It has been busy the past 3 weeks!
The beginning of January, Jake's parents came to visit us for a week. We took a trip to Mindo, the "cloud-forest". There we visited a butterfly garden with hummingbirds and orchids. We also visited Mitad del Mundo, the Middle of the World, and went shopping in Otavalo. We had fun, having family visit and being able to show them around. I think they understand better what we do around here and how we live. It was also nice because Karen brought homemade fudge and millionaires! Yum!
Jake's parents also brought down gifts for the orphan kids from Woodland West church of Christ, our home congregation. The children's ministry had been collecting donations through "Coins for Christ" for Christmas presents. After collecting, the WW kids were assigned an orphan kid and got to go shopping for them. Our Hacienda kids ended up with some pretty awesome gifts! The HOH kids also received a letter from the WW kids saying that God loved them and they were praying for them. It was great to watch the HOH kids read their letters and open their gifts! Thank you Woodland West for loving on these kids!
We are ending our first semester here at school so it has been a crazy place! Kids have been taking exams the last couple weeks and report cards are coming out soon. Kids have been in school only until noon this week, while the teachers stay until 3pm doing prep work for the end of the semester. Thursday is the first day of our 2 week vacation.
Friday night there is a group flying in from Woodland West to join a construction team going to Kumanii. Jake and I will be joining the group on Saturday. Kumanii is about 7-8 hours northwest of where we live. We have to drive to Borbón (3 hours) and then take a 4 hour boat ride up river to Kumanii. The work being done in Kumanii is directly related to the Quito School of Biblical Studies. Kent Marcum, the director of the school, is leading our group. We are excited to be able to serve in Kumanii along side some members of our home congregation!
We will definitely be posting pictures soon!
This last week we had some surprise visitors at school. There was a mama and baby cat sitting on some furniture inside the auditorium. We I went in to check on them the mama ran away leaving her baby behind. I put the baby outside hoping mama would come back, but she never did. So to Jake's dismay, we adopted a cat. He is about 7 weeks old. I named him Chanco (pig), because I find the word fun to say (and because it hadn't been very long since I watched Nacho Libre… "Chanco! I need to borrow some sweats."). Well, the next day we had another visitor. We found another kitty, about the same age and coloring as Chanco. So we found ourselves with two cats! Well… the day after that, Rusty Cambell at Camp Bellevue found another kitten about the same size and coloring. So we took her in too. So for the past couple of days we have had a farm… Chanco (pig), Pata (duck) and Pollo (chicken). But three is a bit much for us, especially since we still plan on Soup coming down soon. One of our cooks talked about wanting a cat so we are going to let her adopt Pollo.
Jake has never been a "cat person" but somehow I found myself being a cat lady!
