Team Ecuador 2009

After a busy fortnight most of the team have returned home - Wendy, Lorna and Oli to Scotland, Lidia to Spain and Miguel is still in transit as he has an overnight stay in London before flying back to Glasgow on Monday. Ricardo is staying in Ecuador until Thursday when he will fly to Lima to begin his 4 week medical placement. It´s been a great fortnight with so many successes and achievements as well as challenges for us all. We´ve all enjoyed the experience and look forward to telling you all about it when we see you soon. We´re so thanksful to God for keeping us safe and helping us in all that we´ve done. Thanks for keeping up with the blog and for all your messages and prayers. God bless you and see you ... read more

Hola, buenos dias amigos - we hope all is well with you all back home and thanks for keeping up with our news by reading the blog. Please continue to pray for us as we commence our final 3 days of the mission. From Monday until Wednesday this week we started and completed a painting project in the church at Los Vergeles. The "sanctuary" of the church had been painted previously but the church hall, 2 class rooms, kitchen, toilets and the patio area were all still the original, dull, concrete grey colour! We set about brightening the place up a bit... sorry, a lot! Last week Miguel and Ricardo measured the walls which needed to be painted (roughamente) and purchased numerous tubs of brightly coloured paint from a local paint shop, with some rather comical ... read more

Since yesterday evening Olive hasn´t been feeling very well - she went to bed early last night and then stayed in bed all day today. She´s still feeling very tired and unwell but we´re not sure if she´s caught something or if she´s tired, over-worked and dehydrated perhaps - she´s been working very hard for the last 5 days with not much time to rest. Please pray for her - pray that she´d be refreshed and made well again and be able to participate in the remainder of the activities this week. Many thanks, The Team x... read more

Hola amigos, it´s 6.57am here in Guayaquil so nearly 1pm in Scotland... hope you´re all having a good day! I really am sorry for keeping you in the dark for the last few days - we´ve been so busy and it´s been hard to find the time to update the blog. But here´s a quick review of the last 5 crazy days...! Friday was our first experience of taking a PEPE class - this started at 8am and finished at 11am and we were left completely in charge of 2 classes of about 20 kids aged 2-4years. We split ourselves into 2 groups - Wendy, Miguel and Lidia went with Vicki Butchers to the PEPE at Los Vergeles while Lorna, Olive and Ricardo went to El Recreo with Peter. Both groups found some difficulties but were ... read more

Dear friends, It´s 23.30hrs in Guayaquil, Ecuador which means that we´ve come to the end of our first week here on mission. It´s been very enjoyable and also really tiring but we´ve achieved a lot and have learned many things, as we discussed in our team debriefing session this evening. After clearing the land at Valle de la Flor on Tuesday, Wendy, Lorna, Oli and Lidia have returned on Wednesday afternoon to teach the local women how to make Wendy´s now intercontinentally renowned "sock monkeys"! It was an enjoyable afternoon for both groups of women and friendships were formed while a new, constructive trade was taught and learned. The hope is that these monkeys, which are relatively cheap and easy to make, will be sold by the women in the area of Valle de la Flor. ... read more

Yesterday we had another busy day in Guayaquil... We began the day with a short time of reflection led by Peter Butchers, focussing on James 2:14-25, a passage which looks at the importance of faith and deeds. We will begin each day with this reflection time, a really helpful way of focussing the group at the start of the day. The rest of the morning was spend in Valle de la Flor, a slum area of Guayaquil, where a plot of land has been bought to build a new church on. The land, as you can see from the pictures badly needed to be cleared, so we popped into the local HiperMarket, bought a few large machetes and got down to some good old manual labour. If ever the expression "Many hands make light work" was ... read more

Journies, Arrival and Preparation for Action! I am pleased to report that we all arrived safely although not quite as planned! Richard who was initially meant to arrived on Friday evening was delayed in Miami for 24hours (don´t feel sorry for him - he was put up in the Marriot and went to South Beach twice in the space of 24 hours!) and so the group was reunited on Saturday night. Wendy, Olive, Lorna Mike and Lidia all arrived safely without too many mishaps along the way - Wendy had her expertly packed, Mary-Poppins-like hand-luggage emptied for all the world to see at security in the airport... only for the official to inform her that the scissors that had activated the X-ray machine were fine and that she could now proceed to repack her bag! ... read more

On Friday evening we travelled to Selly Oak in Birmingham for our team training day which ran from 9am until 4pm on Saturday. Unfortunately Mike was unable to come but the rest of us were there. The programme allowed us to discuss our hopes and fears about the trip, find out more about Ecuador and the work we'll be doing there and gave us the chance to continue to grow together as a group. All in all it was a very successful day! ... read more