Ecuador: part 1

6-2

The three of us girls met up with Sheri at the LAX airport. We

found ourselves outside of the secure area with no way of

checking into our flight to Panama until hours later. We

decided an adventure was a good idea. We walked off to the bus

stop and headed toward the Santa Monica beach. We ended up at

a Thai resturaunt instead. I had been craving Thai for weeks

and was overjoyed when the rest of the team was as excited

about Thai as I was. After dinner we checked into our flight

and headed out. We made it to Ecuador with no trouble. Customs

was a bit cautious when they saw the suitcases full of

medications and medical supplies. Thankfully they didn't need

much convincing to let us through.
Bennie was there waiting for us at the other end of customs.
We were then shuttled to the church that was to become our

home for the next two weeks.

Friday and Saturday-

6-3

The first two days here have been spent learning new names and

faces. Last night was our first night here. We walked to a

local resturaunt for dinner.We were going to go with just

Bennie but the guys at the church were so distressed at the

idea of us going without more man to escort us, so they walked

with us to the place.  This place what like the place in Al

Satwa were they had no menus, they were making just one sort

of dish but were making it well.
We ordered 5 meals of pollo expecting to each eat one. We

ended up eating about 2 of the servings between the 5 of us.

The good news was that we had a fridge at the church for the

left overs. We then went back to the church and settled in.

view from our kitchen window

6-4
This morning Sheri, Manaal and I walked to a nearby fruit

market.
We then had a meeting with Pastor Samuel who pastors the big

church in Guayaquil, Pastor Caluca (sp?) of the Nigeria

church, our team and our translator Andres who we just met.
Meetings are somethign else when you don't speak the language.

I know that my understanding will get better with time, but

for now I am so lost. The meeting was really good for setting

the schedule for the next few weeks.

After the meeting we went to Nigeria for a visit. We say the

church. We were supposed to stay at this church but they had a

water problem that prevented us from staying there.We all

loved it right away and agreed that something could be figured

out in spite of all the standing water. We visited the Daycare

 in Nigeria also.We plan to do assessments of all the children

here in the future.
We saw two children while we were there who had minor

illnesses. There was one baby that we were a bit concerned

with. She had a pretty bad cough that lingered.
One thing that goes without saying is that the children there

were adorable.
We visited some church members after. They wanted us to check

on their children how were sick.
It was a great experience to be invited into these people's

homes to talk with them and see how they live.

Our trip to Nigeria was short. Upon returning home, we set out

in search of ear plugs and tongue depressors. We may or may

not have wandered a bit out of the way just for the sake of

exploring.
 There was a youth service at the church that night, so we

just walked downstairs from our room and got to watch all

these youth get excited and dance for Jesus! PERFECT!!