For example, I created this blog with the good intentions of writing in it every few days. Unfortunately, this goal has not been actualized. I intend to change my ways and begin to write more often.
And now, I am about to disclose as much as I can remember from the last month... hang tight.
The last time I wrote a full blog entry, I told everyone about the first time we went to an indigenous market in Otavalo. That was a fantastic trip! Since then, we have done a lot of things...
Every Monday we have a ministry class, which we used to plan two different ministries. Since the first few weeks, we have gone to a "dump," where we played with the kids whose parents work there. We taught them Spanish Christian songs and performed a play for them of Jesus' birth. I, played the part of the donkey, which was quite entertaining.
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| A happy little family |
Well, all that to say, we had a blast. :)
The next week we switched it up and went to a nursing home in Ecuador to spend time with some of the old people there. That was the most intimidating thing I've had to do yet in Ecuador.. Allow me to explain.. In Ecuador, the culture is extremely different in their family values. Although it may be somewhat common in the States for people to live in a nursing home, it is absolutely not acceptable here. The "Ecuadorian dream" is to have a house with your family, and when your children get married, you would build another floor into your house for that family to live. This dream is not commonly accomplished, but the ideal behind it remains the same. Generally, the family sticks together as much as possible. The people who end up in nursing homes generally feel extremely unloved and abandoned by their family. Others might be slightly delusional or difficult to care for, which gives reason for their presence in the nursing home. With that said, we arrived at the nursing home with no idea of what to expect and no real plan..
The people were all sitting silently outside under an awning when we approached, so we all found a seat near someone and began to do our best to make conversation. I sat down next to a couple who sat silently next to one another. But a small old lady was staggering about, seemingly looking for a seat. So I jumped up to pull up a chair for her.... Instead, she pulled down her pants in the middle of everyone and started to pee! That was the right way to start off the day.. My friend Brianna and I were somewhat shocked. An attendant ran over to help her and clean up the mess she left on the ground.... SO... I decided to move seats.... The next lady who I sat next to did not seem extremely up for conversation, so I probed as much as possible without being extremely annoying.. When I asked her how many children she had, she said, "enough." So I laughed and asked how many grandchildren she had; she said, five. So again, I asked how many children she had and she replied "enough." I had a hunch that she had either forgotten how many children she had or she did not want to talk about them, so I let the topic drop! What else can you do? We made conversation about music and whatever else came to mind, and then the girls grouped up and decided to attempt a skit like we had in the dump with the kids. Becca read from a children's Bible, as we did our best to act out the stories. One sweet old lady sat in the front and said "Amen" the entire time we performed. She was adorable! After the skit, the same old lady talked to me for about 30 minutes about how God had changed her life and how wonderful it was to have his joy! It was such a beautiful testimony in such a sad place. She asked me about 20 times if my family had accepted Christ, and she told me her life story multiple times. Precious. Although I came into that ministry extremely intimidated, I left really blessed.
We have done plenty of other things outside of ministry. There are a couple of missionary families on our seminary's campus, so we have visited them a few times and used their kitchens to cook! Miss Carolyn let us come over to make salsa and guacamole -- yummmm. It's funny because there are certain foods like tacos and guacamole that we consider "Mexican" in the States, but in Ecuador they consider them American! Too funny! They also have an extremely warped view of salad here in Ecuador.. They eat any cooked vegetable (topped with cilantro - always) and that is their salad. But, thank the Lord for Miss Carolyn, who comes into the "comedor" (cafeteria) once a week with a table of real salad (American style) for everyone to enjoy! :) On weekends, we often cook for ourselves in a house or staff's apartment, or we go to the mall to buy American food... The malls here are nicer than a lot of the malls in the States! Pretty much every time we go, we get Pizza Hut or KFC. Sooo, I'm not feeling all that healthy as of late. Especially when we travel on academic outings, we always get fried chicken or some sort of greasy food. So I'm working on the exercise thing. ;)
For one academic outing, we went to the top of the mountain (the one that I can see from my dorm window) and took a "telefético"/cable car up to the top and walked around, and then back down. There was a group of latinos who were extremely excited to see all of us gringos together... so they asked us for a picture! Too funny. Then we continued up to the top and took a bunch of ridiculous pictures in the grass on the mountain. It was REALLY cold up there, considering that I had been sweating at the seminary. It was also rather cloudy, and we decided that we were inside a few clouds at some point! The grass was covering up some huge holes in the ground, which (you can imagine) ended in tragedy for me. I completely wiped out... typical Kristin! :)
Another academic outing we have taken was to "Colonial Quito" - where we took a couple of tours through a church covered in GOLD! And we also took a tour of a museum of Ecuador/Quito. The lady was extremely nice at this museum, and we all loved her. (Funny story.. we take the bus everywhere... and about two weeks after this outing, we were on the bus, and Emily Grace spotted our tour guide lady on the sidewalk and pointed her out to me as the bus was stopping. So of course, I caught her eye and waved! I have no clue whether or not she remembered me, but she waved back! :))
Hmm.. what more? Well I recently got back from the jungle! No.. I don't live in the jungle, contrary to popular belief. I live in the mountains at 9,500 feet elevation-- the jungle is a completely different part of Ecuador. And we travelled for a week to go see it! Let's start at the beginning...
