We arrived in Green Valley last night, July 30th from our trip. I thought I would write about our last days in Ecuador. Where I last left off we were going to Shell, on the edge of the Oriente, the Amazon rainforest in east of the Andes in Ecuador. That’s where Steve & Pauli McCracken are moving for Steve’s new assignment with HCJB. That morning (Monday) we were having lots of difficulty leaving. There were lots of household items they were trying to get on the McCracken’s moving van, I was not feeling well, one of the cars wouldn’t start, then on our final bathroom run I discovered some a little blood where a pregnant mom should not have blood. The van at that point was finally loaded and taken off with all of the McCracken’s stuff and our stuff for the week on it. The car had finally started. We weren’t sure what to do about me. I had heard of having a little bleeding during pregnancy, so I thought if I were able to rest in the car for the 5 hour trip to Shell that would be fine. So that’s what we did.
The trip down was uneventful. As we got within 2 hours of shell we saw more and more rainforest, lots of waterfalls along this lush beautiful canyon, and many tunnels. Holly thought there were “11teen” of them. The tunnels were different than any I had experienced before. They were basically holes blasted through the mountain with roads put through them – none of the finishing touches one would see in most tunnels here. There were no lights, and one could barely see the road and the dividing markers – it felt like we were in a mine. The most non-comforting part was the water that was coming through the ceiling falling on the car as you drove through. I just pictured water eroding through the earth above the roof. These adventurous tunnels did cut off a lot of time and winding roads so I was grateful for them. By the way, we did see someone pass another car coming out of the tunnel leading out to a blind curve.
When we arrived in Shell Pauli had already called ahead to the hospital to get a sonogram for me. The short version of this is the doctor, Becky Brice, thought she might see a heart beat but couldn’t see the baby. So I was to go the next day to Puyo (the next bigger town over) to get another sonogram. Well, with in an hour of leaving the hospital more and more blood kept coming out which hadn’t happened all day. Then it started coming out too fast. I started to get dizzy and passed out in the bathroom. Bill & Pauli were in there with me at that point. Pauli called to Steve to call Becky. Bill said the way I looked after fainting gave him a flash back to seeing his father dad die (Just a year before). I put my head back, turned white and made choking sounds. It did not help that when I came to I was saying, “That was such a nice dream, I want to go back to that dream.” By the way, it was not a dying dream. It was just so much better than the misery I was feeling before. By the time I came to, Dr. Becky (living three houses away) was there with here roommate Denise (the hospital administrator) in their pj’s. There was a stretcher there also they had called over from the hospital 200 yards away which they were putting me on. They walked me right over. In the hospital room, I delivered a very tiny little baby with tiny little arms. I was in the hospital another 2 days and nights. To sum it up... lots of blood, a blood transfusion with Bill as the donor, a D & C procedure, with some sort of reaction or anxiety attack afterwards, then lots of sleep. My doctors were American, but my nurses were Ecuadorian. They would ask me things in Spanish, when Bill wasn’t with me. I would tell them, “No comprendo. I don’t understand” so they would repeat it more slowly. I still didn’t understand, but to get them out I would say, “Si. Yes.” Bill and I laughed at what kinds of things I could have signed myself up for. From my bed I could see the kids playing on the play set between the houses on the HCJB missionary compound by the houses. They each came to visit me one by one.
I was blessed by people I didn’t even know (mostly the missionaries) in the area coming to pray for me, talk to me, reading me Bible verses, and bringing me cookies and other goodies. I loved to see God’s Hand of protection in all of the circumstances. Even if I were at home in Arizona no one could have been there as fast as the doctors were there (sorry Chuck Wunder - your emergency crews are fast, but not that fast) And what If I had stayed behind in Quito? Or it happened on the way to shell? If something like this had to happed, Gods timing and comfort for me couldn’t be better. The e-mails from home poured in as soon as the prayer request was sent out. Thank you all. I am truly blesses with dear friends.
The day I got out of the hospital (Thursday) I also rested. At home I might have rested a little more, but I had a rainforest to explore and not many days left to do it.
My Birthday was Friday the 25th and we decided to go to this “Zoo” about 20 minutes out of Shell. We drove out of town on a little country (rainforest ) road. It was so beautiful. It was also the first time on the trip I was not nauseous (bitter sweet). We saw a big sign by a little rainforest hut “Zoologico.” We assumed it was announcing the zoo up the road a bit. Then 5 miles later we realized that little hut was the “zoo”. So we turned around to park. A man with a very large snake around his neck came to meet us. Along side him was his little tour guide helper, a coatimundi. This little guy followed us around the whole time. At one point I caught Jake sharing a peach with him. Jake would take a bite where the little coatimundi took a bite off the same spot. Jake looked puzzled as I tried to explained to him how to rip off a piece to share not give him a bite. Grace also loved him. She would put food on her shoulder so he would climb up on her.
