Relationship

Yesterday was to be an all work day at Nuevos Amigos School after walking the La Comuna neighborhood. The team worked on tile and painting and then broke for lunch. We invited our bus driver Luis and his ten year old daughter Sophia to join us and were glad they accepted. Nancy had made twelve sandwiches in the morning and with Ricardo and Eric joining us also we had exactly enough.

I teach mission teams in the pre-trip meetings to be flexible and expect surprises. Today there were some:

1) We went to Ricardo's house for a tour. It is a very nice house that he and his wife Maria are proud of and rightly so. He has been working on it for 14 years. Then they invited us all to sit for a drink and we gladly drank Naranjilla juice. Tan delicioso!

2) After we got back from touring Ricardo's home the teachers from La Guardaria day care approached me and asked if the team would like to ride the trolley cars up the mountain. Okay that sentence took me one minute to write but this discussion took probably fifteen minutes with my limited Spanish. At first I thought they were asking if we were taking our compassion kids there with us. Then I realized they wanted us all to go "ahora mismo" (at this moment). My first thought was "no" becasue we had work to get done. And I'm afraid of heights. Duh! That thinking is the very opposite to what I taught this team: to be flexible and expect schedule changes and this trip is about RELATIONSHIPS , not tasks. I almost blew it. Thank you God for leading me.

We agreed to go and had a great time. Six teachers from the school, our team of eight, Ricardo and his wife Maria and son Zacharias, seventeen in all. It was good relationship building as I had a chance to chat with Rosio, director of La Guardaria. I explained the union of ChildReach Ministries and Nuevos Amigos. She said she and her son could go back to the states and I could stay in Ecuador. I said that would work for me if my wife were here (no kidding Chris).

It was a day of relationships.

Oh and we walked the path after we got up the mountain and I realized I can't run fast or far at 13,451 feet above sea level.........in a t-shirt............at about 45 degrees! Brrrrrr.