The Tree

July 7th

Patate, Ecuador

Today the children arrived for the kid’s camp that we’re hosting this Monday through Thursday. It was everything you would have expected out of a kid’s camp, kids running here and there, throwing things in the air and acting like a bunch of hooligans. But before the craziness started, I had the chance to get up on the mountain for a hike this morning with Roberto, Bailey, and Kelli (both from Brook Hills Church). Our purpose was to figure out the best way to get up the mountain in preparation for the kids’ hike on Wednesday afternoon. I’m still not exactly sure how that will work out with about 50 grade school kids, cacti, and plenty of spiders on the mountain. If everyone survives, we’ll deem it a success.

It was such a beautiful morning though. Hiking on these mountains never seems to get old, even after doing it close to 10 times now. After an adventurous start to our morning, I went to Patate with Ester in order to get on the internet (our internet is in really bad shape because of the way they installed it). Catching up on all the emails and blogging filled a good part of my morning before our descent back down to the camp. When we arrived, many of the kids were already here unpacking their bags for the week. A majority of the afternoon was spent just having fun during recreation time with the kids. Tonight was our big skit that I had one line in and dressed up like a tree for. Lots of makeup and a tree costume later, our skit went as planned until the musical part when our sound equipment failed us. It was embarrassing end to what was such a well-planned and rehearsed skit. So much so, that we decided to perform it again for the kids so that they could see the under lying message in full.

One of the highlights of the day was seeing Ovidio back at the camp. He was only visiting for today, but he stayed and helped out with recreation time and caught up with everyone here at camp. For those of you that don’t know Ovidio, he worked here at the camp for several years before deciding to move onto other things. Currently, he works as a tour guide in Banos for foreign groups and really enjoys his work there, but is certainly missed here at camp.

For now though, I’m going to try and quite the rascals staying in the dorm next to us so that we can get some much needed rest.