A week ago, we were at Heathrow airport, saying our goodbyes and taking our first Step in our journey to Ecuador. We were welcomed by Jessie and Abby at the airport and the team was finally United! We temporarily lost one bag along the way, but a few days later it was successfully returned which was a huge answer to prayer!

Since then, we’ve thrown ourselves into life in Ecuador, learning about the traditional food, testing out our Spanish and meeting lots of lovely people. We started off in the bustling city of Santo Domingo, being guided through our days by Abby and Katy. We’ve had some in-country orientation sessions with them to ensure that our transition into life in Ecuador is as smooth as possible.

We then moved on to Orphaids, which is a children’s home where we’ll be spending our weekends. Although we haven’t had the chance to meet many children yet, we look forward to getting to know them over the next few months.

On Sunday we attended our first church service in Santo Domingo, led by Pastor William. We were warmly welcomed by the congregation, and while we didn’t understand most of the service (our Spanish isn’t quite there yet..!) it was so lovely to experience church in a new culture.

We’re now at the campamento – we arrived yesterday and met Hermano Milton and Hermana Nelly, who have kindly let us stay in the house they’re renovating which is at the top of the camp. It’s so beautiful and peaceful and we’re so grateful that we can spend our weeks working here, helping to start off the work on the campamento and motivate the church to get involved with it too!

Thank you for your prayers in this first stage of our trip – we’ve been helped through this week knowing that God is holding us up and keeping us safe through all we do, and that his plan goes beyond what we could ever imagine.

Please pray for our continued health, safety and peace as we settle into our life in Ecuador. Also pray for our Spanish to progress so that we can make meaningful connections with people out here and share our love of God with them through everything we do.

¡Gracias!

Abi, Charlotte, Kate, Jessie and Lily