Praise God for your prayers! Today the only team member who needed to stay back at the hotel was our fearless leader Mark. Everyone else felt well enough to make the trip up the mountain. I’m not saying that every person felt 100% but we’ll enough to make it up and participate today. Some team members were still not well enough to eat solid food, but most who were sick have turned a corner. Please keep praying for our health… That no one else gets sick and that Mark can feel better soon and join us tomorrow.
When we arrived on the mountain we got right to work. Some worked in the kitchen, some worked on finishing the painting in the hallway, Jo led the ladies of Lote Tres in sanding and staining the finished tables, others worked on painting the milk house and Sarah and Levi did their best to fill Mark’s shoes in the “carpentry shop” building tables. All team members were busy most of the morning. We were also joined by 2 College women from Goshen who helped and worked as translators.
During the mide of the morning we were able to watch a large storm front move in across the mountains and the heavens opened up. It rained and rained and rained and then it hailed. It was pretty amazing to watch lightning happen from above the lightning! Lunch was a delicious beef stew and a tea made with some herbs (they smelled like lemon basil), and everyone enjoyed it.
After lunch we prepared for our afternoon activities – women’s day, men’s day and child care. There was a bit of shuffling due to rain and rooms that were being painted. The child care people (high school kids ran this) wanted to take kids outside to do some active games but the rain and hail and mud stopped that. They ended up showing a kids Bible story movie to the kids and teaching them how to fold paper frogs and cranes.
Women’s day ended up with close to 30 women who came through the rain and hail to attend! We started with a prayer partner exchange with the women from River Falls and a greeting. Nikki led a devotion on how women are specifically designed by God to be a help mate for their husband’s, and we ended with a fun craft making colorful flowers from paper cupcake liners with the women.
The men had a devotion and discussion about being of the same mind and attitude as Christ, and then looking at the different relationships in their lives through the lens of Christian leadership. The men from our team then made rice krispie bars with the men from Lote Tres and brought them up to women’s day and served them to the women. It was especially sweet to see how proud these men were of the treat they could make for their wives and other women.
Very shortly after that we loaded up the trucks to head back down the mountain. We were not even 5 minutes away from Lote Tres and the skies opened up again with torrential rain and hail. It was an interesting drive down the mountain! We saw fields that looked like they had a dusting of snow on the and all of the rose houses had huge piles of snow at the ends where it had run off the roofs. At one point the road we were driving on looked like a river. We made it safely down the mountain and decided we all needed some ice cream. After ice cream we arrived back at the hotel just in time for dinner.
As we were relaxing after dinner we were all surprised by a visit from one of our translators last year…. JUANCA! He hung out for the evening and played some games with our team. It was so good to see him again.
It is evident that most of our team is feeling much better this evening as evidenced by the games they are currently playing and the laughter that is rolling from the other room. It is hard to believe that we only have 3 more days here in Ecuador.
