Ecuador Blog

First of all let me apologize for not writing anything in two days! Secondly, let me apologize for not writing this in green like I´m supposed to. We are in Tena (the jungle) sitting in an internet cafe using their computers which is very interesting because every site is automatically translated in to Spanish. It is because I´m using this computer that I cannot type in green. Anyway. On to more interesting things.

We went to an iguana park on Monday in Guayaquil. I think Nathan already posted some great pictures. You have to click on the picture of the building that says ¨Guayaquil - Iguanas¨ and that will take you to more pictures (we just realized that the pictures of the actual iguana park didn´t make it to the blog yet. We´ll work on that as soon as we can buy a phone card and have internet at the house where we´re staying.) On the way to the park we saw a sister street witnessing to a security guard. We stopped to meet her and she just kept saying how ¨linda¨(loveley) I am. I knew I was going to love this place immediately! Later that same day we met an entire group of witnesses who were meeting in the Mall type place to witness. When one of the sisters we met in that group heard my name she said, ¨But not Lopez, right?¨ Then she introduced me to everyone else saying, ¨This is Jennifer, not Lopez.¨ I wanted to tell her that I could see how she could get us confused because we share a similar body part but I held back.

We left for Tena on Monday afternoon, but it is such a long bus ride (10 hours!) we decided to stop in a town called Baños. (Which actually means ¨baths¨ even though we use that word for bathroom.) That place is ¨ESPECTACULAR¨ (spectacular)!!! We took tons and tons of photos and I promise we´ll post them as soon as we can. We stayed in a Hostel (Inn) in Baños. It was a tiny little room with two beds and a bathroom. The best part was that the toilet had no seat! It only cost us $18 and apparently the saying you get what you pay for means that we didn´t pay for a toilet seat! Tuesday we continued on our journey to Tena. In the bus terminal while Mark and I were buying the tickets a woman came up to Nathan and put her hands on his shoulders and said, ¨I want to be a mother¨. To which Nathan replied, ¨I´m married.¨ She responded, ¨I´m single.¨ He said, ¨I´m also a Jehovah´s Witness.¨ Which apparently was very attractive to her because she replied, ¨Give me a little kiss¨and tried to kiss him on the cheek!!! Good times!

Tuesday morning we toured Baños and on the way back to the Hostel to check out we were running late so we hitched a ride in the back of a passing truck! I know! We´re actual hitchikers!! Anyway, Nathan got some awesome video of that hair-raising experience. You see, the traffic laws such as stop signs and stop lights are really just suggestions here, to ignore as you please. We left baños Tuesday afternoon about 2:00 and reached Tena at about 6:00.

The house we´re renting in Tena is very nice. It comes fully equipped with ants, cockroaches, and freezing cold showers! I´m not even jugando. (playing). Seriously, it´s a pretty nice house. It really does have the things that I listed, but it´s not terrible. Except the freezing cold shower. That´s pretty terrible. The boys screamed and I cried. Today we started service at 8:30am and that was an extremely interesting experience! There were over 30 people who met. A brother owns an actual city bus and another brother owns the ¨ranchero¨ which is a truck thing with a covered back with rows of seats. I´ll have to just show you a picture. Anyway. They partner you with someone and off you go. I worked with a sister named Lolita. She speaks Spanish and Kichua (I really have no idea how to spell that. It´s an Indian dialect that is spoken here.) She was my partner, but we also worked the same road as a brother named Mark, his son Eric, and another young brother named Jonathan. We very literally walked through the jungle! The brother held my hand up and down the ridiculous mountains paths we were taking and as I was holding his hand I was thinking, ¨Poor little white girl can´t do it by herself. No one is holding Lolita´s hand. Who cares? I´m walking through the stinking jungle!!!¨ At 12:30 we met back at the ranchero and took it back to the Kingdom Hall where we collected our lunch and headed to the river to eat. After lunch we were divided up in to new pairs and were sent down another street out of town. We invited people to come to a certain street to watch a ¨Bible movie¨ at 6:30. A brother here has a huge screen and a projector and every single Wednesday they show one of the society´s movies somewhere in their territory. Pretty cool. I placed 12 magazines.

I´d love to keep writing but we need to go home now. It´s 10:00 pm here and we haven´t been home since service. We came straight here because we love you all so much!¨:-)