Summer is here???
Saludos a todos!
It is now the month of May and Ecaudor has taken on more of a different feel after the hot and humid winter months slightly cooler night time breezes, not to mention that all of us volunteers are now rolling through our time now with retreat groups coming down and having a little bit more of an awareness of the culture and spanish language which helps a lot, notice that i didn´t say i understood the way of life or thought processes here, but more of an awareness.Also hard to believe that one year ago I graduated college in San Diego, time is a funny thing sometimes.
We have been blessed with the prescense of the Founder and Executive Director of Rostro de Cristo make their way down to Ecuador in the past month, both at different times.Executive Director Patrick came down for our more or less silent retreat at the beginning of this month to talk and share along with a very experienced Jesuit Priest/friend to lead the retreat in reflection and story telling. Great to have them here for the too short of a weekend which was very fruitful!Then our Founder Ftr. Ronan came down to check out the latest with the foundation and where we will be heading next, great to chat and have some great dinners with him.
We are very busy with retreat groups here from the states, Loyola Marymount (CA) just left and there´s another at the other house from Boston then my first group comes in three days from John Carrol U. from Ohio so i´m pretty excited about that!
Our In Country Director Kevin and three of us volunteers met up with the U.S. Consul General for Ecuador just to talk about our foundation and to see how they can support us and what not as a foundation so that was interesting hear about the Consul´s experiences and how they wanted to get involved somehow, obligation or not with foundations but nonetheless i was impressed...I then got a nice birthday lunch from Kevin afterwards so that made it better.
You know that its a different life here in Ecuador when my roommates asked me what I wanted for my birthday dinner last week and i said SOUP!!!
My tutoring work at the school Santiago has been goin better where the kids are much more disciplined and teachers are ready for class...most of the girls react well to it and are working hard while there´s still some very difficult girls to deal with, they still call me ¨Hello¨. So when they call upon me they say, ´Hello, venga por favor´ which is just ´Come here please´ put its done in the classic Ecuadorian whiny voice that can be annoying.
Our after school program is goin good, more activities and we have our retreat groups run it sometimes which is fun for us.
Fellow volunteer Jenny´s family is here right now hangin out and traveling and also took us out for a great meal! They are a super nice Midwestern family from Iowa so I had a fun time talking to them while laying off the Iowa jokes that us Minnesota folk have a tendency to do.
I´m goin to try and get a few pics on here soon, its very difficult to do it at cyber cafes so we´ll see.
Prayer Requests:
1. Retreat groups that are here and coming and us as leaders that Christ will guide and make them think and be challenged.
2. For Alison, volunteer, as she tries to understand and recover during her time in the states that she will come back to Ecuador soon.
3. Our neighbors in Arbolito that they will continue to unite in order to improve their situation.
4. For my cousin Chris that his pain will lessen and he will be on the road to recovery with his back.
Thanks for the prayers and thoughts as time goes on, for those of in education enjoy the summer off and for the rest of you, enjoy your next weekend!
Blessings!
Sam Conway
It is now the month of May and Ecaudor has taken on more of a different feel after the hot and humid winter months slightly cooler night time breezes, not to mention that all of us volunteers are now rolling through our time now with retreat groups coming down and having a little bit more of an awareness of the culture and spanish language which helps a lot, notice that i didn´t say i understood the way of life or thought processes here, but more of an awareness.Also hard to believe that one year ago I graduated college in San Diego, time is a funny thing sometimes.
We have been blessed with the prescense of the Founder and Executive Director of Rostro de Cristo make their way down to Ecuador in the past month, both at different times.Executive Director Patrick came down for our more or less silent retreat at the beginning of this month to talk and share along with a very experienced Jesuit Priest/friend to lead the retreat in reflection and story telling. Great to have them here for the too short of a weekend which was very fruitful!Then our Founder Ftr. Ronan came down to check out the latest with the foundation and where we will be heading next, great to chat and have some great dinners with him.
We are very busy with retreat groups here from the states, Loyola Marymount (CA) just left and there´s another at the other house from Boston then my first group comes in three days from John Carrol U. from Ohio so i´m pretty excited about that!
Our In Country Director Kevin and three of us volunteers met up with the U.S. Consul General for Ecuador just to talk about our foundation and to see how they can support us and what not as a foundation so that was interesting hear about the Consul´s experiences and how they wanted to get involved somehow, obligation or not with foundations but nonetheless i was impressed...I then got a nice birthday lunch from Kevin afterwards so that made it better.
You know that its a different life here in Ecuador when my roommates asked me what I wanted for my birthday dinner last week and i said SOUP!!!
My tutoring work at the school Santiago has been goin better where the kids are much more disciplined and teachers are ready for class...most of the girls react well to it and are working hard while there´s still some very difficult girls to deal with, they still call me ¨Hello¨. So when they call upon me they say, ´Hello, venga por favor´ which is just ´Come here please´ put its done in the classic Ecuadorian whiny voice that can be annoying.
Our after school program is goin good, more activities and we have our retreat groups run it sometimes which is fun for us.
Fellow volunteer Jenny´s family is here right now hangin out and traveling and also took us out for a great meal! They are a super nice Midwestern family from Iowa so I had a fun time talking to them while laying off the Iowa jokes that us Minnesota folk have a tendency to do.
I´m goin to try and get a few pics on here soon, its very difficult to do it at cyber cafes so we´ll see.
Prayer Requests:
1. Retreat groups that are here and coming and us as leaders that Christ will guide and make them think and be challenged.
2. For Alison, volunteer, as she tries to understand and recover during her time in the states that she will come back to Ecuador soon.
3. Our neighbors in Arbolito that they will continue to unite in order to improve their situation.
4. For my cousin Chris that his pain will lessen and he will be on the road to recovery with his back.
Thanks for the prayers and thoughts as time goes on, for those of in education enjoy the summer off and for the rest of you, enjoy your next weekend!
Blessings!
Sam Conway
posted by Sam Conway | 4:57 PM
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