Christmas in an Ecuadorian mountain village

We're celebrating this Christmas as missionaries, serving at a family camp in Ecuador. Last Saturday, we drove UP into the mountains on windy, narrow roads with amazing valley-views, for three hours. Then we turned down into a pueblo that some of the OMS camp's hired workers know about. Two of the workers came with us, each brought a child or two. Plus two missionary moms came up from Guayaquil to come with us, each bringing their two and three kids. SO there were 22 people and TONS of presents, costumes, props, sound equipment (which we didn't get to use, because the town didn't have ANY electricity coming into it) packed into the camp's ol' truck and the camp manager's new van.

As we drove into the village, we hollered out the vehicle windows for people to come to the main square: a concrete field, found in every village just outside the school; it is used for soccer, a kind of volleyball-ish game that is popular here, and general hanging around spot. We started out playing parachute games in the fog. Within moments, there were eighty people in the square. Within a half hour, there were about 150, mostly children. We were told that "gringos" (caucasians) had never been up to their town, so the people were intrigued as to why we were there.

We began the "centre" games: Ethan ran a football-through-a-hoop throw, Lauren ran a spoon/egg relay race, Don ran a horse-shoe-toss station with Katelyn's help, there was a boot-throw-into-a-rope-circle game, a bean-bag toss game, and a pop-bottle-bowling centre. Kids earned tickets at each station.

After an hour and a half of games, we dressed-up volunteer village kids in sheets and costumes, and did a live nativity performance with them. A donkey and some sheep showed up, and joined in, as Rebecca (one the missionary mom's) read a Christmas story. Then Guido, the camp manager, did a little sermon about Jesus.

THEN we gave out presents. Every baby through teen who showed-up got a gift (We'd been shopping for little gifts for the past month, then we'd wrapped for three days straight, last week, and organized the gifts by gender and age). When the crowds cleared and we began to pack-up, we had about twenty presents left. We reckon that we gave out about 200. It was so fun to see everyone opening presents!! We also gave out watermelon slices and baggies of popcorn (that we'd popped in a pot on the stove; we bagged popcorn until 2am the night before the event).

Our efforts felt were well worth it: all of the prep, and the crazy drive . . . it was quite the experience. Ethan says "The kids were pretty poor, as soon as they saw the van and truck they immediately came, they kind of just were trying to get whatever they could, presents, tokens, they were trying to take the balls that were meant for the game, etc". I guess Ethan felt that desperate poverty. I didn't feel that; I was walking around most of the time, taking pictures, and I felt the surprised joy. I got many more smiles than usual. Some people asked for their picture to be taken, so that they could look at themselves in the camera screen afterward. They wouldn't smile for the picture, but then they'd giggle and cover their mouths when they looked at the camera screen and their picture, afterward. It was so great to be able to converse with them in spanish; it sure makes me want to expand my vocabulary much much more. Katleyn says, "It was happy giving things to other people to make them happy. That's what made me happy. We went up a hill in the town and saw a mad horse, it was tied, and it started putting its ears up and pawing, then it backed-up and tried to run forward. Then we saw baby pigs." Lauren's favourite part was leading the donkey around, when the kids went to listen to the story. One young boy handed a donkey's rope to Lauren, when he went to sit down and see the play. So she proceeded to walk the donkey around for ages and ages; she even gave out donkey rides. Lauren did a great job of running the egg race game all by herself. She has been working really hard on her spanish and that showed. Don had fun with the kids! Toward the end, he walked around with a bag for the wrapping paper garbage, it was so cute watching the littlest kids unwrapping their presents. He kept calling me over to take pictures of this little child and that little one. By then, many of the parents were very friendly, encouraging their children to look at the camera for a photo.

A lucky local pig got lots of watermelon rinds when we cleared-up the courtyard! Then we had the long, windy, bumpy drive back, with many of the adults and children dying to use a bathroom (a few volunteers chose to venture into the field that the crowd had been using as the toilet, but not many). We were all exhausted when we made it safely back to camp. It was a rich Christmas experience.

Wishing you a joyous Christmas this year!
Love from the Murray family