Day 2 and 3

So we finally made it to Ecuador! We spent the night in Miami in a hotel and then left on Saturday at 6am for Ecuador. The flight was nice and we watched NBC on the in-flight entertainment. But we sat on the plane in Miami waiting to take off for two whole hours. Supposedly four people had decided to ditch their flight and not show up, but somehow their luggage was on our plane. And because of FAA regulations, we are not able to take off with unclaimed bags onboard. But the funniest thing {although not so funny at the time} was that the plane had been completely loaded in about 45 minutes but for some reason it took them all of two hours to find four bags on it. But we got a free granola bar for our pains so it was all worth it in the end....sure.

                                                                  The Guest House 

Quito is a wonderful place in the middle of a mountainous region. Quito is the capital of Ecuador and therefore is a very large city. We landed in Quito at 9am on Saturday. We are currently staying in a Christian hotel of sorts. It is called the "Guest House", and it is a place where missionaries and their groups can stay for a little bit cheaper than a regular hotel. I'm rooming with Aaron Quinn, one of the guys of my group, right now. He's a freshman missionary flight major who goes to Jacksonville University. He's an awesome guy and we have had alot of laughs together.

Our room

The Dining Room

So I guess I should tell you a bit about the people in our group here. So first of all, the leader of our group is Brian Behal. He served as a missionary pilot in Ecuador and Mexico for many years. For personal reasons, he had to return to the states and so he is now a regional recruiter for MAF. He takes groups like us down every summer. He has a fantastic personality and is always keeping us in order and on time. Brian also brings his wife Pam down on each of these trips. She has been fantastic for asking questions about missionary life from the wife's perspective. Next is Barb and Annalise Bowman. They are a mom and daughter from Boise, Idaho.  Barb has just recently been hired by MAF in the communications department and she wanted to come down to see what missionary life is so she can have a better understanding as she talks to others about it. Annalise is a student at Minnesota University and she is majoring in dance. Then we have Ethan Wolff who just graduated from High School and is planning on attending school at University of Arizona for linguistics. He is fairly good with the spanish language and so me and him like to practice our espanol together. :) Then the rest of us are missionary flight majors and are coming down to see if this is really what we want to spend the rest of our lives doing.We have Aaron Gibbs and Sarah Morris who attend Jacksonville University in Florida. Then we have Ben White who is going to Florida Institute of Technology. Then we have Erica Smith who attends LeTourneau University with me. It is a really group of people and although we have only been together for two and a half days, we are already bonded really well.

So after landing on Saturday, we headed off to the Equator Museum that was about half an hour away. It was such a cool experience and I learned so much. We also found out that in Quito there are TWO Equators! One is the culturally accepted and tourism spot, the other about 300 yards away is the actual spot calculated by professional GPS. Its so funny cause the original founders had used trigonometry and astrology to determine their spot and made their monument, but their methods had faults in them and so they were slightly off. But because they had already built the monument there, they just left it and didn't tell anyone. But later on, when the GPS came out, people discovered that the Equator was in a different spot. So we visited BOTH spots and therefore got our cultural experience and also our scientific certainty. On the ACTUAL site they had a tour of the different cultural displays they had and they also showed us some experiments that verified the accuracy of their spot. It was amazing. One of the experiments that they did, was they poured water in a bowl and watched as is came out the drain in the bottom. So when we placed the bowl exactly on the line, the water would drain straight down. But then when you moved the table just 10 feet to the South, the water would drain clockwise down the drain and would create a vortex. Just ten feet different! And when we did it ten feet to the north, the water would drain counter clockwise. It was incredible. I guess it has to do with the gravitational pull from the earth, and when you are on the equator gravity is perfectly equal.

One foot on the Northern Hemisphere, one foot on the Southern Hemisphere...

The "Real" Equator...                                                                  The Politically Correct Equator...

Now I've been to both...  :)


So then today was Sunday and so we got up at 8 in the morning and went to Church. The Church we went to was one that Brian and Pam used to go to quite frequently. It is in a very poor area where most people are barely surviving on the bare essentials. And yet it was amazing it watch these people worship so fervently and listen to the pastor preach right from his heart. The sermon was on walking the walk rather than talking the talk and he incorporated a chapter in Luke of how when Jesus was asked if he was the Savior, he responded, "Look! The Blind see, the lame walk, the death are raised, and the poor are given the good news." The pastor stressed how we must live our faith instead of telling people that you are a Christian. He used a quote that I really liked: "Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words" I watched as people who had absolutely nothing to their name, live like they had everything in the world. And when I thought about it, they do. They have faith in God, and that is their strong hold, that is their life, that is all that you need in life. That is everything in life. Jesus is all. But we as Americans so often forget this. We get so blinded by our "stuff" and our "social life", our cars, our homes. Often these things define our lives. They give us meaning and we can't live without them. But when you don't have these things to weigh you down, its almost freeing....interesting food for thought. 


Then after church, we went to a local food pantry called Pan de Vida. It was cool to take a little tour of this wonderful facility and listen to the director tell how his vision of serving the kids of the streets and how he had so many obstacles in the way, with finding a facility, to finding funds, to other things. And yet through it all, God had sustained him. In just the right time, someone would send a check, or he would get a telephone call and he would just smile and say, "God you're so awesome!" I love hearing about all the different ministries that people do, and how God has sustained them and provided for them and kept them trusting in Him.


After visiting the Pan de Vida, we did a little shopping, then played some ultimate frisbee and had some fun. Tomorrow we get on the bus and drive like 5 hours to get to Shell, and then....the jungle......

oh, side story...so these are Cuy {guinea pigs} I told myself that I would eat something exotic on this trip. Well I was able to talk the rest of the group to order one of these and we all ate a little bit of it. It actually wasn't that bad. I kinda tasted like turkey...not like pork as I had expected...but anyways: Exotic Food {check}