A lot can happen in a month.  

You may have heard, but our friend Pedro had a heart attack at the young age of 30 in the beginning of August.  Ivan was with him when it happened.  They were in Tena, about 5 hours away from Quito when it happened and so Pedro ended up in the hospital in Tena.  Upon arrival, they immediately ran a COVID test which came back positive and so he was placed in the COVID patient ward.  There's a lot of details and you can follow Pedro's specific progress and situation through the gofundme page we set up.  But since this is my blog, I'm telling my story.  Since Ivan was with Pedro (and had been with him for several days prior) we erred on the side of caution and assumed he was also at risk for COVID (or a carrier of it) so when he arrived home, he immediately went into self-quarantine in our guest room for the next two weeks (didn't quite make it to two weeks, instead we did a covid test which came back negative and we let him out).  But man, those days felt like eternity.  

During his self-quarantine, Pedro was released from the hospital but under the assumption that he was still a covid risk, he also self-quarantined at our "compound".  Which meant that I was cooking for and caring for all the people.  If you know me, then you know the kitchen is not my forte.  Yikes.  It was just an extremely exhausting time on all levels.  Cooking and sending meals to each person without contact and then figuring out how to handle the dish washing etc.  Trying to explain to Benji that yes Daddy was home but no, he couldn't come hang out with us.  (Cue the scene from Frozen "do you want to build a snowman").  Insert <breakdown> here.  We all survived.

Once Ivan was in the clear, he whisked Benji and I away to the beach for a few days (thanks to friends sharing their beach house with us!) and it was exactly what I needed after the crazy.  Just the 3 of us on a vacation (something I don't think we've ever done before!).  It was Benji's first time to see the ocean so it was super fun to experience that.  It was the reboot, or reset or refreshment that I needed and I felt like I came back home with renewed energy.  A week later, we headed to the coast again, but this time with our nephew in tow and to visit friends in Guayaquil.  We have two friends who have been working to start up YL in the city of Guayaquil and after several failed attempts to visit them, we just went for it.  I had a lot of mixed feelings (some fear) since Guayaquil was in the news a lot with covid and not for good reasons.  But we did what we could to be safe and the rest we put in God's hands.  Somewhere in there, I started getting messages about my dad and that he went to the emergency room for extreme stomach pain that he was in.  Thankfully, in the end it was something that a quick surgery could fix and he's doing well.  However, in the moment, it was hard to get lots of details and I was not always with internet so it felt hard to know what to do.  Then we took a round about way home, so that we could drop our nephew off at his home in Shell.  Lots of long hours in the car!  

Here we are in the first week of September!  We made it!  

One day at a time my friends and we will make it!  That has been my mantra.  Elizabeth Elliot said "Do the next thing."  When life is overwhelming or you don't know what God is asking you to do, just do the next thing.  Whether it is washing the laundry or making a meal or writing a friend.  When things feel uncertain or fear creeps in, just do the next thing. 

Mask wearing continues to be required in public

Olon, Ecuador

Family time!

This boy!

September Ministry Update