Day 5: Work day two

Buenos días from beautiful Ecuador!

Today's blog post will be a little shorter because we worked again and didn't do a whole lot of new stuff. But it was still an amazing, touching, and hilarious day. Once everyone was up, we all tried some blackberry juice, papaya, roll, and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We then headed out back to the compound to continue working on our house projects.

Before starting work, we got to have some devotions with some of the local maintenance workers, which turned out to be a pretty cool experience. One of the guys got out a guitar and taught us a short Spanish worship song and we, in return, taught them “Father I Adore You”. Then, at the wondering if one of us young people's stories, Kendra shared why she decided to come on this trip and a little bit of her faith story. It was a neat time of fellowship with God.

Work was very similar to yesterday. We continued brushing window bars and painting them and moved on to finishing priming and putting a first coat of paint on the first missionary house. We took our first cafecito, or coffee break that everyone takes around 10:30, where we got to relax, talk, and eat a roll and drink coffee, milk, or tea in the hospital. We got to walk to a restaurant for lunch, and we all had a chicken rice soup for an appetizer, then a meal of chicken, rice, and pasta salad.

After working and showering, we all had some free time to go and wander about Shell before meeting for supper. We were given a challenge to buy the most unique thing and to have the most interesting Spanish conversation. Obviously both went to me, with getting some tea that was titled “Instant Legz” and having to struggle to communicate to a pharmacist for Mallory to buy some cough drops. I didn't really win anything though :(

For supper we got to go to a Chinese restaurant for our supper, and it was very similar to Chinese food that you could find in the States. After sitting and talking for a bit after supper, we headed back to the hostería and did our daily reflections and devotions ritual. After sharing great memories and God moments, we went into some more testimonies, this time through the braveness of Emily, Mariah, and Mallory. They were fantastic and were pretty amazing to hear about.

Before we knew it, it was time for bed so that we could prepare ourselves for another day of work tomorrow.

-Zach
PS sorry we don't have pictures.  We took a ton of great shots, but the Internet here is REALLY slow and it takes over one hour to upload a picture.