Little Kids Climbeth

July 9th

Patate, Ecuador

I was looking forward to today. When we were planning the tentative schedule for this week, one of the wild ideas we had was to take all them hiking up the mountain that I so much enjoy climbing. We did it today in less than an hour and a half, an incredible feat for these kids. Instead of taking everyone in one group up the side of the mountain, we broke off into two different groups in order to give the kids an option about the difficulty of their climb. Of course I went with the group that went up the difficult way and what a time we had. We were a little short on water and breath when we finally got to the top, but it was an excursion to remember.

After the climb, everyone here at camp was pretty worn out. The basketball camp in the afternoon was a bit harder to put on with a bunch of really tired kids, but looking at this positively, at least they won’t be yelling, screaming, and pillow fighting instead of sleeping tonight.

Like so many other things this summer, putting on a basketball camp reminded me of all the times I was a camper myself, trying to learn as much and play as hard as I could. It was a thrilling experience to get to teach the stretch, fundamentals, and drills that I had learned for years growing up. I must have missed out on the uber-competitive kids yesterday because they certainly came to play basketball today. Who knew referring Trashcan Basketball could be so hard?

To wrap up the night, the camp had its’ closing ceremonies, recapping our hiking journey today on the mountain and the many things the kids had learned throughout the week. They stay here at the camp until tomorrow afternoon when they’ll return to their villages.

I’ve had a lot of questions about my lost camera the past few weeks and I wanted to let everyone know that I’m pretty sure it’s not coming back. It’s not a reflection on the culture, or on the Ecuadorian people or any of that, but it just got taken during that first week when I was sick. I never really took the time to thank my Grandfather and my Dad for buying and making the arrangements to send down a new camera about three weeks ago for me to use to continue to capture the many ways God is working here in Ecuador. With that said, thank you very much for assisting me and going out of your way to make that happen.

I also wanted to update you on our internet situation. When I left last Wednesday, Brother Steve and the internet guy from Patate were having quite the discussion about the implementation of the wireless internet here at the camp. It’s very obvious from the lack of service sometimes to there being a router outside (one that’s made to sit inside) that the work he and his internet people did was very subpar. The past two days, there has been internet at times, sometimes spotty and at very slow speeds, but internet nonetheless. With all that said, I’ll keep posting and answering emails and questions as often as possible and as often as our internet system allows.