We  are staying in Manta, Equador this week.  Our host missionaries, David and Monica, have arranged for us to eat our meals at the home of Nelly and Cristabal.  They are friends from their church.  The food has been wonderful.  We have been able to minister to their family as well.

On Saturday, a few groups went out from the church to share the gospel and invite them to an MMA event next week.  Joe and Monica were able to share with a few different families.  Joe taught Biblical Manhood to a group at the church on Saturday evening. 

(This is the family that makes and serves our meals.  Nelly, Cristobal, Leonardo, Joselyne, Crisnel, and Andres.  Andres was at school when this picture was taken.)

(These are our host missionaries, David, Monica, Micaela, Isabella, David, and Christina.)


On Sunday, we went to church.  AC preached the sermon on the purpose of the church. 

The head pastor, Tony and his wife, Joy are missionaries from the U.S.  They have lived in Ecuador for 23 years!  Monica also introduced Joe and I to the director of an orphanage here.  She said that we would get to go spend time at the orphanage on Wednesday!!

Then after lunch we went to the beach at Murcielago to swim before Pastor David shared his open air evangelism.  Nathan helped A C and Stephen Goodwin with the MMA demonstration.

Joe taught Multiplication last night after dinner to the family that makes our meals, one of the pastors and his family and some other neighbors!  They said that they had never heard this teaching.

Hola!  We have had an eventful week here in Ecuador.  We flew on three planes to finally make it to Manta, Ecuador on Tuesday morning.  We were picked up by David and Monica, the missionaries here. We rested on Tuesday at a hotel here.  (It reminds me of the places we stayed on youth retreats in Florida, except it is not on the beach.)

On Wednesday, we drove to a very remote village.  We stopped to eat lunch in a town called Santa Ana.  We arrived in the country about dinnertime.  The men in the village worked for about a week to clear a path for our vans to drive the last mile to their village.  They were very excited for christian fellowship.  Each of our three families was assigned to a host family.  Our family was assigned to Rukaado and Digna. 

They were wonderful to us!  They live in a beautiful bamboo home.  We were able to share our testimony with them. They are going through infertility like we did.  Our team shared the gospel with children at two of the village schools and with some of the families in the evening.  David shares the gospel while he paints a picture that continually changes to depict what he is saying.  Monica, David, and their family share a moving drama to music.  A C, Stephen Goodwin and some of the smaller kids use MMA (mixed martial arts) to share the gospel.  We also handed out some of the cards that the kids from Getwell Road UMC VBS drew last week.  Abby was able to give the card that she drew to a girl named Sandy. The next day we found out that Sandy lived in a home near where we were staying.  I tried to add more pictures but the internet connection here is not very good.