As we walk to and from the office we see many different people in need. One day as we were headed to the office we noticed a woman trying to push her large vendor cart onto the sidewalk. Lynn helped her get her cart up on the sidewalk. As he was walking away he looked down and saw a five dollar bill, which he picked up. I told him that was his pay for his good deed so he won’t get the blessings. He’ll have to wait for his next opportunity for the blessings.
As I’ve mentioned before, this month is zone conferences. Tuesday they had combined zone conference for three zones, which included about 30 companionships. This made for a very large group and Sis. Richardson had Lynn and I go and help with the lunch. Since it was Tuesday and that’s two for one pizza day at Papa John’s they had pizza, salad and Sister Richardson’s delicious lemon bars. We enjoy meeting with these young missionaries and feel of their enthusiasm.
Sister Allred is doing very well as she is learning all that she’s supposed to do. She does well on the computer and is a very self-assured and self-confident person. She’s not shy about asking questions and digs right in to get the work done. It’s nice to have her here. We still miss Sister Thomas but Sister Allred is working out well in her place.
I’ve been working on gathering all the needed pictures for our mission Christmas card that we will have printed for the missionaries. A lot of the missionaries were here last year and I can use the same one but I’ve been trying to make sure that the picture we have for each missionary is a nice one, with a nice smile. For the most part that has been easy, since we try to take their pictures when they arrive and one of them is a picture with them smiling. One Elder came in to the office a while ago and said that he didn’t want to have the one that was used last year used for this year’s Christmas card. When I looked at the picture I knew why. It was the same picture that he had on his passport, which usually does not have you smiling. He said he would send me a better one. He came in the office again this week and since I hadn’t received a new picture yet from him I took one that was very nice, showing his beautiful smile.
Sister Richardson sometimes calls and asks me to send her pictures of the missionaries for one reason or another. Since I’ve been organizing the pictures on the computer using Picasa it makes it really easy. I just type in the name in the search bar and it will bring up pictures for that missionary. Picasa has a face recognition feature that works really well and I can find pictures pretty quickly. Sister Richardson wants to have displayed in the mission home pictures of the missionaries that will be leaving and then give them one of them or a collage made of several of them. I’ve enjoyed helping her to gather those pictures.
Another project that I worked on was maps of the world showing where our missionaries come from or place of origin. I found and printed out maps of different areas of the world and then printed out a list of those missionaries who came from that area. I put them up this last week and it has caught the eye of missionaries as they have come into the office. They seem to like to find their name and the names of those who are also from that area. It was fun to put together.
This Saturday the senior missionaries took a train ride on the Tren Ecuador from Quito to Boliche and back, which was about 59km and took about 8 hours. We all took taxes to the Eloy Alfaro train station in Chimbacalle (which is at the southern end of Quito. We found that the first part of our journey would need to be a 30 to 40 minute bus ride, since part of the track between Quito and the next train stop was damaged. I was a bit nervous about the whole trip since two out of our last few trips I’ve ended up with motion sickness. I talked with the mission nurse, Sis. Holbrook, and she had some travel sickness medicine that I could take. She said to take two tablets, they were chewable, about one hour before leaving and it would take care of me for the whole day. It proved to help a lot as I didn’t get sick, even with the bus ride. As we were on the bus our guide pointed out ten volcanoes that we could see as we traveled along the road. We learned that Ecuador has about 60 volcanoes. As we arrived at the train station to board the train our bus driver had to back the bus up the street to where they let us off, turning sharp corners on the way. I marveled at his ability to just barely miss the corners of buildings and not to even have a spotter to help him. At one corner the corner of one roof was just inches from my window. It was amazing.
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| I asked Lynn to hold my hat while I took some pictures. I guess the best place he could find was on his head. |
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| A real close call by the driver. The corner of this roof was just inches away from my window. |
The train ride was at a nice slow speed as we traveled through the country side. Many times we would see people along the way waving from their back yards, some working in their fields. We made one 30-minute stop at Machachi station, which had musicians playing and horses with riders in authentic native costumes. Sister Allred got on one of the horses and looked right at home, since she is from Texas and has horses of her own back home that she is probably missing.
As we traveled back it started to rain and there was cloud cover hiding most of the volcanoes we had seen on our way to Boliche. As we pulled into the train station where we were to board our bus for the ride back to Quito there were two missionaries standing by the side of the tracks. Since this area is in the Quito mission the senior couples from that mission knew these elders and visited with them before we boarded the bus to head home to Quito. By the time we returned to Quito it had stopped raining.
A little background of the railway line we traveled part way on:
The construction of the Ecuadorian railroad began in the late 1800’s and by 1908 the stretch between Quito to Guayaquil was completed. Nowadays some of the tracks have been refurbished and offer a unique way to discover Ecuador’s contrasting landscapes. Lynn asked if you could ride the train all the way to Guayaquil. They said you could but it would take four days and three nights, with layovers. It would take you through the majestic landscapes of the Andean highlands to the endless planes of the Coast. It would be quite the experience but probably not one we will be able to enjoy.
Here is a status update of our grandson Matt by his mother, Heather.
Matthew is still on the right path, getting better and better each day. He has seen a few doctors since he got out of the hospital, and is now down to just one medicine. He will be seeing a few more over the next few weeks. Provided that he doesn't have any incidents in that time, they anticipate he will be off the last one late in October.
When asked if there are any lingering effects, I would say he only has two. His left side still has trouble keeping up with all he tries to do. He can do most anything he attempts, but his left leg and arm may not support him. This is especially important to watch as he leans on his arms for support or runs on uneven ground.
The second is that he still has a hard time with his temperature. He is regularly cold, even when it is 75-80 degrees out. We just have him wear warm clothes and socks almost all the time and this seems to do the trick.
Again, we thank so many if you for your support and prayers through this time. We are so grateful for our miracle Matt.
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