On Thursday night, all of the girls were packing our bags like crazy, with no idea of what to expect. We knew we would be climbing a mountain, so we would need warm clothes... We also knew we would go swimming and hike through the jungle, so we would need shorts and sandals.. The packing thing was quite a mess, but I managed to jam-pack my bags with everything I could fit for every type of weather! The next morning, we packed up the sprinter -- with more people than usual. Lucy, the NILI coordinator, and her husband, Salomón, were going to come with us! Lucy gave birth to her son, David, two months ago, and he was joining us for the trip as well! Sooo... with 7 NILI's, Lucy, Salomón, their baby, Kyle, Jana, Jen, and another pastor joining us for the ride.... 14 in total... we packed up and piled into the Sprinter... shown below.
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| the Beloved Sprinter |
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| Yummm. Avocado! |
We continued on the road and finally made it to Rio Bamba, where we said goodbye to the pastor and continued to the hostal. The hostal was sooo nice! It had a chicken and rooster walking around, some cats and dogs (pets of the owners), some canaries in a cage, a beautiful garden and Frank Sinatra music playing outside! It was magical. :) We then went to an indigenous market to buy fruit. It was the biggest market I have ever seen! It was all outside, and there were THOUSANDS of fruit. Two large structures were set up: one contained the market with fruits from the sierra and jungle, while the other contained all of the foods brought from the costal regions. It was incredible, and the fruit was delicious!
That night the girls and I had a fun night complete with a dance party and girl talk! The next morning we woke up EXTREMELY early to make breakfast before the great hike up Chimborazo. The climb was incredible. It was extremely cloudy and cold as we hiked, and it was extremely difficult to breathe at times. Kyle and Salomón both intended to climb with us, but both felt sick, so they both returned to the Sprinter to wait for us. We had decided the night before that we would sing "the Climb" by Miley Cyrus as we climbed.. it proved nearly impossible with the lack of oxygen, but we did our best. We even attempted to translate it into Spanish! We made it to the second refuge, and all of us made it together!!! :) I was so proud, because one of the girls has asthma- and yet, ALL of us made it! I felt so accomplished. When we got to the refuge, we came upon a huge group of indigenous people who had gathered to pray and share food. It was such a beautiful sight! They welcomed us to their group, and we ate my favorite snack -- tostado! (It's almost like partially popped popcorn.. but the corn dries out your mouth and it's all salty... everyone else hates it, but I love it!) This was the beautiful sight we came upon... 
The sight was just amazing. I don't know that we will ever experience anything else like it. They began to pray together too, which made it even more breath taking. We had brought candies to eat as we climbed, and we had more than enough to share. After they allowed us to partake in their food, we began to hand out sweets to whoever wanted them. They were all very thankful, even though most of them spoke "Quechua" - the indigenous language. It was a fantastic experience. A really fun fact about Chimborazo is that it is the closest point on the earth to the sun! It just so happened that the same day that we climbed Chimborazo was my friend Emily's 21st birthday! So before we headed up the mountain, we surprised her with a cake, (which we ate that evening). :) Very fun.
That day, we went to another town and visited a museum, where we saw an extremely old mummy and some other cool artifacts from Ecuador, one of which was one of the few remaining original copies of Don Quixote! We walked around the town and found some fun little shops. It is interesting to see how each town is different in the country. I love comparing similarities and differences as we visit new places. That night we went out to a church and participated in their youth group church service. There weren't that many people there, so they all tried to learn our names. We played a fun game in which there were two teams, each in a line... each person had a long stick in their mouth, and one ring. The ring had to be passed from one side of the line to the other before the other team finished -- without using hands! Lots of fun! :) I'll probably use that one again.
