And the Business Continues

Tuesday night we went to the Brown’s for pizza and to have a bit of meeting as we had not met up just us Ecuador interns since arriving back in Quito. We talked a bit of what the summer is going to look like, our special project for the summer (each intern needs to come up with a project that they are going to work on over the summer. It can be anything, in the past people have made calendars and Peruvian cookbooks to sell and raise funds for Inca Link. Basically it’s up to you to decide what you want to do; it just has to be something that will meet the need of a person, church/town, and ministry here. I still have to decide what I am doing for my special project as I just found out that I would need to be here for more than just the summer in order to do what I had originally wanted to do. There’s a need up in Huaticocha for someone to go and teach music lessons and I would have loved to do that, but I would have to go up there and live in the jungle for about three months and I leave in two. I was sad when I found out, so now I need to figure something else out), and wrote up our goals for the summer. Anyways, while we were there we found out that we (just the five of us and Liz as we decided later was going to come with us) would be heading to Portoviejo on Friday till Tuesday to work alongside Percy and the church. The days before we left were busy; we went to the women’s prison on Wednesday morning and Ganas house Thursday morning. We left for Portoviejo late Friday morning; it was an eight hour bus ride. This time was a little better than all the bus rides we took while we were on the race because we could bring iPods this time, but still, eight hours is long! We got to Portoviejo sometime around 7 p.m. We didn’t do much when we got there, Percy picked us up on his way to a visit (him and some leaders at the youth group make weekly visits to youth member who don’t go to youth often or who they are hoping will start coming to youth). Anyways, after the visit (we didn’t go in because we had to stay in the back of the truck and watch our stuff) we went out for supper and then went back to Percy’s apartment. Ben stayed on the third floor with Percy in his apartment and the five us girls stayed on the floor below in an apartment that was owned by someone in the church who let people come and stay there instead of at a hotel. I stayed in a room with Mandi and Julianne, and then Liz and Reese stayed in the other room. We thought we had the place to ourselves until a few days later when we actually ran into the lady who owns the apartment in the apartment. We just chilled our first night there; I tried to learn a few of the songs that I would be playing on Sunday at church. I learned three of the five songs. Thankfully I didn’t have to learn the lyrics like I had to do when I helped with worship in the prison, I just had to learn the chords which were really easy, everything was in basically in the same key so that was really nice. Saturday morning came quickly. We had to be up early because we had a busy day ahead of us: we started by going to the church for 7 o’clock for a pray meeting before the ministries for the day started. There were the six of us from Inca Link and then five members from the congregation (that includes Percy). We took about an hour to pray for the various ministries that were going on that day. When we got there Percy made it a rule that we could not pray with someone we knew, it didn’t matter if we knew Spanish or not we just weren’t allowed to pray with someone from our team. Every five or so minutes we would switch prayer partners so that by the time was up everyone had prayed with everyone. Though it’s still super frustrating not knowing any Spanish it was still cool to go to this prayer meeting. Half the time I didn’t know what the other guy was saying, but it didn’t matter because we were both praying to the same God who understands both of us. I just thought it was cool that we had this time together to just gather and pray.

Later in the morning we went back to the church to fill a water tank of water to take with us to the garbage dump. Every Saturday morning Percy and some people from his church deliver water to the community that lives in the garbage dump. The people of this community rely on Percy because they have no drinkable water, this is their only water for the week. Every home had a couple gallon pails that were filled, but when you look at how much water they are actually getting it’s not a lot. They have to ration it out carefully in order to have just enough to make it to the next week. I know for one of the challenges for the race we had to carry two two-gallon pails up the hill to the families, but this time we were actually able to stay longer and play with the kids and pray with them. Percy did a little Bible study for the kids and then handed out some notebooks and paper hats. It was crazy to see where these kids live because they live amongst all the garbage of Portoviejo, they run around bare foot in all this trash that litters their living space. Yet despite where they live and their circumstances these kids were happy. They were smiling when we got there and they lit up when they saw Percy. They loved the attention and I’m glad I got to go and spend some more time there. Afterwards we drove down the hill and into the area where all the trash is brought, sorted, and burned to hand out fruit to the workers (again similar to what we did during the race). Only this time it was a lot quicker because we didn’t go as far and didn’t really stay around long enough to talk with them. It was a busy day, we had to get back because we had to re-fill the water tank to take water to another community just outside of Portoviejo. At the second community we went to we were able to spend a little bit more time there. We stayed and had a Bible study for the women of this community and then we gave out water. Again it was just crazy to think that they have no drinkable water and they rely on this water week by week in order to survive. It’s just crazy!

We had a bit of down time after we left, but not a lot before we had to get back to the church for the youth event that night. The day before Percy told us he wanted us to lead something special for the event so we had a few hours the day of to plan something. We chose to do a cardboard testimony. During this no one spoke, we had one of the band member’s play his guitar, but that was it. One side of the paper (we couldn’t find cardboard) we wrote what we used to be like in one or two words and then on the flip side we wrote how God changed us. We each had to write two just to make it longer, and then we wrote one together that we all held up at the end. I can’t remember what I wrote because it was all in Spanish. Afterwards we just stayed and hung out with the youth. Before we left Percy told us that he didn’t want us sitting together or talking to each other. He said that many times before people would come on missions trips and then not talk or interact with the people of the church, and because of this North Americans are given a bad reputation. Our goal was to break that reputation. I was a bit scared at first because I didn’t know how on earth I was suppose to interact with them when I know all of two words in Spanish. However, a lot of people I found spoke English so that was lovely! I felt bad because I came down to their country without knowing the language and I am speaking to them in my language. Talk about ignorance. The people I met were pretty understanding so that helped. I had so much fun getting to know some of the leaders, I was among the last of us interns to leave because I was having such a great conversation. Thankfully I got to see all of them the following day in church.