The man walked us back into the rainforest. First we saw lots of caged turtles right next to the alligator pond. Emma and I thought it funny when he explained how he cages the turtles so the loose alligators don’t eat them. He told us finding the alligators, was like Where’s Waldo and who ever found them fist would win. Well I looked first by my feet. They turned out to be across the pond. I was only slightly relieved. As we went deeper into the jungle we saw some large caged rodents (no capybaras though). He pointed out an animal track that was the size of my hand. It led us to a tapir. This animal is part of the horse family but looks kind of like a pig with a droopy snout. I stands about as tall as Jake. We found it in a muddy corner and anyone who had boots could go pet it. From that day on I never went anywhere in the rainforest with out my boots. I didn’t want to miss anything. After leaving the tapir we came across a band of loose squirrel monkeys. If you had food they were right there crawling all over you. They could hear the zipper open on our backpacks, and would come every time we opened them. We all loved it. It was so cool! I would say that was one of my favorite days!
Saturday we went to Baños (about 1 hour out of Shell, at about 6000 feet elevation). To get there we got to go back through those lovely tunnels. This place has stand after stand of sugar cane product (juice, chunks, candy…) It is also known for it hand-made taffy (“melcocha”). Over half of the shops had guys pulling large chunks of taffy in the doorways, like this: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldUbzN4MEGM) They would then rip off little samples to pass out. I believe I tried every one. This one stand had Mora flavor (blackberry). We thought that was the best one. So we bought some fresh from them. For lunch that day we found some Cuy (roasted guinea pig) for Jake, Steve and Bill. The rest of us ate chicken.
After lunch Pauli, Grace and I shopped around while the boys took the rest of the kids on a waterfall bus ride. On the waterfall tour they got to see bungee jumping, went on a ride in a cable basket (“tarabita”) far above the canyon and Rio Pastaza, and did see some water falls too. The kids loved it.
Sunday after church we went to this tree house that was about 10 minutes away from their house in shell. It was 11 stories high. At the top 3 levels there was a room on each level you could sleep in. We had questions like, what about having to go to the bathroom with lots of ideas coming from Jacob about what you could do. Again the construction was not OSHA approved. Many times I was pointing out holes in the floor to watch out for. Jake had to carefully put his foot in each one and say, “this one mom?” I don’t think he was being a smarty, just trying to mentally and visually take note. It was a little high for me. I felt comfortable on floor 8. Jake said he likes is one story tree house in North America better. We also found another friendly monkey a little bigger than the ones we played with earlier, and some beautiful macaws. The kids loved a very tiny monkey we could see inside the window of the hut of the man who lived on the propriety. We thought it was a baby, but he told us it was a different kind of monkey.
Later that afternoon, we walked over to an orphanage in Shell called La Casa de Fe (the House of Faith). This American gal, Patti Sue Arnold, was giving foster care to one baby and then stared one by one to take in little ones as needed as her own children then at 10 children she realized maybe God wanted her to open an orphanage. Now she has 47 children. She has about 80% special needs kids. She explained that when a child was born with special needs in those parts the parents use to just kill the baby or child, but since there have been so many missionaries there, they don’t do that so much any more. Yet, they still don’t want them. Some they drop off there. A couple they have found living with the dog under the house. Many, many heart breaking stories. She explained how some of the kids that have been taken away from the government can’t be put up for adoption so she will have them through college. The kids loved the baby toddler house. They played with and held the little guys for a long time. As we left they were begging to take some of them home with us. There were two little girls who were malnourished when they found them. They were 5 & 6 years old and presently both smaller than our 2 ½ year old Holly. I enjoyed playing with the older kids. Dioselina taught me lots of Cats Cradle games (games you play with string) Patti Sue has decided to home-school the kids this year, because of the lack of discipline and Character learning in the Ecuadorian schools, public & private. So I got a tour of where that is happening, on the roof. The kids sit on boards & brick benches, and in front is a white board. Pauli & and I are working on a plan to get some more school stuff to them. If you would like to check the place out here is the website: http://lacasadefe.org/. We were touched from the outset by what God is doing for those precious, otherwise unwanted little children in the orphanage through Patti Sue and her very special helpers.
