Short version:
Wednesday: We drove to the cities and stayed overnight.
Thursday: We flew to Houston, and then to Quito, arriving after midnight.
Friday: We spent 1/2 the day driving to Shell. We
got to our hotel in the late afternoon, and then got oriented to our week with staff from Casa de Fe, and had dinner with a missionary couple.
What you can pray for: Pray for the Zuniga family. They are missionaries who work at Casa de Fe and elsewhere in Shell. Pray for the funding they need, and especially for their street ministry to prostitutes.
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| Our Team Front: Barb, Tracy, Nancy Middle: Wanda, Jenica, Carol Back: Rita, Kendra, Jeff, Rae, Benita, Jon |
Wow. 14 hours
after returning home from my mission trip to Shell, Ecuador, my emotions are
running high. I feel so refreshed and built up. New friendships were made. Kids
were served. Much random manual labor was done. I bonded with some teammates,
not so much with others. Every group seems to contain certain personality types,
and this was no exception: Carol and Barb were the loud, super outgoing ones. The
shopper was Wanda. Jeff knows his Bible really well and was a great leader (so
nice to not be in charge of anything!). I enjoy and appreciate Rae and wish I
had gotten to know her better. Jenica is a fellow Cobber/singer and tons of
fun. I finally started to get Jon’s sense of humor on the flight on the way
home. I really bonded with Rita. She’s almost 75 and a barrel of energy and not
afraid to try anything. Traci has
a servants heart, Nancy, my other roommate really has a love for Jesus, and Benita
was a solid team member…I’m so thankful to have had the opportunity to get to
know them all.
I laughed more on this trip than I have in years. I got more
giggly at the end when I was obviously more tired, even though I didn’t really
feel tired. We laughed at Barb accidently scaring this missionary pastor who was
staying at our hotel when she meant to scare Carol. I laughed at Rita’s sense
of humor—like when she told about how someone found a bug and one of the kids
said it was an aphrodisiac and so she touched it here and there, and rubbed
it’s belly for a while and nothing happened…
I’ve known for decades that I eventually was supposed to
serve in the Andes in some capacity. I’ve been praying specifically about the
right opportunity since getting home from Ukraine in 2013. I knew it was time
to start using my Spanish major for something other than the occasional book
that I’ll read in Spanish.
Last summer at Camp Cherith, my job was food ordering. After
placing my last order of the season, Jeff, our Sysco rep, asked me if I would
be interested in going to Ecuador on the mission trip that he and his wife
lead. We had never talked about much outside of food during the whole season,
so I believe it was God prompting him to ask me. I immediately felt that this
was the right opportunity.
Fast forward five months, and here we go!!!
Wednesday:
We met at Cormorant Lutheran at 2:00 to pack our checked
bags with items needed by Casa de Fe. Suitcases were filled with peanut butter,
coconut oil, knives for the kitchen, a laptop for one of the administrators,
school supplies, clothes, and many other items.
I rode with Wanda, Benita, and Rita to our hotel in the Twin
Cities. Upon arrival, the group went to Denny’s for dinner, but my dad and stepmother
picked me up and took me to Ikea. A friend of my dad’s who was a
stunt man in many movies and TV shows happened to be there, so we ate with him
and heard lots of crazy stories.
Back at the hotel, I didn’t really sleep a wink all night.
My mind wasn’t nervous about anything, but my heart rate wouldn’t slow to a resting
rate—it must have been subconscious. And maybe a little bit due to roommates
who may have snored…
Thursday:
After breakfast at the hotel and two shuttle trips, the
twelve of us and 25 or 26 suitcases were all at the airport. Oh, and somehow we didn't get the sewing machine for the casa to the airport. Oh well.
Getting everyone on the plane is the biggest stressor for
Jeff on these trips. I think we did well as a group with being on time, and no
one seemed to have issues with security or passport control. Both our flight to
Houston, and the one to Quito were on time. As we waited for our first flight,
I broke out my “Pass the Pigs” game and got about half the team plus a random
little girl to play.
The sky was clear on the way to Houston. We realized we’d be
back there on Superbowl Sunday and wondered how crazy the airport would be. Ashlynn,
who was traveling to Casa de Fe for a three month stay “found” us in the
airport because of our purple shirts. She had booked the same flight as our
group so that she could share our bus to Shell once we were in Ecuador. She is
super sweet, and was a pleasure to have as an honorary member of our group.
