Ecuador Slideshow

One last "Wow" moment

Check out the volcano!!! We looked out the window as we left Quito and this is what we saw. Talk about another "Wow" moment!

Team arrived safe and sound with ALL luggage to Gulf Shores around midnight Saturday night. Very tired but extremely blessed.  The faithful Mr. Larry even allowed the team a Krispy Kreme run before we left Pensacola.

We are looking forward to tonight's celebration at Crossroads at 6:30. Hope to see you there if you are in town!

A Day in the Clouds...

Today we headed to the "Tucanopy" in the cloud forest of the Andes Mountains. We had a great time ziplining over the tops of the trees & learning about the plants & vegetation of this reserve. Our lunch was also amazingly wonderful - completely homemade salad, dressing, pizza, Brazilian chocolatey-strawberry-toffee-caramel dessert plus fried green plantains with guacamole. We have lots of pictures and video from this day of fun, so here are a few pics we'll share before SUNDAY NIGHT!

Please join us THIS SUNDAY NIGHT 6:30 at Crossroads for a Hot Dog Supper & Celebration where we will share about our trip!

A Night to Remember

We enjoyed an elegant dinner in Old Town Quito next to the President's house tonight. After that we were in for a huge surprise. Two words: Party Bus.

Yes, we did ride through downtown Quito whooping and hollering and blowing the whistles they gave us on the vehicle pictured above.

Day 4 - Last workday photos

 

 

 

This is Jessie, one of our Colorado partner team members, having a great time with kids at the park.

The team with the little Ecuadorians actually won this futbol game. The next photo is the child stealing the ball from David!

Kimberly and her new best friends.

Morgan and her new best friend.

Brian won the heart of this little girl pretty fast.

Going to the park required a short walk down the street from the church where we were working. Note the buildings and streets common to this village outside of Quito.

David and Richard take a break while the afternoon VBS kids wait on the stairwell to go in for arts & crafts.

The ladies (including Jill!) worked just as hard as the guys, hauling buckets of dirt and taking their turns with the pick-axes to dig the trench.

David swinging his pick-ax.

This is Lyle with the pastor of the Puengasi Christian Church, where we worked every day building the daycare facility. Pastor worked alongside us every day, and even though he spoke no English, made friends with everyone in the group. His wife and daughters helped with VBS and made us a homemade lunch (which was delicious!) every day!

The pastor's wife and daycare teachers made ornament keepsakes for every team member to take home as a "thank you" for our work this week.

Even though we are done working, we will be posting more pics from week. Tonight we are headed to a special dinner and a tour of Old Town Quito. Tomorrow we will be ziplining through the cloud forest!

Day 3 pics

Today the construction crew began & finished the work of mixing concrete (with no equipment, by the way) and filling in 3 holes for the foundation of the building. It was a long, hard day of shoveling, mixing, and passing buckets of concrete mix down the "bucket brigade" line.

Even though the day was exhausting, the entire team has headed to the market to find some more bargains before coming home Saturday. (Well, the entire team minus the exhausted team leader who is updating the blog...)

VBS had a great day with lots of crafts today. Other team members have some great photos and video that you will see later...

Note how close the guys are to the edge of the large hole while stacking the rebar. Yes, it was quite dangerous but nobody fell in, except Hank who kind of "jumped in" to avoid a nasty fall.

Brian carries a bag of concrete mix to the appropriate spot for mixing.

David assists Richard in navigating the wheelbarrow successfully over the plank bridge to the concrete mix pile.

Mixing the sand and gravel...

Mixing the concrete!

Video 2 - Kimberly and the cutest little girl ever

This sweet child is pretending that she didn't get a piece of fruit. Trying to pull one over on Kimberly, when Kimberly is the one who handed it to her. It was too cute.

Video 1 - Afternoon VBS fun

A few pics from Tuesday

Rarrrrrrrrr!!!

Morgan, Jill & Lyle are tired of the rebar...we finished the last one thankfully today...will start standing them up & pouring concrete tomorrow!

The twins with the twins!

Face-painting with Sarah & Brian.

Video of this little encounter coming later...little girl was trying to fool Kimberly as to the location of her piece of fruit :).

Julianna's favorite pics - First Work Day

Richard's shirt says it all as the construction team prepares for the day of manual labor.

Lyle's morning job: Bending steel bars into squares.

Brian reads a story to the morning children...in Espanol.

This picture depicts how a mission team moves a large pile of dirt from one place to another when there is no large modern equipment available. It took six hours to move the pile of dirt from the corner to the dump truck on the other side of the wall where Alex is standing.

Kimberly & Jill didn't really fall in, although I asked them to act like they did. This is where we'll put the steel beams when we're done tying "re-bar" (sp?)...

David is a master at tying rebar.

Breathtaking view from the park where we take the kids to play at the end of VBS every day.

The kids clean up the trash in the park every afternoon before they play. SIFAT staff have turned it into an intense boys vs. girls competition to fill the trash bags with the most trash.

Christine makes a new friend within just a few minutes of going outside to play.

Kimberly and her new friend take pictures of each other on Kimberly's camera.