Hello everyone!
We just arrived at our hostel in Quito from our week in Shandia. It was an amazing week with speed bumps, fun and a ton of learning experiences.
We left Monday morning around 10:30 for our 5 hour bus ride and arrived in the village around 9:30 PM. There are two different ways to Shandia from Quito, one is around 5 hours and the other is about 7. There was a giant mudslide about half way through the 5 hour route, so we had to turn around and go the other way. It was quite the day but we were all very excited to be in the village and ready to work.
We were able to work with some amazing Ecuadorian people during our project. Our first full day there (Tuesday), we helped move a lot if river rocks to the site of a future discipleship center for church leaders in Shandia and the surrounding villages. We used wheelbarrows, shovels and just plain hard work. The team was amazing all week, so much so that one of the afternoons we were supposed to work, we got off because they wouldn't have had enough work for us! All the kids worked very, very hard and got a lot of work done. They use river rocks to hold the concrete in place, so once we got the rocks in place, we got sand and cement to make the concrete for the floor of the building. We got 45 bags of cement mixed with the sand, which is 3 wheelbarrows of sand per bag of cement. They were very pleased with the work we got done.
After work on Wednesday we ran a vacation Bible school for the kids in Shandia. We didn't exactly know how many kids we would have or the timing of everything, so it didn't go real smooth. Even though it could have been better, we connected with the kids and regathered ourselves that evening to do better on Friday. After we finished our work project in the morning, we took a thirty minute walk through the jungle to a small village named Santa Rosa to do the VBS. It went much better and we brought a couple kids from Shandia with us. It was the highlight of several people's week.
We got to stay in an awesome little tourist stop that was in the village. Unfortunately all but four of us got sick, some worse than others, but everyone is feeling pretty healthy now. It was a gorgeous village with amazing people!
Tomorrow we are going to the church we went to last week and to the market and one of the sites for Youth World to get a little tour. Then it's off to LA for a couple nights and home. We will post again before we get home. When we do get home we will have tons of pictures and many more details!
God bless and we love you! Thank you for all the prayers...
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