Before coming to Ecuador we had read some books to the kids on missionaries in Ecuador (Nate Saint, Rachel Saint (Nate’s sister) & Jim Elliot) There is also a great movie we watched, “End of the Spear” About the missionaries who were martyred while trying to make contact with the Huaorani Tribe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huaorani . We saw many of the places talked about in these books. We saw the MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) airstrip and hanger and Nate Saint’s house. We drove through Mera where Rachel lived and I believed was buried. Monday morning we got to get a tour of the cute little Nate Saint School. This school was dedicated on the 10th anniversary of the missionaries’ deaths. Nate had wanted to have a school for missionary kids. There are 20-25 kids in the school this year with 3 teachers. This year the grades range from K-5th grade. I love how the different ages mix and interact with each other, and the great class sizes! We walked there from the McCracken’s new house. At one point we had to go over a high suspended bridge over a creek. Again I was holding hands tight. This is not a bridge I would let my kids walk by themselves to school on. I hear that usually the kids pile into a car, because of the rain. This was the dry season and it rained on and off all day and night. I guess what makes it the dry season is that there would be 2-4 hours of sun between showers.
After that we headed to back to Quito. We stopped in Baños for more cane juice, taffy (from our favorite stand) and to see another zoo. This zoo was built into some steep (non- wheelchair accessible) cliffs. There were lots of animals, but mostly all in cages. Where is the freedom in that? I am definitely spoiled by the last zoo where we got to interact with the animals. I did have a monkey try to take my camera while I was taking a picture of it. I got a great shot with its face and hand coming towards me.
Tuesday was packing and last minute stuff like mailing post cards. Not an easy task in Ecuador. The mail system is not trusted and therefore not used much. There is a lot of hand delivery going on. One of the missionaries even gave us some stuff to mail from the states.
Wednesday we flew out. We woke up at 3:00 to catch a 6:30 flight which we found out was delayed until 1:30 because of volcanic ash spewing some place. Three hours of that time we spent waiting in line to put our bags on the plane. 2 hours we ate breakfast with another family we met in line with four little girls 6 weeks old to 6 years old. They were missionaries moving back and were having some trouble getting their baby (born in Ecuador) out of the country. At one point we all took a taxi to the park to play for a couple of hours. Then back to the airport for some lunch and more paperwork and baggage (carry on) checks. We got on the plane when our seats were called thinking we would see our friends on the plane, but the plane took off and they never made it on. I can’t wait to hear what happened. That poor family has to try the whole ordeal again. :(
The flights were everything you can imagine spending 8 hours in the air with a two year-old: Several spills and lots of entertaining to be done, not much napping.
My dad and Kathy picked us up and we were blessed and welcomed with a welcome home banner, Flowers and fruit at our house.
It’s a treat to be home, and I’m loving it, but I definitely need to return to Ecuador some day!
The trip down was uneventful. As we got within 2 hours of shell we saw more and more rainforest, lots of waterfalls along this lush beautiful canyon, and many tunnels. Holly thought there were “11teen” of them. The tunnels were different than any I had experienced before. They were basically holes blasted through the mountain with roads put through them – none of the finishing touches one would see in most tunnels here. There were no lights, and one could barely see the road and the dividing markers – it felt like we were in a mine. The most non-comforting part was the water that was coming through the ceiling falling on the car as you drove through. I just pictured water eroding through the earth above the roof. These adventurous tunnels did cut off a lot of time and winding roads so I was grateful for them. By the way, we did see someone pass another car coming out of the tunnel leading out to a blind curve.
When we arrived in Shell Pauli had already called ahead to the hospital to get a sonogram for me. The short version of this is the doctor, Becky Brice, thought she might see a heart beat but couldn’t see the baby. So I was to go the next day to Puyo (the next bigger town over) to get another sonogram. Well, with in an hour of leaving the hospital more and more blood kept coming out which hadn’t happened all day. Then it started coming out too fast. I started to get dizzy and passed out in the bathroom. Bill & Pauli were in there with me at that point. Pauli called to Steve to call Becky. Bill said the way I looked after fainting gave him a flash back to seeing his father dad die (Just a year before). I put my head back, turned white and made choking sounds. It did not help that when I came to I was saying, “That was such a nice dream, I want to go back to that dream.” By the way, it was not a dying dream. It was just so much better than the misery I was feeling before. By the time I came to, Dr. Becky (living three houses away) was there with here roommate Denise (the hospital administrator) in their pj’s. There was a stretcher there also they had called over from the hospital 200 yards away which they were putting me on. They walked me right over. In the hospital room, I delivered a very tiny little baby with tiny little arms. I was in the hospital another 2 days and nights. To sum it up... lots of blood, a blood transfusion with Bill as the donor, a D & C procedure, with some sort of reaction or anxiety attack afterwards, then lots of sleep. My doctors were American, but my nurses were Ecuadorian. They would ask me things in Spanish, when Bill wasn’t with me. I would tell them, “No comprendo. I don’t understand” so they would repeat it more slowly. I still didn’t understand, but to get them out I would say, “Si. Yes.” Bill and I laughed at what kinds of things I could have signed myself up for. From my bed I could see the kids playing on the play set between the houses on the HCJB missionary compound by the houses. They each came to visit me one by one.
