Sunday 16th


First day of going out and helping the different foundations for kids, or schools. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. Don’t know how much in poverty these places would be. I did expect them to be an experience. I’m in group three, and we went to Padre Pio. Bus ride there was interesting. You could see as we drove how run down and poor everything was getting. When we arrived I could already tell this one was going to be the poorest one we’d visit. The houses looked like they were made of whatever they could find laying around, or taken off another surrounding structure. There was a police station right in front of the church. And I do mean right in front, no more than 30 feet away. When we first arrived there were no kids there. The priest was not there either. A young man by the name of Fabian, I think it was, was there and can of a tour of the place. The whole front of the building was a church. It was pretty old and dusty, simple, but it’s all they had and that was ok. It was pretty open there as far as how a stray dog from the street wonder in the church and no one seems to care. We did find out later that they have a dog there. I think it was a stray they found and look after. I will say now, not to name names, how a group member was afraid of dogs was a little funny, but annoying and ridiculous. Fabian told us how the kids were with the priest at another church I think it was. He went into showing us the back part of the church where they have a kitchen, class rooms, and the back patio where the kids play. Upstairs there was more classrooms and padre pio stayed. I have to admit the classrooms looked more like classrooms slash storage rooms, but at least they have classrooms. They also had a room that had a couple of old computers so that was nice. Fabian also mentioned how they have a little of a bat problem upstairs. When done with the tour we moved back down. We asked what work we were doing and we came to find out that we weren’t really going to be doing and real work. They had the paint, but the guy that was setting everything up, wasn’t going to be there that day. So we moved back into the church where they the lady that helps make all kinds of designs with the palm leafs was going to come over and show us how to make something. Well it wasn’t a very hard process but if you fall behind a step and don’t see what you do it gets a little hard to catch up. So what I’m saying is that mine looked pretty crappy, but it looked pretty close to what it was suppose to be. Not long after doing that some of the kids attend there came by. All of them good kids, they seemed very happy to see us. I think after the first kid showed up it didn’t take long for more to show up. I want to say that about 10 kids showed up the whole day. We took some quick time after making the palm thing to talk to the kids a little. Right about that time padre pio showed up. To keep busy and try and help out with what ever we could we started to clean the church. We wiped down all the benches and pews. And then began to sweep and mop the floor. The majority of the children were right there cleaning with us and they seemed happy to join in on the effort to clean. When all the cleaning was done we went to the back patio and played a little soccer with the kids. Shawn brought some sidewalk chalk for the kids and they really loved that. You can really see how much these kids appreciate us being there. Back at home the little we bring them might not seem like much to most kids, but over here in Ecuador it means a lot to them.