That night, unfortunately, I had some EXTREMELY bad stomach pains and could not sleep more than three hours.. I kept my roommates up most of the night too. :( I ended up getting sick, but that didn't seem to help either... I took a bunch of stomach medicine, and eventually in the morning I felt well enough to attend church again. It ended up lasting on and off throughout the week, but by the end of the week I was all better!
Since I can't exactly remember the order of my days... here are some foods we ate while in Rio Bamba.. some fried chicken, blood soup -- a specialty here.... they had us try it before they told us what it was.. apparently it's goat blood. So yea... and the afternoon that we climbed Chimborazo, we experienced "pig." We went to the market, in which there is a large room completely filled with booths of women selling their pig. Every woman is wearing the same pink outfit, and each are serving exactly the same meal of pig, potatoes and salad. When you walk in, they all start beckoning you over to their booth, and they rip off pieces of pig for you to try as you make your decision! Ok, so moving on... we left Rio Bamba on Sunday, leaving Lucy and the baby with Lucy's family. Salomón came with us and we ventured to Shell. In case any of you haven't seen End of the Spear or read Through the Gates of Splendor, Shell is well-known for its story of Jim Elliot and Nate Saint, who were missionaries to the Huaorani tribe. In the 1950s, the Huaorani had been completely untouched by outside world, living completely off the land and using their rituals. They were an extremely violent tribe, constantly in war with others. Essentially, any homicide resulted in a chain reaction of many more homicides as retribution. In fact, 70-80% of adult deaths in the Huaorani tribe were homicides! In the 1950s, a group of determined American missionaries, including Jim Elliot and Nate Saint, made the first contact with these people. They flew overhead and dropped goods down in baskets, eventually making a face to face interaction. Neither understood the other's language, but the contact was nonetheless friendly. Unfortunately, a clan from the Huaorani's came and murdered all of the American missionaries. Amazingly enough, years earlier, a girl from the tribe had escaped and was adopted by the Gringo's and befriended by the same missionaries who were murdered. When the young Huaorani woman heard of the murders, she accompanied the wives of the missionaries as they went to live with the tribe who had just murdered their husbands. They preached the gospel to the tribe, and eventually they were saved! The entire lifestyle of the tribe was transformed by the love of the Lord! (Read the book. I'm going to!)
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| Dui is the little old guy in his skibbies! |
On Monday, when we travelled to the Huaorani tribe, we also went to a monkey refuge! They had taken in a bunch of injured or endangered monkeys to care for in the jungle! Some of them were pretty big, as in, bigger than a medium sized dog.. others were smaller. We also found a bunch of other weird animals.. like a badger-type animal and a sea otter? One monkey had been bred in captivity and was rescued by this refuge, but his development was severely damaged... so he can't use his arms at all. :( He was found sleeping with a dog outside. When we first pulled up the Sprinter, we opened the door to find a bunch of monkeys approaching the car! One jumped in and wouldn't come out!!! After a few minutes of prompting, he left, but not before he stole a bag of chips from my friend's bag! Crazy monkeys....
Also while in the jungle, we visited multiple waterfalls! They were amazing! :) I am astounded at God's splendor with every new piece of His creation that I see here. It's truly incredible.
The best waterfall we visited was a whole day journey. We drove to pick up our guide one morning and some long rubber boots for everyone. Then we continued into the jungle, where we took a canoe ride on a tributary to the Amazon River into the jungle to find a waterfall!!! When we got there, we had a long hike ahead of us! On the way, our guide stopped us and covered us in mud that he found. Apparently, the mud is extremely expensive in Europe, because it cleanses all your pours! But here, it's free! When we got to the waterfall, we all went swimming! :) It was a blast. On the way back, he showed us a bunch of plants and explained their uses to us. It's amazing how God makes plants for every purpose. We even chewed on a leave that freshens your breath! He also used a "paint" plant to paint my face! haha When we got back to the sprinter, we had lunch waiting for us at a small restaurant there. We ate fish (like, still with skin, tails, and eyes)... rice, and salad. It was delicious! After lunch, we headed out to another indigenous Quechua tribe. This is one of those tribes which is made up solely of a family and their children, grandchildren, etc.. It was really neat to see how they live! It was an awesome day!!!The next day, we went white water rafting!!! It was a blast. I wish there was more rough water, but we still had a great time, and it was quite a work out!
All in all, we had an amazing trip.. the hostal in Shell was beautiful, and we could not have had a better time! I am probably forgetting a million things, but this is too long to keep going..
If you wanna know more details, ask! Otherwise, hopefully I'll write again soon!!!
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