Jennifer is Adopted

This week Jennifer met her forever family!! Her parents are from Quito and they do not have any other children. This week, I got to spend some time with them as they first met her and then spent time bonding with her this week. They are very sweet and it is wonderful to see Jennifer with such loving parents. I am excited to keep in touch with them and continue to see Jennifer as she grows! 

The Anderson Family

I had the pleasure of spending most of the summer with an adoptive family from Georgia. The Anderson Family has been connected with For His Children for quite some time. They have four biological children. 10 years ago, they adopted a little girl from For His Children who is legally blind. After the oldest daughter came down to volunteer at FHC a couple years ago, God spoke to her about adopting one of our girls. After many miraculous events, the family started the process to adopt two of our children with special needs, Daniela and Leslie. They arrived in June and I was able to be present when they first met their girls – what an incredible event. These two girls have been waiting quite some time for a forever family. This family has been such a source of encouragement to me this summer. They have shown me what it truly means to obey God’s call. This was also a “first” for me that I got to spend so much time with a family while they were finalizing the legal process. They lived right down the street from For His Children so I got to see them most every day. We spent time at the park together, eating dinners together, and we enjoyed praying and fellowshipping with/for each other. This past Thursday, they were able to fly home. The girls are doing so well and I stand amazed at how God has chosen just the right family for them. Congratulations Anderson Family!

The Welcome Sign when the Family first met the Girls

The whole family

With the Girls one of their last nights in Ecuador

Vacation Bible School

A couple months ago, my friend Kayla and I decided to talk to our pastor about having a Vacation Bible School at our church. Vacation Bible School is not something that is very common in Ecuadorian churches. In fact, our church had never had one before. The response was overwhelming. Within a couple weeks we had about 25 volunteers committed to helping. The problem was that we only had 1 child signed up. Kayla and I drove around in the orphanage van to hand out fliers to restaurants and stores in the neighborhood. We then also decided to open up the VBS to a local ministry called Pan de Vida (Bread of Life). This ministry works with the poorest people in Quito. The children are often times working on the street selling candy or gum or performing in intersections in the hope to get some small change. In a few days we went from 1 child to 60 children. I had a group that was volunteering at For His Children for the week and I spoke to them before they came down about helping out. They had just finished their own VBS at their home church so they happily agreed to bring down their leftover craft supplies to help us out.

It was awesome to see God working throughout the week during the program. We had volunteers of all different ages and backgrounds, languages, and cultures; from different churches within Quito and really from throughout the world. The kids enjoyed Bible time, music, sports and snack, and crafts. Compared to most VBS programs, ours was pretty simple. It was put together in about one month and we had limited resources. The joy though that these kids felt was evident. For a couple hours, they were able to just be “normal” kids.

After living here for awhile it’s easy to become hardened to the needs you see around you. God has really opened up my eyes to the needs of so many children in this city.

I saw one of the Pan de Vida children the other day. He asked, “When do we get to go back to church?” I think it was a success!

"God loves us, We love our Neighbors" The handprints were done with the help of the kids from the orphanage

Random Thoughts from the Summer

Yes, I realize it’s been two months since I’ve updated my blog. One of the reasons behind that is that this may just be one of the busiest summers I’ve ever had. Summers at For His Children are always filled with teams from the States/Canada, new volunteers, and this summer we even had some adoptions taking place. Since part of my job is leading teams/volunteers there has been a constant flow of activity. God has put many different people in my path this summer and I am thankful for new friendships and being able to connect with people from all over the world, even if only for a short time. At the end of each day, I say to myself, I really need to be writing this stuff down. So many different things happen in the course of the day that it is easy to forget what I actually did. So here’s my post of some random things that have happened this summer.

I went on a search for 1 ½ hours to find guinea pig for a group to eat. Apparently guinea pigs are not commonly sold on Mondays and Tuesdays in Ecuador (this was a Tuesday). I was given many different directions from people who I asked out the window as I was driving the 15 passenger van. I was offered a live guinea pig. After explaining that I wouldn’t know how to prepare it, I was sent to another town. All the stores seemed to be closed down in this one. I finally ended up finding one about 15 minutes away from the orphanage for $20 – I got to pick which one I wanted! Expensive piece of meat – and there’s not really that much meat on it!

I got to go back to Henry Davis (the orphanage I was first working at) to see some of my students graduate high school in July. These were kids I taught English to two years ago. It’s always fun to reconnect with them. I also got to see my friend Amy who lives about an hour away. It was a nice day break from For His Children as it’s challenging to get away sometimes. We even got to swim in a community pool for about an hour near a house where she was house sitting. Very nice!

I am going to estimate that I’ve been to the airport about 30 times these past two months. There’s a countdown going on as to how many days it is until they open the new airport which will be located outside of the city. Sadly enough, I know this information, and I can tell you we have 66 days left. There’s a big screen outside the airport every time you drive in. ‘

The people at the Equator monument all know me now and I get in for free.

I have learned more than I ever thought I’d need to/want to know about construction, computers and IT work, and just fixing different machinery. My Spanish vocabulary now includes words like “tile nibblers” and “spray foam insulation” and “grout”. I have pretended I’ve know what I’m talking about as I help to direct groups with projects and go to stores to purchase materials that I don’t even know what they’d be called in English.

I went to visit a master weaver last week with a team that was visiting. Everything is done by hand and he walked us through the process of back strap weaving. Very interesting! We were out in the middle of nowhere in a little farmhouse watching something that has been done in this culture for hundreds of years.

I’ve learned my way around the cities of Salcedo and Latacunga where our other home is located. There are a lot of one way streets and I was with a team driving them the wrong way down these one way streets. At one point, I had to have a man get out of the van to stop traffic so I could back up the street.

Today I got to meet the Vice President of Ecuador. Check out the photo below! This was a huge deal for For His Children. He is handicapped so we were asking him to advocate for our special needs children.

I have not cooked a real meal for myself in probably about 2 months. I’ve been invited by my awesome teams for dinner or by families, friends – it’s been quite lovely. I’ll be back to reality very soon!

I’ve had four different roommates this summer.

I think that about finishes my random ramblings….

The infamous "cuy" guinea pig

Tribal Dancing II

I often tell the story of my very first weekend in Ecuador of how I got to participate in a celebration of the founding of one of the caregiver’s towns. As most of you have heard this story, you will remember there was throwing of oranges, tearing apart of a live chicken, and dancing for seven hours in a circle. Well the last couple years I’ve been unable to participate again as I’ve had a team or I’ve been away. Well this year it fell on Saturday and I didn’t have to pick my next team up from the airport until later that night. So lo and behold I got to take part again in this awesome festival. I invited two other volunteers from the orphanage to come along. We once again were given the typical dress consisting of blouse, skirt, poncho, hair wrap, and jewelry.  We drank the typical drink and ate some corn. All of the caregiver’s family members remembered me from last time. I’m pretty sure there are not many white girls traveling to this town. We paraded and danced this time only for three hours to the same song as I had to catch a bus to get back to pick up my team. Well since this is a pretty remote town, it was challenging finding a bus back to Quito. We eventually jumped in the back of random pickup truck (this was at around 7:30 – dark and cold!) who brought us to one of the main highways. We got there just in time to catch the last bus back to Quito! Unfortunately, I did not get to take part in any animal sacrifices this time.

This same little girl next to me remembered me from 3 years ago ---there aren't many foreigners coming into this town! This is my friend Christine with another little girl. 

Doesn't this sheep look fake?

This is me with Tia Alicia - she's pretty awesome!

Starting our parade down the street

Getting into our circle for some dancing