After a month of e-silence, we're thrilled to be writing an update on our mission situation!
All five of us have arrived safely at Camp Pallatanga in Ecuador. The camp is a two-and-a-half hour bus ride from the city of Guayaquil. When we go to Guayaquil after the campers leave this Sunday, I will get to post this message to you.
We arrived at camp, in the dark, the evening of Saturday November 5th. We stayed in one of the dorms for a few nights until our little house was cleaned out and ready for us to move in. We're comfortably cuddled into this home, Ethan and Katelyn share a small bedroom, Lauren has a little bedroom, and Don and I have a bedroom with our own bathroom (first ensuite for us, ever!). We're still living out of suitcases, because the bedrooms don't have room for dressers and they don't have closets. So we'll have to do some creative organizing, but in the meantime, we've gotten straight to work at camp.
The missionary family we have come to help at the camp, the Orellanas, have been managing the camp facilities for seven years. Kim is originally from the states. Guido is from another part of Ecuador. They met and were married here. Now they have three daughters: Isabel (who is 8years old and four days older than our Katelyn), Elena (who is 5years old and beginning to read), and Sofia (who is three months old).
At present we do not have internet at the camp. Kim and Guido have arranged some internet connection through their cell phone; cellular service and electricity are both somewhat intermittent at camp, but we have been trying to set up our own cellular account. So hopefully in time, we will be able to send text e-mails from camp. The camp does not have enough coverage to allow us to go onto websites (such as our blog), use skype, or e-mail pictures. So we plan to type updates regularly, then upload them whenever we go into the city.
Our closest town, Pallatanga, has fresh produce available at the market on Sundays. It also has small shops where we can buy margarine, rice, biscuits, etc. Meat is purchased at an open air butcher. “Bread” is bought at the bakery (not loaves, but different buns that always have different fillings, like cheese or fruit). Last week when we couldn't make a phone call from camp, we had to drive into Pallatanga to get cell service. When the camp has campers (most weekends), we drive into Pallatanga to get the workers, so we are back and forth to town often.
The camp is about 4 kms from town, bordering the highway that runs between Pallatanga and Guayaquil. The camp property covers a lot of area. The rainy season is just about to begin (we just left Costa Rica's rainy season, so we're doing “winter” twice this year!); at the moment, the camp is quite brown and dry. The camp's to-do list has no end. We've jumped straight into our ministry of being a blessing to the Orellanas and the camp:
Don is out in the work shop. The first week we were here, the camp was short on beds for their upcoming youth weekend retreat. So Don got to work building a bunk bed. His prototype required all kinds of design modifications to suit the materials that he was able to find around the Pallatanga area. The freshly cut wood twisted and changed as he worked with it; the old wood piles were either termite-eaten or shrunken solid. He broke bolts, used whatever types and lengths of screws he could find. Purchased angle iron and made angle brackets. The making of the bed was challenging. He came back to the house late each night, tired and hungry from the physical and mental challenges. On Friday night, the single-bed-on-top, queen-bed-on-bottom bunk-bed was assembled in one of the dorms, just as the campers were arriving. Guido would like Don to make 29 more (one for each dorm room), so that the camp could host couple retreats (the camp only had single-bunk-beds).
Amanda began homeschooling day three after arriving at camp. It is a squish to give each child a spot to do schoolwork in our house. With five children in four different grades from kindergarten to junior-high, Amanda is kept busy prepping, teaching, and marking. Schedules are evolving, but the Murray children have to do math each day. LA is taught on Wednesday and Fridays. Kim is teaching the children Spanish and Science on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while Amanda is beginning English classes for single-mothers from Pallatanga on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There is also a demand for a children's English class on Saturdays for students from Pallatanga, so that will likley begin in December. In addition, Amanda is getting used to cooking and cleaning “from scratch”. Each day, the bugs try to move back into our little house and access to groceries is a challenge.
Lauren and Katelyn have become fast-friends with the Orellana girls. The four girls have already tried camping in a tent (which ended in a sleep-over in the house). Katelyn and Isabel get to work together on a lot of their grade three schoolwork. They share a common love of animals! The camp has a horse, four dogs, a cat, three chickens, and on the first day we were here, the girls caught a pet frog.
