Day 8
Today started bright and early with the sky full of sunshine. After breakfast and a devotion that focused on suffering (which was quite moving for many on the team) most of the team loaded the truck taxis and headed up the mountain.
Three of our team members headed into Cayambe in a different truck taxi. We delivered all of the donations for the children’s home and the donations for the clinic and headed to the grocery store to pick up some supplies for lunch.
The team was met by a small mountain of sand, gravel and concrete. But…
The biggest and best surprise of the day was that they rented a concrete mixer instead of mixing the concrete on the ground! This saved us hours of back breaking work. A lot of the team spent the morning helping to mix concrete, load it into buckets, send it down the line of people and lift it up onto the roof of the milk house.
This work went on all morning long! It was heavy, dirty work but the members who helped loved what they did. Several members worked in the kitchen making lunch and others worked on finishing washing the windows on the church. Because of the warm, sunny, bright day a lot of the team members felt the altitude at some point in the day.
After lunch some of the team returned to the concrete work and the rest of the team prepared for VBS. The kids started showing up and any team members who were not doing concrete helped with the kids. The kids did craft projects, played games, watched a video of a Bible story and watched a skit done by 4 of our teens.
As soon as VBS was done, most of the team loaded up the trucks and returned to Cayambe. A few of our team members had been asked to meet with a member of the church in Lote Tres because they needed some prayer and counseling.
The team quickly cleaned up and some members went to the grocery store to buy some goodies as souvenirs. Dinner was traditional llapanganchos (ya-paan-go-chos). Llapanganchos are mashed potatoes with seasoning and a bit of cheese that are formed into a patty and fried until crispy on the outsides. They are pretty great and the whole team enjoyed them!
Our team had to say good bye to one of our interpreters who needs to go to a meeting for the Covenant Church of Ecuador. He will be dearly missed these last few days of our trip as he has touched many of the lives on our trip-especially our teens.
The evening was spent just hanging out together, playing Code Names, visiting with each other and planning farm visits for tomorrow. Our team is very tired tonight so please pray that we all sleep well and have energy for tomorrow’s activities.
