Toffee Town

Day three of the race was a sweet day... literally! We started the race at Casa Elizabeth (this is the teen pregnancy ministry; the house is on the hill just behind Casa Blanca) where we had to write a quiz on our intern manuals. The hardest part of the day was running up the steps to Casa Elizabeth (the sad thing, it's like a minutes walk away, but I am was still getting used to the altitude and arrived slightly out of breath - working out before coming here did absolutely nothing for me. The altitude messes everything up). This was the first day where we began switching the teams up; I was with Robin and Matt. It was really funny being on a team with Matt after being with Vicky and Jereme for the past two days. Matt is really competitive, and Vicky and Jereme are pretty laid back. He was getting frustrated with the quiz and was trying to convince the judges that our simplistic answers were sufficient. Anyways, we eventually got everything correct and were able to continue on. We had to walk up this large hill to get to the bus terminal, were we had to catch a bus to Alluriquin. Alluriquin is the town that my aunt, uncle and their girls call 'the toffee town' because almost every shop is selling homemade toffee. Our job once we got there was to find a shop keeper by the name of Esteban Andrade and get instructed on how to make toffee. I thought this meant that we would making the toffee from start to finish, but it really meant that we would be pulling the toffee and wrapping it up to sell. The ladies at the shop showed me how to properly close the ends of the wrappers by placing the tin foil in the flame and then bending it over. It took a few tries, but I finally got it. The ladies were laughing because apparently it should not have been as hard as I was making it out to be. We finally pulled and wrapped a dozen toffee sticks (we ended up with fourteen because my first two were not very good). Once we were done our next clue said that we had to get on the bus to Santo Domingo and sell all the toffee. We were not allowed to be on the same bus as any other team, and the bus that we got on was full of kids heading home from school. What kid would not want to buy toffee for 5 cents a piece? With Matt selling the toffee, it was all gone within minutes. About an hour or so later we arrived in Santo Domingo and were suppose to head to Simon Bolivar park to get our next clue. Well our bus driver had never heard of this park, no one on the bus had ever heard about this park before so that was a bit weird. Matt called Rich to find out what was going on, Rich ended up talking to the driver only to discover that we were actually on the wrong bus heading the opposite direction of where we needed to be. The bus driver pulled over to drop us off and to call a taxi for us to take us to this 'unknown' park. That took some unnecessary time, but things like this happens and you just have to make the best of it. When we finally got to where we needed to be our next clue read: "Count all the light blue rocks on the wall. If you make a guess, and are wrong, you will have to wait 5 minutes to give your answer again". The first day had a challenge similar to this (if you remember) that consisted of counting all the names on the wall of the Cathedral; that was only 205 names however. The wall that is mentioned in the clue is actually this long retaining wall on the side of the road the stretched for a few blocks. We thought that we had to be right on the dot with this, so we each counted the wall about three times. If any of our numbers were off from someone else's number we would ALL begin again. This is a bad challenge for an OCD person like myself who had to make sure that we all had the right number before moving on to the next section of the wall. We were the last team to arrive and the last team to leave. We were halfway done when Lisa Merritt starts calling to us to just make a guess, that we did not need to be right on because otherwise we would never get out of there. We still had about eleven or so panels of light blue rocks that we needed to count, so we estimated what each panel would be, multiplied it by eleven and got our number. Our first guess was somewhere in the 2,000's (I thought we should say something is the 3, 000's but Robin and Matt thought that that was too high so we went with something lower). We were wrong. We had to wait five minutes before we could guess again, so this time we decided to say 3,500 because we were told to go much higher. Sure enough the correct answer was 3,526. From there we had to get on another bus to El Carmen, once there we had to choose a "triciclo" (a bicycle pushing a cart from behind) and travel to the church. The three of us get there and pile into this triciclo and the driver starts pedalling. Because of all the extra weight in the front from our bags and ourselves the guy was having some trouble going fast. This wasn't good enough for Matt so he got out and started to run, pushing the triciclo. We decided to take turns helping this guy out, but when Robin and I tried to get out (while this cart was still moving) we tipped it forward. I scrapped my toe, but whatevs. We could see the other teams (or some of the other teams) in front of us and we arrived at the church at the same time as three of the other teams. Well, we didn't really arrive at 'the church' because the church has not been built yet, we arrived at the site where the future church, Terreno de la Iglesia, will be. We had to chose a 4x4 piece of land and completely clear it from all the brush that had overtaken the parcel of land. We were given a wheelbarrel, a machete, and a shovel. Our shovel broke within minutes of working because Robin is just that strong [ =) ]. The blade of the shovel was to awkward to hold so we used our hands and just ripped everything from the ground. We were the fourth team to leave (so we had moved up a spot) and we had to get into a vehicle and travel to the banana plantation. Once there we had to package up a box of bananas (weighing 50lbs) for exportation. These bananas that we were packing up were to be shipped out to New York City, and should arrive two weeks from this day. We were shown what to do, which wasn't difficult so it didn't take that long to complete, but the owner needed to go through and inspect each box and make sure that all the bananas were good and in the box the proper way. Again, we were the last team to leave. We were given a map and had to find the children's home which was our pit stop for the night. We saw two teams heading one way and Matt decided to follow them because that's where they were going so they had to know what they were doing. The judges called out and said to actually read the map and not just go by instinct and follow the crowd. The map told us to go the opposite direction from the others, I was presistant that this was the correct way so we went in the other direction. Just as we arrived on the main street that would take us to where we needed to go, I saw the white Inca Link van drive by so I knew we were going to right direction. We didn't see any other teams, but we just kept going where we were going. We ended up in third place for the day; I think that's pretty good considering we were last for a good majority of the day. We head to the hostel in which we were spending the night to wash up for dinner at the pastor's house. Dinner was at Elmer and Carmen's house (the pastor and his wife). We got to hear a little of their story over dinner, Carmen was a maid at Rich and Lisa's house in Peru and Elmer was a janitor at the church they went to trying to save for school. They met and got married and became missionaries in Ecuador. There's more to their story than that, but it's late and I can't remember details right now. One thing that was really touching was to hear that the church in El Carmen paid for our hostel that night; they're church has no money, but yet they still paid to put us up for the night. What a huge blessing! I almost cried when I heard this because this has never happened to me before. They were excited for what we are going to be doing this summer and wanted to help out. I shared a room with Vicky that night, and I was commenting about how the room wasn't the nicest I've stayed at, but I couldn't complain. Not after knowing that the church has nothing and yet they still paid for us to stay there. It was a simple room with two beds, a nice bathroom and a fan. What a blessing it was, I was so touched that someone would do this. This church has no money to build the church where we were digging earlier, yet they are trusting that God is going to provide. It's cool to hear stories about people's unwavering faith, and how nothing stresses them because they know that God is in control and that he will provide. I want to have a faith like that, in which I don't have to stress about the simple things of life (such as finances for school, etc), but I just know that God will take care of me no matter what. I can't wait to go back to El Carmen and work alongside of Elmer and Carmen this summer. I would love to get to know them better and hear more of their story about what God is and has been doing in their lives.