Sunday morning Julianne and I had to get up earlier than everyone else because I was sharing a bit of my testimony at Percy’s Bible study and Julianne had to translate for me. That and we also weren’t allowed to travel by ourselves. The service was horribly long (I don’t know if I can actually say that about church, but if you want honesty here you go) and I didn’t understand a word of it which made it even worse. I didn’t play for the morning service, I played for the evening service, which was thankfully different and shorter than the one in the morning. I got there an hour before it started so I could learn the songs. They have a different way of practicing and playing music here; no one uses music. They all learn the songs by ear and then just play them. Someone wrote some of the chords out, but they also don’t write down the typical chords (ie: C, G, D, etc...) they instead write RE (C), SOL (G), and CO (D) which made it hard to understand. The guy that I stayed with during the amazing race, Carlos, was there and he was able to help me out by writing a few things down and then just shouting out chords to me while we were playing during the worship. I was so happy to see Carlos again, I got to talk to him that night before at youth and just catch up a bit. Out of everyone we met from there I miss him the most (he has a girlfriend for those of you who are thinking otherwise! I met her and she is an absolute sweetheart!), we connected really well because of our love for music and serving. He told me later when we were driving to the bus station to head back to Quito that that was the first time the church had let a girl play (not sing, but play) onstage. I was shocked, what an honour! I’m glad I didn’t know this beforehand because otherwise it would have added a lot of extra pressure that I didn’t need; I was already stressing because of the songs and not having the music in front of me. Then during the service I sat with Carlos and his girlfriend and he was kind enough to translate the entire service for me. I would have died of boredom otherwise because it is hard to sit there and pay attention when you haven’t a clue as to what is going on. Ben had to leave on Sunday night because he had to be back in Quito for Monday, so after church we dropped him off at the station and then just went back to the apartment and chilled.

Monday we spent the day at the beach in Manta, I posted some pictures of the day; I’m sure it’s pretty self-explanatory =P.

And then Tuesday, our final day in Portoviejo, we went to a town just outside Portoviejo called Calderone. We went to visit with the pastor and his family. I wish I could remember their names, but they were both very hospitable, and patient, and just very kind. We didn’t do a lot while we were there, mainly just visited but that was still pretty cool. We went on some house visits with the pastor and for the final one we had to drive a bit of ways to get there. I stayed back while the others went by bus because I was going with him on his motorcycle. However, when the others left we couldn’t leave because their son had the bike and was not back yet. This was terrifying at first because my only way of communicating with them had just left, I don’t know Spanish! It was very hard at first because I couldn’t understand a word they were saying and for some reason I was really nervous so that made it even more difficult. Eventually I was able to understand a bit of what his wife was saying/asking me and surprisingly enough a bit of what Chris taught me first semester this year came back so I could say a bit. Somehow his wife and I were able to have a conversation; I’m sure it was at a kindergarden level, but it was a conversation nonetheless. We talked about Canada in comparison to Ecuador, about Portoviejo, Quito, and Calderone, and then also a bit about Paraguay. It was just really cool. I don’t know how, but somehow God gave me enough Spanish knowledge to talk. It was just cool! I also go to see a massive iguana while we were outside talking, again, talk about cool. This creature was probably over four feet long, he was just huge! I wish I had my camera, but Jules had my bag because I didn’t want to take it on the bike with me. When their son arrived we finally headed out to this woman’s home. By the time we got there Percy was almost done, but we still got to pray for her. I don’t know her whole story, but she was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and so we were praying for healing. I talked to Liz about it afterwards and she was saying that although this woman has cancer she has this amazing faith that believes that God is going to heal her. While this lady spoke to us she had this peace in her eyes, like she knows everything is going to be fine because whatever happens is God’s will. If you could pray for her as well that would be great, she also has a very young daughter (my guess is around the age of three) who needs her mom. From there we got on a bus and headed back to Portoviejo. We had only a few hours at Percy’s place before we had to head out again; this time to play soccer with some of the girls from the church. Talk about an unfair match! To make it worse it was us against them... again, not fair. Oh well, I had fun with it. I still can’t play soccer to save my life, but I still had fun. The game finished at 10 p.m. and our bus left at 11 p.m. So we had an hour to all shower and get to the bus station, talk about rushed. That was a bit stressful but in the end we made it to the station on time and everything was almost good. Again, it was hard saying goodbye. I would love to have stayed there longer. I don’t know if I’ll have the opportunity to go back there during the summer; I only have two more months here and there is so much I still want to do and I would love to be able to go back to some of the places that I’ve already visited and stay longer and just get to know people better. I hope I can go back, I really enjoyed my time there.

The bus ride back was brutal! I was stuck sitting by this lady that I didn’t know who ended up taking half of my seat when she fell asleep. Then add the guy behind me who kicked the back of my seat for six hours straight, yup I was not to happy when we got back at 5:30 in the morning. We arrived back at Casa Blanca around 6:30, went to bed and slept for three hours before Mabe came in to wake us up and tell me that my uncle was here to pick me up. The Wednesday we got back was Annalise’s grade 6 graduation at the Alliance Academy International school here in Quito. Grade 6 grad down here is huge! You should have seen some of the dresses! Anyways so I didn’t even have a whole lot of time to sleep. But speaking of sleep I should probably log off and go to bed... it’s after 1 a.m. here and it’s another early morning tomorrow.

More later!!

(the pictures posted are from just a few taken while in Portoviejo; some were taken there, in Manta, Calderone and then one from grad)