Yesterday was THE day for the group.  We spent the day with the kids we sponsor through Compassion International.  Those of you who have experienced this understand that words can’t describe it. 

They ranged in age from about 7 to a teenager in the Leadership Development Program.  We met in a park and gave them some gifts and just hung out and played together for awhile.  Then lunch was served ( Kentucky Fried Chicken and papas ).  The group ( 65 strong ) loaded into two buses and headed for an amusement park and our kids got  to ride roller coasters and such and play all kinds of games.

 Several highlights for me:

     - meeting the mothers of my sponsored kids ( my wife and I have visited three times now  but never met a parent)

     - finding out that Compassion is paying all the medical bills for my Compassion son Richard who has epilepsy

     - taking my kids to the mall to buy lunch for the group and watching them ride escalators and elevators for only the second time in their lives

     - Richards mother  ( Azucena ) rode all the crazy roller coasters and such and said it was a beautiful day for her because she could just forget about all her problems

     - seeing the hearts of my group melt in the hands of these kids

     - finding out that the mother of  Tom and Pam Patton’s sponsored child accepted Jesus into her heart in a park in the middle of  Quito simply as a result of Tom asking her

Saying good-bye to these kids just stinks but it was a very good, difficult, beautiful day.

-rick

The team arrived safe and mostly sound on time last night.  They were tired from a long day of travel but all is well.  We will travel about an hour by bus this morning to the south of Quito for a vistit to project EC124.  We will learn about Compassion International’s CSP (Child Survival Program).  But not only learn about it, we get to go into the home of one  of the children to visit them and see the program in action.  A few surprises await the rest of the team today.  One is that one of our members will get to meet his sponsored student a day ahead of the rest of us.  It’s going to be a great day.

-rick