Home at Last!

We arrived back on the HVA campus at about 2 PM today. We were tired after traveling all night and morning. While I know we are glad to be home, I think at least a small part of each of us wishes we were back in Galapagos.

Our trip was very uneventful. Our luggage made it also! I was worried for a few minutes when I saw pink tagged luggage on a baggage cart outside the plane about the time the flight attendants started the safety spiel. I’ve become accustomed to having the safety spiel take place as we are taxing out the runway. Thinking we were about to pull away from the gate, I panicked a bit and flagged down the flight attendant to briefly explain our situation. She brushed me off and said “They’ll get it all on.” We watched as the luggage cart pulled away. Fortunately it just pulled around to the front of the plane and they loaded the remaining pieces of luggage in the front of the plane. What a relief. All the luggage was present and accounted for in DC.

This will probably be the last (or one of the last) posts on this blog. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed reading/seeing just a small snippet of our adventures.

For those of you in the Hagerstown area, the HVA vespers program this Friday night (Apr. 9) will be a report on the mission trip. Vespers will be at 7:30 PM in the HVA church. All are welcome to attend.

Final Sabbath

We are currently waiting for our plane to Atlanta in the Guayaquil airport. Our plane should leave in about an hour.

Today we slept in a little, had breakfast (for more details on that, see the comment under the last post). We had a “church” worship service together in our hostel. The last three people gave their testimonies and we had some journal sharing time.  Then we had lunch, and most of the group went to El Parque Historico de Guayaquil, a park that has been developed to show what 19th century Guayaquil looked like. There were three parts. The first part was a “zoo” with animals native to coastal Ecuador. The second had buildings (a huge mansion and a hospice) and a malecon that depicted city life. And the last part depicted country life. There was a large country home that would have been used by a rich family for a 3-4 month vacation every 2-3 years. There was also reed tree “house” that the workers at the country house would have lived in. The kids seemed to really enjoy themselves. We were in a hurry and they kept stopping to take picture after picture.

After the park we hurried back to the hotel, loaded our luggage on the bus in record time, and headed to the mercado (market). Our friend, Pablo, from the Union somehow convinced the mercado to stay open 2 extra hours so  that we could do some souvenir shopping. Then it was off to the mall for a quick supper in the food court and a mad dash to the airport.

What a big sigh of relief to be able to relax for a few minutes before we board. Speaking of boarding…that process has begun, so I better run.

Arrived safely in Guayaquil

Well, we have arrived safely in Guayaquil.  We are at the hostal where we will spend the night.  Everyone is ready to move into their rooms, but currently we are waiting to find out which rooms we will be using.  By the way, this is Mr. Sager and I have hijacked the blog.  The flight from San Cristobal to the mainland was uneventful..as was the trip to the mall to enjoy some air conditioning.  We were supposed to go to the mercado, but sadly, we could not go,  as it closed early on account of Good Friday. It is possible that the market will stay open a little late for us on Saturday night, so there is still hope.

Yesterday, we went on a big excusion to three locations.  First, Isla Lobos, where we could swim with Lobos (Sea Lions) and marine iguanas.  Marine iguanas only live in the Galapagos Islands.  Then we were off to Leon Dormido (Sleeping Lion).  Some extreme snorkeling to say the least.  Some of us were fortunate enough to see a shark.  Then we went to Puerto Grande, a beautiful deserted beach, where we had lunch and met up with the small band of lucky fishermen and fisherwomen.  We had about an hour to swim and then we headed back to town.  The fishing group was incredibly lucky and caught a wahoo on the way back to town.  ¡It was deliciosa!

I am sure that Jennifer will give you pictures at some point, but I had the opportunity and she was watching Denali, so I thought I’d post something.  It does appear that we now have all been assigned rooms.  I am going to go move in!  Thanks for all your prayers throughout this trip!  The kids have enjoyed hearing your comments!  Also, if you are part of the HVA Galapagos Facebook group, you can check out a few videos I uploaded there. 