I was blessed by people I didn’t even know (mostly the missionaries) in the area coming to pray for me, talk to me, reading me Bible verses, and bringing me cookies and other goodies. I loved to see God’s Hand of protection in all of the circumstances. Even if I were at home in Arizona no one could have been there as fast as the doctors were there (sorry Chuck Wunder - your emergency crews are fast, but not that fast) And what If I had stayed behind in Quito? Or it happened on the way to shell? If something like this had to happed, Gods timing and comfort for me couldn’t be better. The e-mails from home poured in as soon as the prayer request was sent out. Thank you all. I am truly blesses with dear friends.
The day I got out of the hospital (Thursday) I also rested. At home I might have rested a little more, but I had a rainforest to explore and not many days left to do it.
My Birthday was Friday the 25th and we decided to go to this “Zoo” about 20 minutes out of Shell. We drove out of town on a little country (rainforest ) road. It was so beautiful. It was also the first time on the trip I was not nauseous (bitter sweet). We saw a big sign by a little rainforest hut “Zoologico.” We assumed it was announcing the zoo up the road a bit. Then 5 miles later we realized that little hut was the “zoo”. So we turned around to park. A man with a very large snake around his neck came to meet us. Along side him was his little tour guide helper, a coatimundi. This little guy followed us around the whole time. At one point I caught Jake sharing a peach with him. Jake would take a bite where the little coatimundi took a bite off the same spot. Jake looked puzzled as I tried to explained to him how to rip off a piece to share not give him a bite. Grace also loved him. She would put food on her shoulder so he would climb up on her.
The man walked us back into the rainforest. First we saw lots of caged turtles right next to the alligator pond. Emma and I thought it funny when he explained how he cages the turtles so the loose alligators don’t eat them. He told us finding the alligators, was like Where’s Waldo and who ever found them fist would win. Well I looked first by my feet. They turned out to be across the pond. I was only slightly relieved. As we went deeper into the jungle we saw some large caged rodents (no capybaras though). He pointed out an animal track that was the size of my hand. It led us to a tapir. This animal is part of the horse family but looks kind of like a pig with a droopy snout. I stands about as tall as Jake. We found it in a muddy corner and anyone who had boots could go pet it. From that day on I never went anywhere in the rainforest with out my boots. I didn’t want to miss anything. After leaving the tapir we came across a band of loose squirrel monkeys. If you had food they were right there crawling all over you. They could hear the zipper open on our backpacks, and would come every time we opened them. We all loved it. It was so cool! I would say that was one of my favorite days!
Saturday we went to Baños (about 1 hour out of Shell, at about 6000 feet elevation). To get there we got to go back through those lovely tunnels. This place has stand after stand of sugar cane product (juice, chunks, candy…) It is also known for it hand-made taffy (“melcocha”). Over half of the shops had guys pulling large chunks of taffy in the doorways, like this: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldUbzN4MEGM) They would then rip off little samples to pass out. I believe I tried every one. This one stand had Mora flavor (blackberry). We thought that was the best one. So we bought some fresh from them. For lunch that day we found some Cuy (roasted guinea pig) for Jake, Steve and Bill. The rest of us ate chicken.
After lunch Pauli, Grace and I shopped around while the boys took the rest of the kids on a waterfall bus ride. On the waterfall tour they got to see bungee jumping, went on a ride in a cable basket (“tarabita”) far above the canyon and Rio Pastaza, and did see some water falls too. The kids loved it.
Sunday after church we went to this tree house that was about 10 minutes away from their house in shell. It was 11 stories high. At the top 3 levels there was a room on each level you could sleep in. We had questions like, what about having to go to the bathroom with lots of ideas coming from Jacob about what you could do. Again the construction was not OSHA approved. Many times I was pointing out holes in the floor to watch out for. Jake had to carefully put his foot in each one and say, “this one mom?” I don’t think he was being a smarty, just trying to mentally and visually take note. It was a little high for me. I felt comfortable on floor 8. Jake said he likes is one story tree house in North America better. We also found another friendly monkey a little bigger than the ones we played with earlier, and some beautiful macaws. The kids loved a very tiny monkey we could see inside the window of the hut of the man who lived on the propriety. We thought it was a baby, but he told us it was a different kind of monkey.
