the kitchen.

Ok, that’s definitely enough. Thanks for reading it all. I’ll try to keep the posts shorter. It’s just I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to get to the cyber, so I’ve got to squeeze a lot of experiences into one post. I’ll try to get there more often. Or maybe I won’t. I don’t know yet.

My stomach’s been hurting a little. Wish me luck with that. Also, I wanted to post more pictures, but it took about 15 minutes for each of those to load, plus some time for the ones that began loading and didnt finish. I maxed out at 3. hahahaha. Hopefully I will figure out an easier way to do this.