During the second week of Spring Break, 4 short term missionaries from MNU Mid America Nazarene University came. Krista, our daughter led the team and so that made it super special. We did a lot of traveling from place to place evangelizing and doing some construction.
The first program was
Chillanes, Ecuador which is two hours outside of Riobamba and took us pass the tallest volcano,Chimborazo, in Ecuador, on the way. This little town does not have a
Nazarene Church so we met with some other Nazarenes from
Riobamba to evangelize children from a newly organized Compassionate International project. There were over 250 parents and children that met in a school auditorium.
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| Harrison in Chillanes |
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| Brittany with Child Sponsorship boy. |
The students didn't have much time to prepare for a program but they did a great job acting out the story of the Prodigal Son and singing songs with them. Thanks for the help of Harrison Guaman our construction worker that is also very good with children. We also witnessed the passing out of the
Operation Christmas Child Boxes that are sponsored by the Samaritans Purse Project. The children and parents waited patiently while more than 150-200 names were called. If you have never seen a child or children open up their boxes be ready to be greatly impacted. Operation Christmas Child passed out more than 100 million boxes globally this year and we just got to see a tiny part of what happens all over the world. The future of this area is to build a Compassionate International After School Center and a Nazarene Church.
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| Amanda with Child Sponsorship girl |
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| Checking out his big box |
We then traveled to the jungle area of Macas but sometimes the road was pure mud, because they were still building the road. Here we worked in a Shuar village called Cumbatza where we do have a Nazarene church but it is meeting in a small room. We helped to start their new church building made out of bamboo, huge rocks from the river for the foundation and bricks. This area brings much history of the shrunken heads and the chicha drink. The shrunken heads is not practiced anymore and the chichi drink is made with yucca, which is somewhat like a potato, that is chewed up by the ladies in the community and then spit it out into a gourd to ferment for several days and then water is added to it. They were very gracious and offered their special drink to us. We evangelized to more than 150 kids that afternoon in a neighboring school. It was hard looking in to their big eyes and telling them good-bye. We stayed in Sequa where there isn’t much but we found wifi in the plaza in the middle of town!
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| Working in Cumbatza |
Next we did more driving and met District Superintendent, Mario Paredes at
Chinimpi a different Shuar area outside of Puyo,
Ecuador about an hour. We looked over a new property for another Compassionate International Project and met the leaders of that area.
Then we got into our new what seems like "home on wheels" and drove to
Riobabma about three hours, the shortest trip yet. The next day we went to an area outside of Riobamba called
San Pedro to help them put up a portable chapel. We could see two different
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| learning how to mix |
volcanoes while working. The people of this area had cleared a small patch just big enough for the chapel where they had cauliflower and cabbage growing. We evangelized to children in the neighborhood in the new portable chapel and to our surprise not many attending were from the church.
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