Later that afternoon, we walked over to an orphanage in Shell called La Casa de Fe (the House of Faith). This American gal, Patti Sue Arnold, was giving foster care to one baby and then stared one by one to take in little ones as needed as her own children then at 10 children she realized maybe God wanted her to open an orphanage. Now she has 47 children. She has about 80% special needs kids. She explained that when a child was born with special needs in those parts the parents use to just kill the baby or child, but since there have been so many missionaries there, they don’t do that so much any more. Yet, they still don’t want them. Some they drop off there. A couple they have found living with the dog under the house. Many, many heart breaking stories. She explained how some of the kids that have been taken away from the government can’t be put up for adoption so she will have them through college. The kids loved the baby toddler house. They played with and held the little guys for a long time. As we left they were begging to take some of them home with us. There were two little girls who were malnourished when they found them. They were 5 & 6 years old and presently both smaller than our 2 ½ year old Holly. I enjoyed playing with the older kids. Dioselina taught me lots of Cats Cradle games (games you play with string) Patti Sue has decided to home-school the kids this year, because of the lack of discipline and Character learning in the Ecuadorian schools, public & private. So I got a tour of where that is happening, on the roof. The kids sit on boards & brick benches, and in front is a white board. Pauli & and I are working on a plan to get some more school stuff to them. If you would like to check the place out here is the website: http://lacasadefe.org/. We were touched from the outset by what God is doing for those precious, otherwise unwanted little children in the orphanage through Patti Sue and her very special helpers.
Before coming to Ecuador we had read some books to the kids on missionaries in Ecuador (Nate Saint, Rachel Saint (Nate’s sister) & Jim Elliot) There is also a great movie we watched, “End of the Spear” About the missionaries who were martyred while trying to make contact with the Huaorani Tribe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huaorani . We saw many of the places talked about in these books. We saw the MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) airstrip and hanger and Nate Saint’s house. We drove through Mera where Rachel lived and I believed was buried. Monday morning we got to get a tour of the cute little Nate Saint School. This school was dedicated on the 10th anniversary of the missionaries’ deaths. Nate had wanted to have a school for missionary kids. There are 20-25 kids in the school this year with 3 teachers. This year the grades range from K-5th grade. I love how the different ages mix and interact with each other, and the great class sizes! We walked there from the McCracken’s new house. At one point we had to go over a high suspended bridge over a creek. Again I was holding hands tight. This is not a bridge I would let my kids walk by themselves to school on. I hear that usually the kids pile into a car, because of the rain. This was the dry season and it rained on and off all day and night. I guess what makes it the dry season is that there would be 2-4 hours of sun between showers.
After that we headed to back to Quito. We stopped in Baños for more cane juice, taffy (from our favorite stand) and to see another zoo. This zoo was built into some steep (non- wheelchair accessible) cliffs. There were lots of animals, but mostly all in cages. Where is the freedom in that? I am definitely spoiled by the last zoo where we got to interact with the animals. I did have a monkey try to take my camera while I was taking a picture of it. I got a great shot with its face and hand coming towards me.
Tuesday was packing and last minute stuff like mailing post cards. Not an easy task in Ecuador. The mail system is not trusted and therefore not used much. There is a lot of hand delivery going on. One of the missionaries even gave us some stuff to mail from the states.
Wednesday we flew out. We woke up at 3:00 to catch a 6:30 flight which we found out was delayed until 1:30 because of volcanic ash spewing some place. Three hours of that time we spent waiting in line to put our bags on the plane. 2 hours we ate breakfast with another family we met in line with four little girls 6 weeks old to 6 years old. They were missionaries moving back and were having some trouble getting their baby (born in Ecuador) out of the country. At one point we all took a taxi to the park to play for a couple of hours. Then back to the airport for some lunch and more paperwork and baggage (carry on) checks. We got on the plane when our seats were called thinking we would see our friends on the plane, but the plane took off and they never made it on. I can’t wait to hear what happened. That poor family has to try the whole ordeal again. :(
The flights were everything you can imagine spending 8 hours in the air with a two year-old: Several spills and lots of entertaining to be done, not much napping.
My dad and Kathy picked us up and we were blessed and welcomed with a welcome home banner, Flowers and fruit at our house.
It’s a treat to be home, and I’m loving it, but I definitely need to return to Ecuador some day!
Posts
