After waking up, we had an amazing breakfast of french toast and coffee. We had to wait for the trucks that we were going to drive to come. Once we arrived to the community, we began work on the trench for the pipes. All day, the view of Chimborazo was clear and beautiful. There was a tractor there that was digging as well, and it was causing a few problems. The tractor was supposed to arrive on Monday as it was only needed to dig in a particular tricky spot where the pipe needed to be laid in a stream under a bridge.

Since it was there, the people were wanting to rely on the tractor to do the difficult work. The soil where we worked had many rocks and boulders that we had to dig out, so many people in the community got discouraged and stopped working.

In spite of that, we kept working until lunchtime.

After eating our delightful sack lunches, we pulled out a guitar and began a little worship session.

Once the kids had arrived we saw that there was a little more than double the number we had yesterday. In addition to the hat craft from yesterday, which functioned like a name tag, we had a bag craft for them. There were some very artistic kids in the group who covered their bags with jewels, stickers, and paint.

When the kids had all trickled in, we did some songs, a skit, and a Bible verse. Then we went outside and played balloon stomp, where we tied balloons to everybody’s ankles and they all tried to pop each other’s balloons. We then gave all the kids a balloon to take home and then we cleaned up and headed back to Codeinse where we rested and ate some delicious chicken fajitas. We did some preparations for the craft for the next day, and snuggled some baby guinea pigs. We had our meeting and heard many funny stories from Cesar and Nancy. The funniest part of that was when Cesar, telling us about some financial disputes the community had when a new mayor was elected, said sheepishly “so I…organized a protest.

The highlights of our day include the balloon game with the kids, worshiping as a team, pulling out all the large boulders in the ground, and listening to stories after dinner. We are looking forward to singing for the mayor tomorrow, climbing Chimborazo, and lunch with the community tomorrow. We were surprised by the large number of kids, how rocky the ground was today, and that the cheery Ecuadorians began rebelling and nearly fighting due to the water project. We are incredibly thankful for all the good food Nancy made us, the fact that we have a warm shower, the ministry we’re getting to observe and the opportunity to be here, and being here makes us very grateful for many amenities and other things we have in America