¡Hasta luego!  DSager

Project Update

I would like to apologize for not writing a whole lot about our work projects in the blog. To be honest I haven’t been to the church since Sabbath. I’ve been going to VBS in the morning and holding down home base (the hotel) during the afternoon while Denali takes a nap. I’ve been having enough trouble keeping up that I haven’t gone recruiting work site stories. I feel bad not reporting on it though since the project is the reason we are here.

I went to the church briefly tonight and got to see the fruits of our labors. The inside of the church has a new coat of paint. The walls are yellow and the pillars/accents are a terra cotta color.

The bars on the windows were also repainted…black. The kids said the paint was almost like tar. Many of them are still sporting it on their bodies. The other day we thought Katie Y. had a new tattoo on her upper arm. It was just paint. (Glad we didn’t have to try to explain a tattoo to her parents. Haha)

A new black wrought iron gate has been installed. It looks nice and slides open and closed very smoothly. The Pastor Fernando is super excited about having the gate!

The most labor intensive part of the project was the sidewalk. The church is built on a corner and we put in sidewalks on two sides of the church (the sides next to the streets). They had to dig up the remnants of the sidewalk in front of the church, dig down deeper, remove rocks that were in the way, etc. Some of the rocks were so big there was no hope getting them out so they dug around them to bury them deeper. Tonight I saw some of the big rocks they removed and I was impressed. They were the size of well I’m not sure what…how about a couple or three very large watermelons melded together.

They also poured concrete in the space between the church building and the wall surrounding the church. It is a space about 8 feet wide and runs the length of the church. The preparation for cement also required some significant dirt/rock moving.

That’s all I’m going to write for tonight. Need to go to bed early tonight (for once).

Thanks for tuning in. At last count we had 63 comments and 5,555 hits on the blog with today (Wed.) being the busiest day. WOW! If there are as many prayers going up as hits on the blog…….

Tuesday

Tuesday was a work/VBS day. They continued painting the inside of the church and poured the concrete sidewalk on the outside of the church.

At VBS they continued the David theme and talked about David and Goliath. The kids got to play a modified version of pin the tail on the donkey…it was throw a pebble and hit Goliath in the forehead. Only one child hit Goliath squarely in the forehead.

For supper our whole group went to a restaurant in town called Miconia. The restaurant is on the second story. There is a wonderful view of the bay and the malecon. We preordered our food so that the cooks would be able to prepare food for so many people at the same time in their tiny kitchen. There was a bit of miscommunication about our dietary restrictions so we ended up with somewhat of a fiasco. We asked for a vegetarian pizza with no cheese. We were expecting one with all the veggies mentioned on said pizza on the menu. Instead we got two pizzas with only crust and tomato sauce. At our request they added some veggies for us….cauliflower and broccoli. Not exactly what we were expecting, but it was pretty tasty. We were expecting the fettuccini alfredo to be vegetarian. It was not. It had ham in it. They graciously made hamless versions for us. Needless to say our dinner took significantly longer than we had planned, but we had a fun time together.

After worship we had an early lights out.

I think Victoria has the record for sea turtles seen in one day. She’s pretty sure she saw 13 different ones on Tuesday morning. That’s amazing! (I saw 4.)

Photos of Critters

Here are some photos of some of the critters we have seen.

Spider between the tablecloth and vinyl cover.

Roach & Mrs. Sager’s Finger

Sea Lion & Pelicano

Pelicano 2

Lizard

More Sea Lions

More Sea Lions

Crabs

Pelicano

Iguana

Frigate Birds

Sea lions enjoying the beach.

Spider comes to VBS.

Sea Lions “guarding” our stuff at the beach.

Sea Lion

Chicken

ALL LUGGAGE HAS ARRIVED!

The remaining luggage arrived a this afternoon! (Even one piece of luggage we were told yesterday could not come because it did not clear customs.) We are blessed and thankful. On a sad note…one person had some cash in a gate checked carry-on and it is no longer in the bag. I haven’t heard any other news of that sort…hopefully I won’t!