Ethan started a pick-up game of soccer in the town plaza, yesterday. He's really been missing his St. Albert and his Costa Rican soccer pals! He has also been missing being connected to friends via internet. The camp has lots of room to move and lots of jobs to do, but no children his own age. The dogs want to play ball with Ethan, but they tend to eat his soccer balls rather than pass them back.
We had a 107 campers last weekend; 5 over capacity, so some siblings shared beds. I have one more load of laundry left to do this morning, then I'll have washed 214 sheets, ready for this weekend's 102 campers. Last weekend was a teen camp. This weekend is a kids camp (9 and 10 year-olds). This morning, Don is working on the camp park: fixing the tire swing, putting handles on the home-made teeter-totter, and adding some balance beams. The weekends here are busy, facilitating camp activities (like the zip-line and games in the gym), washing dishes after each meal (everyone is needed to help), and running the camp's little snack shop (Ethan and Lauren's new project – for which they NEED to work on their spanish!), along with finding any needed supplies (just keeping up with the toilet paper needs, etc). For the most part, our job is to help facilitate the physical camp needs. There are a few camps coming up where we will be organizing and running all of the activities with Kim and Guido. The first one of thes is a children's Christmas camp, December 16-18, where very poor children will come from Guayaquil to play games and make Christmas presents for their families. Our children will be very involved in planning and running this camp. Please pray for this children's camp!
We pray for you also: for our homechurch Sturgeon Valley Baptist in St Albert, for the church we grew-up in, St. Pauls Anglican in Edmonton, for our school community at Camilla in Riviere Qui Barre, and the children's Logos friends at Elmer Gish and Leo Nickerson in St Albert. We miss you and are very thankful for your prayers for our family and this camp. Please pray for safety for us at camp, and that our daily tasks here will have an eternal impact.
Thank you for you for reading this long blog. Please do e-mail us, and know we will reply as soon as we have internet.
Blessings on your upcoming week!
the Murrays
Camp life
Today is a camp day (Saturday). It is fun and noisy. It begins and end with piles of dishes to wash and dry.
Most camps are weekend camps. This weekend is a kids camp. The campers here came with youth leaders from a large evangelical camp in Guayaquil. Last weekend's camp was a teen camp, the youth from Guayaquil. You might not find Pallatanga on a map of Ecuador, as the nearest town is small. But Camp Pallatanga is about three hours drive from Guayaquil, on a highway that runs through past camp, through Pallatanga, then onto Riobamba, before continuing another four hours onto Quito, the capital of Ecuador. The 14 acres of camp property borders a steep hill at the back and the highway at the front.
It is the end of the dry season, so the grass is brown. There are lots of bugs trying to live with us. The “coffee flies” relentlessly rise from the brown grass and bite our feet, ankles, and legs. Our children's legs are covered in bites that both bleed and itch (but there's neither malaria or yellow fever here, due to our altitude = 4,000ft). The camp is virtually on the equator; so the sun rises and sets close to 6 each day. At mid-day, today, it was hot. Above 30 degrees. By evening it is cool again, as low as 17 degrees (we're thinking of you, as winter begins back in Alberta!!). Soon the rainy season will begin here. I am not looking forward to the increased number of bugs!!!!
The pace of the weekend is almost slower than the weekdays. Though the camp kitchen feels frantic just before meals, and is blaringly hot all day long. Lunch is the larger meal here. No sandwiches! Lunch and dinner are two-course cooked meals: soup first, then rice and likely potatoes too, served with meat, other vegetables are rarities. The snack shop is ahive of activity throughout the day, especially just before and after meals. The campers buy drinks (coffee for the adults, pop or bottled water for the kids), candies, chips, etc. With last year's snack shop money, the camp built a zip-line. I am signed up for zip-line suiting-up duty, tomorrow morning after breakfast.
Over the course of the weekend, we run around supplying the campers with anything they need: a projector, audio equipment, water-balloons, gym equipment (yes, there is a big open gym at the camp – which is lovely in the evenings when the fields are pitch black, and it will be such a blessing during the rainy season!!), field equipment (the go-carts need constant repair), etc. As well, we feed and clean-up after the campers. Our children have picked-up bags of garbage already this weekend. All the while, we know that God is at work, using this camp as a blessing to its campers. There is so much room to play here; it is so different from the city, where these children live.
