Category: Casa de Fe

Smells Like Jungle

This week we (the summer hosts) have been training as a team, living in a hostal together and visiting the ministry sites where we will be working with teams. The last three days, that has meant an adventure to the oriente, or the jungle region of Ecuador. It’s been a really cool experience for me, especially because I’ve been to most of the places before.

Shandia is alwas fun, and I got to stay in the new hostal there for the first time, in adition to seeing old friends and going down thebbrand new zip line over the river. I also finally got to see the church in Puyo where my buddy Darío grew up. But the site that just blew my mind was La Casa de Fe.

In 2007 I went to CDF for the first time with the team from Christ Episcopal Church. We worked for just a couple of days playing with the kids and taking them to the park, and pulling rocks out of the water and cutting down grass at their new property. At the time, that property was just a patch of grass and a muddy swimming hole, and the director, Patti Sue Arnold, would point out to us the buildings that would some day exist. I just couldn’t imagine it.

Over the course of the last four years, I have returned to CDF in a variety of groups. I’ve seen the orphanage explode from 19 kids to over 60. I’ve seen gringos and Ecuadorians work on construction and programs there. But nothing could have prepared me to come across the dam and look up to see this bright green building poking out of the trees and realizing that this new building was fully functional after all this time.

I knew that they had moved from the old (tiny) site to the multi-use building on the new property. But knowing it in my head and seeing it with my eyes were two totally different things. As we walked around and saw the kids playing or learning with the tias and teachers, my mind was quite simply blown. I told Cameron this morning that I almost couldn’t reconcile the two images in my mind, the functioning orphanage in front of me and the unfinished, unpainted piles of cinderblocks where we camped out in a tent 19 months ago.

I know that the building is the least important thing about CDF. To see the love that the kids receive and all of the opportunities given to them because of Patti Sue is just amazing. But seeing a patch of grass turn into a home over the course of my time coming the Ecuador is just one of those visible reminders of the faithfulness of God and just how much of His work we can see when we stop and look.

Emaus Mission Team

This weekend I had the opportunity to go to Shell with a group from Emaus to work at La Casa De Fe. I won’t give the history I could on either group, I’ll just skip to the part about what we did this weekend.

It was pretty amazing to see the “Promised Land” after having been absent from the property for two years. When I was last there, it was a patch of tall grass, a stream, and a backhoe. Now there’s a completed water tower and bodega, and a significantly constructed multi-purpose building. The entire concrete framework of the building is done, to the point that we were able to camp out under tents and misquito nets on the top floor as we worked on the first floor.

I’ve been saying today that this weekend was probably the most work I’ve ever done in my life. I’m trying to think of a time that could beat it, and I haven’t come up with one yet. We shoveled out and leveled the dirt under the first floor, dumped in bigger rocks that won’t hold water, covered it with a layer of plastic and rebar-like metal grate material, then mixed and poured concrete for the real floor of the ground level. Part of that involved carrying around 50-kilogram bags of cement to mix concrete.

Now, being your typical kid from the United States, the only metric conversion I know how to do in my head is miles to and from kilometers, and I only know that because of a minor road trip I took to Canada with my grandpa during which I sometimes drove. It wasn’t until after I’d staggered around carrying three or four of those bags that I discovered that it’s more than a 2:1 ratio of kilograms to pounds. I don’t even weigh very much more than 50 kilograms.

Needless to say, between that and the shoveling and pushing wheelbarrows of concrete and sleeping on a constantly deflating air mattress on more concrete, I’m more than a little sore right now. But since I don’t plan an exercise regimen of shoveling concrete and rocks every weekend to keep up these muscles that I didn’t know I had, I’m glad about some other things with which I came away from this weekend.

At certain points it was hard being out at the new property basically all the time and trying to think of it as a ministry site and not just a work site. But when we did finally have the chance to go over to the orphanage, and then to have a bunch of the kids come out to the property to have a worship service with us this morning, it drove home one of those things that I did come away with. Twice now, after having seen the property when it was a piece of land indistinguishable from the rest of the jungle around it, I’ve gotten to be a part of building a place that’s there only because of people acting out God’s love, and which will soon be not just a building, but a home full of that love.