<--view from Casa Blanca in Quito!Hey everyone! A lot has happened in the past week, but it has all been pretty good experiences so far. Last Sunday morning I flew out to San Diego and met up with a pretty good sized group to drive down to Ensenada, Mexico. We basically jumped into vans and found the basics to talk about. The training was for people that were a part of Christian Missionary Alliance groups this summer, so I met people that were going to Gabon in Africa, El Salvador, Jordan, Peru and the ones going down to Ecuador with me. We stayed in a nice bunk house that had just been rebuilt because they are hosting more teams this summer. Before we even got settled, we went straight to a village where we lead a VBS for some of the kids in the area. We walked around and knocked on people's doors to see if the children wanted to come to the VBS that we were putting on. Not too many showed up, but we still had a fun with the ones that did. We led a couple of songs, did a Bible study on the Prodigal Son, and played some classic games like duck duck goose and red light, green light. We ate some yummy tacos at a taco stand near the bunk house and spent the rest of the night with a speaker and some great worship.
Monday morning we went to a small church in the area and had some more worship time with a speaker. Then we did some team building activities such as a name game and getting everyone to stand on a tarp and find a way to flip it without having anyone step off. It was a lot of fun and really pushed people to work together and talk. The rest of the night was really relaxing and we had a great home cooked meal and got to sit around the fire and enjoy each other's company. Tuesday we got to do a service project of either helping a church put some concrete pathways in or painting the dining place of the bunk hall we were staying at. I got assigned to painting, which I love to do anyways, and the place looked really great afterwards. It was really cool to not only do a service project for someone, but to do it for a family that is allowing you to stay in their bunk house for a couple of days. That night was our last night in Ensenada, and it ended with some more great worship and a final speaker about how it might be hard to where we are going and how to deal with what was going to take place this summer. He discussed a lot about the disorientation process and how it is going to be okay as long as we deal with it and work with one another. Those words were great to hear because it is kind of scary to completely step out of what you are used to and go on a trip like this.
On Wednesday we drove up to Los Angeles and got to spend the night on Hollywood Boulevard together. I got to see a lot of the hand prints and the stars of all the famous people. Thursday we wrapped everything up and broke up into the teams that we will be spending the summer with to talk about last minute details. Also, we got the chance to talk with some of the CMA workers in our hometown area about how we were feeling about this summer and even life after it. It really put me in a good state of mind to leave the next morning and be ready to go to a completely new setting for the whole summer. That night, we went out to a great Italian restaurant called "Bucco de Bepes" where we had SO much food. It was a little bittersweet because it was the last night we were going to all spend together before we broke off to our own countries, and I had made some good friends with a couple of people that were going off to Gabon, but we still had a great time together. We got to walk around the Santa Monica pier afterwards and go down to the beach to run around in the sand.
The next morning I began all my travels to Ecuador. I was in the first group of 6 travelers that woke up at 3am to get to the airport for our early 6am flight. We got to Miami just fine and quickly ate lunch before we were going to board the plane at 2:30pm. We got on the plane and were sitting there for a little bit until they finally came on the intercom and said that there was some volcanic activity in Ecuador and they weren't sure of the situation so they would keep us updated. It wasn't too much longer that they told us that all flights out to Quito were cancelled for the rest of the night and to go out to the gate for more information. We weren't sure what we were going to do, but we were able to meet up with the rest of the people in our group as they landed in Miami and we got a hold of the people in charge. We got a hotel for the night and decided to grab some dinner together. We called the airline number many times to figure this all out, but it just so happened that everyone got rescheduled for flights on Saturday except for three of us, myself included. We couldn't get on a flight until 6:30pm on Sunday, but at least we ended up with something. However, we went back to the airport at 3am on Saturday with everyone to try to get our names on standby to at least get a flight out that day. When we went up to the counter, they told us that there were over 100 people on the list before us, but we could try. Basically, we sat at the airport all day and went around to any airline that we could to get on a flight, but the three of us needed to stay an extra night in Miami. I was with Chelsea and Cory, two great people that will end up going to Peru in a week, but I was so happy that I was with them because we were completely comfortable together. We started just turning everything into humor, otherwise we probably wouldn't have gotten through it. Long story short, after over 39 hours in Miami, we finally took off for Ecuador. We got in late last night and crashed. Today I was able to unpack a little and try to prepare myself for tomorrow. We are headed off to The Amazing Race where we will be split up in groups of 3 and have to spend 4 days running around the whole country of Ecuador with just a backpack and doing all these tasks that they are assigning us along the way. I'm sure that will be quite an experience and I'll be sure to write all about it.
Thanks again everyone for all the prayer support throughout everything! God is good and He eventually got me to Ecuador and I'm safe.