Camp Pallatanga is working toward hosting more family camps and couple's retreats. Don has begun building bunks that will sleep couples on the bottom, as one step toward this goal. The camp has three dorm buildings. Each has six dorm rooms and bathrooms for girls and boys. The dorm rooms have bunks for as many as ten campers and as few as seven. We have a full camp this weekend.
When the campers leave tomorrow, the work really begins. Laundry, hundreds of sheets, as well as towels and wash-cloths from the kitchen. The camp has three washers and dryers, and it takes the week to get through washing and folding all of the laundry. Workers are here helping in the kitchen on the weekends. They come from town, beginning on Thursday, to help fold the clean laundry and prepare the dorms and kitchen. They bring their youngsters to work with them. This gives me lots of time to work on my spanish, cuddle babies while working, and help the local workers learn some english. In town too, through the week, we run run errands, replenishing the snack shop supplies, and buying a camp's worth of groceries in a spanish-only environment. Kim Orellana is a marvel in town, with her fantastic grasp of spanish, her efficient manner, and her patience for nothing ever being straightforward or on time.
Many town's people have asked for english language lessons. So more and more classes are being fitted into the week's schedule. One group of young single mom's are due to begin coming from town to the camp each Tuesday and Thursday morning for english classes. Other moms are looking for english classes for their children, on weekends. I am going to be as busy as I am able!
Then there is the camp to-do list. Three years ago, the camp began to build “the new house”. Simply stated, it needs to be completed. This is one of the projects that OMS hoped Don and I could help accomplish in our year here. The concrete structure is built, the roof is on, and some windows are in on the main floor. Otherwise, the house needs work. The “little house” that we are in now, is needed for the staff that come on weekends. So the plan is for us to complete the big house as soon as possible, then we would move into there for the remainder of the year.
The big house would be marvellous for homeschooling! Right now, I have three children working in the tiny kitchen, one in the livingroom (working on a folding table), and two in bedrooms (one at a desk and one working on a bed). Not ideal school circumstances. With five (sometimes six) students, ranging in grades kindergarten to grade seven, some need space, all need help, the big house would provide a much more suitable space for homeschooling. The big house is also being designed to be used a a couple's retreat spot. The four upstairs bedrooms will have double beds. There is a real need for instruction in marital faithfulness in the culture here; so the house has been designed with couple's retreats in mind for the future.
It will take discipline to make time to work on the big house, as there is so much maintenance begging attention around camp. Don's workshop days are long and laborious. He's begun to eat like a youth and sleep solidly. He comes back from the shop filthy each day, usually the dark forces him in, even though he's trying to keep his hours from 7am to 4pm. His main challenges lie in compromising and make-shifting using the tools he has to work with, to manufacture the things we could readily buy at home, like angle brackets, and go-cart axels. He's is really missing his own tools, especially his drill press, and some solid drill bits. Keeping the current tools working is a challenge too. The camp has an older tractor that does work. There's a broken ride-a-mower. There are two additional washing-machines at the camp that don't work. A large freezer in the camp kitchen that quit a week after its warranty ended. The camp has enough windows, screens, doors, toilets, showers, and roofs in need of a bit of love, to keep a gaggle of handy-men overwhelmed. All of this gives Don lots of time to work alongside, Julio, an 18 year-old camp worker who is eager to learn english, and interested in learning more about Christian faith, and Guido, full-time OMS missionary, and the camp manager.
Then there is the horse. The Orellanas purchased a young filly, the morning after we arrived at camp. So Don and I fit in horse-care morning and evening, and horse-training in our spare time. We've got her leading, and we're about to start her lunging. The Orellanas don't have experience with horses, but the girls are eager to learn.
Now the camp bell is being wrung, and the singing is about to begin in the dininghall/meeting-room. The over 100 kids are nearly exhausted from a full day of running around camp. The church leaders have been looking forward to this 6pm dusk, that will chase all of the campers into their devotional time. We know some of the campers will be dreaming about their chance to zip-line, tomorrow. So our work here is really all about supporting this thirty year-old ministry in Ecuador. Praying for the upcoming and ongoing camps, workers, and campers. Being witnesses to the locals that we work alongside. Thank you for praying for us and with us, as we pour ourselves into our work here. Please do let us know your questions and ideas, so we can keep you informed about our work here! And let us know how we can pray for you!
=) the Murrays
