Ecuador Blog

Well,
as you all know from Mark’s post to the blog, we quite literally
missed the boat going to Isla de la Plata on Thursday. We missed it
by about an hour. So, instead of going to the poor man’s Galapagos,
we went to the poor man’s Isla de la Plata!

It
was a very nice day spent on the ocean. I’m extremely excited to
report that I did not sweat at all on the boat!!! This is a big deal
since it is only one of probably two times this whole trip that I
wasn’t sweating.

I
really hope the underwater camera pictures turn out nicely! We’re
going to wait to get them developed in the States so we can make them
digital. I don’t know if I told you or not, but Nathan is putting
together a movie of our trip. He’s combining all the pictures and
videos of our trip and putting them to music. Then we will all do a
commentary of what is going on. Think: Mystery Science Theater.

Thursday
afternoon we went to the Service Meeting and Theocratic Ministry
School in Olón. It was at 4:00 in the afternoon. That was
strange.

While
we were standing on the side of the road waiting for the bus to take
us from Montañita to Olón, a car stopped on the road
and seeing that we were dressed up, asked if we wanted a ride to the
meeting. We said YES adamantly and climbed in to their AIR
CONDITIONED car! They were ex-missionaries who are now serving in
Olón as regular pioneers. They served as missionaries in New
Zealand. They are about 60 ? 70 years old now.

As
Thursday night was our last night in Montañita, we treated
ourselves to a nice dinner. The boys had lobster and I had king
prawns. It was good.

We
packed everything up and left for the Branch Friday morning. We had
a pretty easy time catching buses to Guayaquil. We arrived at the
Branch about 12:30 in the afternoon.

We
met a really super nice sister named Toni Toth. She was working as
the receptionist. She was extremely friendly and asked us all what
our favorite animal was. When we came back to her desk after the
tour she had homemade bookmarks for us. She likes to draw and so she
gave us bookmarks with our favorite animals drawn on them. What a
memory! (I chose birds, Nathan chose monkeys, and Mark was being
difficult saying that he doesn’t like animals he likes stars, so I
chose fish for him because I know he liked the fish he saw in the
ocean.)

The
tour was nice. There are 130 bethelites serving/living here and 30
international construction workers. We got to eat lunch when we
first got here and it was the best rice/bean/salad lunch we’ve ever
eaten in our entire lives!!! Well, it could have been partly
because we were starving, dead-dog tired and sopping wet with sweat.
But, guess what we had to drink?….Sangria! Can you imagine? We
drank WINE for lunch at BETHEL!!! That was neat.

We
also got to eat dinner (which was leftovers from lunch but we didn’t
mind). At dinner we met a sister who had been a missionary for 35
years in Ecuador and just last Sunday was assigned to Bethel.
(Because she’s getting up there in years and her health is
declining.) She’s having a hard time adjusting to Bethel life and so
far hates it, but she knows that it’s the best thing for her.

Friday
after dinner we went back to our rooms (Nathan and I had our own room
and Mark had his own!) and packed. Nathan and I went to bed at 9:00.

Saturday
morning we went to breakfast/morning worship at 7:00 am. (Oh. I
want you all to know that I had the best nights sleep I’ve had since
I’ve been here! The beds at Bethel are softer than everywhere else,
the pillows are fluffier, and there is AIR CONDITIONING!!! I was in
my virtual paradise right here.)

When
we came in to the dining room for breakfast we saw Toni’s husband and
decided to follow him to his table. As it turned out, he conducted
morning worship! The comments are all assigned and all the people
who commented sat at the table to our left. The format of every
comment was a question and then the answer. The commenter read their
question and comment. Nathan asked if they were supposed to read it
and Bro. Toth said it’s not a thing that Bethel tells them to do,
they just do it because they’re nervous. I asked if he provides the
questions and he said no the person commenting makes up their own.
Nathan said it was their introduction. I guess I’ve never formatted
a comment that way before. It was very interesting.

We
had a very traditional Ecuadorian breakfast. It was a type of fish
soup with red onions, lime juice, cilantro, and tomatoes as
garnishments. It reminded me of posolé. It was pretty good,
but it was a little strange that we were eating fish for breakfast.

After
breakfast we took our bags over to the literature room and used their
scale to make sure we were under the 50 pound weight restriction.
One of our bags was 10 pounds under and the other one was 12 pounds
over. (Mark had already let us use his dufflebag so we were able to
shift enough stuff around to get both of our big bags under the
requirement.) Mark’s bag was about 4 pounds over so he shoved some
of his stuff in to the dufflebag. I think we should all be OK now.
(I hope.)

After
the bags were all situated we moved all of our stuff in to Mark’s
room. Toni arranged it to where we could leave all of our stuff in
his room while we went in to Guayaquil to mess around. She also
arranged to have a brother pick us up in Bethel at 10:00 pm to take
us to the airport where we will wait around for our 2:10 am flight.

We
went to the city for the day. While waiting for a bus a sister drove
by and offered to take us to the Mall. We went to the new mall in
Guayaquil and it was very nice. Very expensive though. A t-shirt in
Tommy Hillfiger costs $35 dollars. A polo costs $65! I did find a
cool jewelry store though (of course). We also watched a movie in
the very nice theater. Fortunately for us, they play some movies in
English.

After
the movie we jumped in a taxi and headed for a restaurant a brother
in Olón recommended to us for ?the best steak we’ll ever eat
in our whole lives?. We ordered filet mignon and pesto spaghetti
to share. The filet mignon was indeed extremely tender, but it comes
with a white gravy on top so that was kind of gross. The pesto was
pretty tasty.

We
jumped on a bus that took us to the bus terminal and then got another
bus to take us back to the Branch. We arrived about an hour and a
half later.

We
are now sitting in the room in Bethel and the boys are taking a nap.
It is currently 9:04 pm and we will be picked up in less than an
hour. We should have wireless internet at the airport so I hope to
post this to the blog when we get there.

Talk
to you all soon!