Reflections of Refinement: ECUADOR & BACK TO LIMA PLUS SOME CHICKENS>>>

Our great adventure to Ecuador was one of those things where you have a basic idea of the plan and a few ideas of how it will come together. But in the end it's really not much like you thought it would be at all.

We started out our trip by going to Piura. Jose has family there and we have connected with a Missionary there too. Our main purpose was to really just visit and see what it's like there. Piura is a region but there is also a city called Piura. That is where we went. After living in a big city it's easy to forget that Peru is a developing country. In Lima we have many modern conveniences that are similar to America. Fast food, better roads, etc.. There are still dirt roads and shacks for houses in many parts of Piura.

We still aren't sure if the city of Piura is where we will end up or if we will be going to another area. Jose's family was telling us about an area close by that is full of witch doctors, its called Huancabamba- Piura, Peru. There are several parts of the region that don't have even one church. The word of God is so needed there. It's hard to know where to start.

Slums as far as the eye can see

Another shot of condense poverty

This is a Pastor's church we talked too

That's the Pastor in green and the other guy is Jose.

He is doing AMAZING things in the slums. NO JOKE.

House made out of straw/i think bamboo sticks

Sunday night we took a bus back to Piura. The bus left at 8pm and I was feeling under the weather. We were going to cross the border around 2 am . After we were on the bus for awhile something woke me up. It sounded like...a chicken? no, several chickens. And it was. A lady with a cage full of chickens got on the bus at the second stop and stayed on all the way to Piura. Those chickens would screech and all the rest would start to chatter at each other. Then the lady who brought them would "sh-sh-sh-sh" as if they were a fussing child. It was ridiculous.

Once we go to the border we found out that the system was shut down and we had to wait for 1 hour for them to turn it on, so we waited till about 3 something in the morning. It wasn't fun trying to switch buses and 6 people luggage's (jose+kat+the 2 boys+mine+jose's dad stuff) from one bus to another at that hour either once we went from Ecuador into Peru.

From Piura we took another bus which was much nicer and more comfortable to get home. The trip was Monday night-Tuesday morning. It was a 16 hour bus trip.

Now we have 90ish days to get our visas or leave the country again (Feb. 20 is the date all this needs to happen by). Please pray that God would provide the finances for the visas for 5 people which is $2,000. The trip we took was an adventure, just not something I want to be doing every 3 months. Thank you all for keeping us in prayer while we were traveling. We saw the hand of God in many ways.

Here are some pictures of Ecuador. It was an amazing place, NOTHING I expected.