On the flight to Quito, we flew over the Gulf of Mexico, and
I enjoyed watching the boats and islands go by. Supper was a yummy
chicken/quinoa casserole. Because we were seated alphabetically, I sat next to
Jon. I didn’t get to know him very well until the return flight, at which time
I really started to appreciate his sense of humor. Jon was in a bicycle
accident in college and suffered brain-damage, and walks with a cane, and is a
little hard to understand. Nevertheless, he was a valuable team member,
especially as he spent hours reading the Bible to the kids with severe special
needs in the infirmary.
Upon arrival in Quito around midnight, Chris Zuniga and
Joel met us at the airport and had vehicles to take us to the guesthouse where
we spent the night. We didn’t realize that there was a guest sleeping in the
room next to ours, and that guest was a little upset with us for waking him up.
He stood in his doorway in his underwear and gave us a small piece of his mind.
Sorry, sir. The place seemed deserted when we arrived. Then again, it was after
midnight. We should have figured… Nancy, Rita and I shared an upstairs room. I
never slept well very on the trip, but at least I slept better than I
had the previous night in Minneapolis.
Friday:
In the morning, we had a lovely breakfast of fruit with
yogurt, toast, and juice. All Ecuadorian juice seems to be fresh and thick and
heavenly yummy. Typical flavors included mora ( a berry), naranjilla (similar
to orange), and others.
After breakfast, our bus driver, Darwin, arrived and we
began the 90ish mile trip to Shell. Although the roads were new, and the speed
limit reasonable, it still took somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 hours to
get to Shell. Maybe it’s 90 miles as the crow flies, but on mountain roads, it
seemed more like 200! I enjoyed speaking Spanish with Darwin. We talked about
the upcoming elections in Ecuador, and about President Trump. I gained a little
confidence in my Spanish speaking ability.
I sat in the front seat of the bus with Nancy, and the
scenery was beyond words. The first part of the drive had kind of an
alpine-arid vibe to it. There were many terraced fields on the mountainsides,
and random Holstein cows tied up and grazing near the roadside. We passed pine
forests, and plants that reminded me of aloe vera.
You KNOW it’s going to be a good trip when an ice cream stop
is on the itinerary. We stopped at Micko’s maybe halfway between Quito and
Baños. I had a cone with one scoop of mora, and one scoop of apple-mandarin ice
cream. Delicious! We also got to try yucca bread there. It was better than the yucca bread I made at home a few weeks earlier. I started helping others with Spanish
by translating the ice cream flavors and enjoyed helping with communication for
the rest of the trip.
The alpine-arid vibe gave way to rainforest as the altitude
decreased and we neared Baños (a resort town that we would stay in on our last night). We stopped for lunch at a place that evidently
caters to all the “gods” (according to Patti Sue, founder of Casa de Fe). I had
the Hindu platter and enjoyed my view of Frida Kahlo art on the wall. OK, maybe
not all of it. Some of her portraits are a bit weird.
After many miles of windy roads, vehicles passing us despite
double yellow lines that evidently don’t REALLY signify a no passing zone, and
many tunnels and bridges, we arrived in Shell and checked into the Hostel
Esmeraldita. I was once again with
Rita and Nancy. Our room was nice, but didn’t have any outside windows. Two
windows opened to the hallway, and I’m not sure how securely they actually
locked. Between not having a deadbolt, and having your keys hung on hooks
behind the (not always attended) front desk during the day, it probably wasn’t
the most ever secure set-up, but yet it felt safe.
I don’t remember when we first tried the shower, but we soon
discovered that the source of hot water was approximately two blocks away. Good
thing we were in the rain forest and water use is probably not an issue. The
warm side of lukewarm was about all we ever achieved with the shower, but at
least the cold wasn’t the cold of the water coming out of my well at home, but
rather more of a “luke cold”. Remind me to pack a shower “puff” next year.
There were no washcloths, and I had to resort to fingernails to get caked-on
mud off my legs on several occasions.
That night, we had dinner at a restaurant with a missionary
couple, Erik and Renee, from Holland, MI. Erik works with tribes to facilitate
having them build their own water systems. This is important, because they take
ownership in a project that they do themselves, and they then know how to
run and repair it. He also works with a program that trains missionaries who are
going to go to the Middle East for a time. They learn many skills, everything
from how to butcher a chicken, to skills needed to share the Gospel with the
local people. Renee is a therapist at Casa de Fe, and has other
responsibilities elsewhere.
That night, it turned out that Rita had lost her John
Steinbeck book somewhere, so I lent her my “Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer” book by
John Grisham. It must have been OK because she read the whole thing by the end
of the week. We fell asleep, ready to meet the kids at Casa de Fe in the morning and begin our work.
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