Tuesday

Today started the same as all days have and will from here on out.  We eat breakfast at 7:something, even though it is scheduled for 7.  At whatever time we finished we regrouped and walked to Pan de Vida to get an official lowdown on their mission of serving the homeless, orphans, and broken in Quito.  We watched a video and then heard the founder's testimony.  His name is Oscar and he was born in Ecuador but his father encouraged him to pursue education in the States.  He was accepted to the University of Delaware with a scholarship as a foreign student.  He thought his English was enough to get by at school until his first teacher had a heavy southern accent and the second had a heavy Indian accent.  He saw 2 very clear options of either dropping out, or working very very hard to understand and do well, nothing in between.  He chose the latter and ended up graduating with honors with a degree in economics.  He took this knowledge and applied it to starting a rose business (because the best roses come from Ecuador); however, his small business failed and he was forced to return to Ecuador.  Ecuador was in sad financial state, but he found success as a business consultant.  One day, a boy asked to shine his shoes, which he accepted in order to help the boy, who was clearly impoverished.  He felt a God-given guilt about it and struck up conversation with the boy.  He bought him lunch and continued to talk with him and then talked some more, about who Jesus was to this boy.  He invited the boy to come weekly to his church for food and Biblical teaching without actually having any plans for how his church would react to the offer.  Long story short, Pan de Vida was born and has grown ever since, to the point that Oscar has had to drop his business consulting job in order to run the ministry full time.

We made lunches after hearing from Oscar and set out to do some team-building exercises with each other and a few Pan de Vida employees who we'll be working with this week.  Their names were Carmen, Sharon, and Janila.  We were split into 2 teams and given the task of making huts for ourselves that we could all fit in our of wooden poles, large sheets of paper, a roll of tape, and some strands of rope, without speaking.  I found it to be an interesting challenge selection, considering we couldn't speak very well with the Ecuadorian members of our team anyway, but it was a valuable nonverbal communication builder as well as a good lesson in the fact that we are joining God's work force late in such situations as these and it is good to be receptive to people who have lived where we are now living for the first time.

After completing that task, Oscar suggested to walk to the other end of the park we were at to a lookout point over Quito where we took some great pictures quickly and then moved on out so as to see the house on which we'd be doing construction.



We later found that "doing construction on the house" meant "Building a house."  The roof had previously been deemed unsafe, but when they took it down, they realized that the walls were also not kosher; therefore, dirt between two other houses waited for us.



Realizing we had some time to spare though, we grabbed some shovels and moved a pile of rocks, bricks, and dirt out of the way to better prepare us for our full day of work tomorrow.  The most important part of our visit today was the relationships we built in leaps and bounds.  The father-son combo who are in charge of the construction were thrilled to have us, even for a shorter time today, and those of us who speak some Spanish got to make many connections and ask good questions that have opened the door very wide for future interaction.  Jose and Juan Daniel are wonderful, soft-spoken, hard-working, easily-smiling men that I expect all of us to work very well with.  The Dreves kids also brought themselves a small children's ministry by going out into the street and teaching local children how to make rubber band bracelets.  It was very cool.  If at any point any of us didn't have a job, there was always soccer to be played with children who were more than willing to approach us if it meant kicking that oh-so-alluring black and white ball.  They too were excited to have met us and sent us off with many shouts of "Mañana, mañana!" ("Tomorrow, tomorrow!" - Someone feel free to comment if I'm translating for you too often and am taking all the fun out of the Spanish trivia)

We returned and had another strong training session, followed by a wonderful dinner of creamy mushroom chicken, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and corn.



We ended our night with a group game that was a cross between "Patty-cake" and "Signs."  We are thankful for good rest separating routinely packed days.

Mr. Phillips and Mario have received a tremendous turnout to their training seminars for church leaders and potential partners and have been very busy because of it.  Pray for their continued pleasing work to God in uniting the church, especially Mario because he has to do all the talking.

Pray also for our focus in sharing Christ with our words and actions in our partnership with Pan de Vida, pray for all of our still-weird-feeling bodies from unknown sources (flight, altitude, food?), and pray for continued growth as a team and as individual Men of God.

We pray in thanks for you all,

GCC Men's Soccer