Ecuador Mission trip

In August, Jim and I went with our mission team from Auburn United Methodist Church to Ecuador on a week's mission trip. We flew into Quito and spent one night. On Sunday, we attended a small church which was a wonderful experience to share their service. After that, we loaded up the van and truck with all our trunks and luggage and headed from Quito down to Santo Domingo in the lowlands. This was our base for the work week there. We stayed in the town of Santo Domingo and went out each day to the Tsachila villages that we served. We had a medical team and a Bible school team. Jim helped Robert, the pharmacist count and dispense the pills for the medical team. I was on the Bible school team. We had a great week and it was so much fun to share with the children and to watch their faces as we played with them and had the program. At the first village, we were outside under the big pavillion that is covered and has a concrete floor. The children brought their tables and chairs or desks out and joined us there This year, our program was to tell the life of Jesus as some of the children were costumed and acted it out for us. It was a lot of fun and the children loved to participate. Meanwhile, the medical clinic went on in a different area of the school-a new wing they had built since we were there last year! We went to this village two days and then we went to a second village for two days. There were 13 of us on the team this year.

One of the teachers that we saw the first day in the clinic, was having difficulty seeing. The doctor checked him and found he had benign tumors on both eyes and without surgery, he would be blind in 3 years. He could not afford the surgery but it was very special to be able to tell him the next day that some members of our team were going to pay for his surgery. He is helping those children so much at the school and what a wonderful gift to give to him and to the children to have his sight restored.

We played with the children after the Bible school was over. We gave each child a packet that had sunglasses and a visor in it-they live so near the equator and cataracts and other eye problems are so prevalent at early ages so hopefully, if they can wear the UV sunglasses, it will help them protect their eyes more. You can see from the photos, that they loved them!