Sharing our Ecuador Mission Story
Sunday, March 14, 2010 | 4:30 – 6:00 pm
Woodside Bible Fellowship, 200 Barnswallow Drive, Elmira

Jeremy Horne
for the Life Change Adventures team

Hey folks, as many of you know a team of people from Woodside are going to Ecuador in  February to work on several projects there. To help support the trip we are putting on a breakfast and labour/silent auction at Woodside. Details below:

Breakfast & Labour/Silent Auction on Saturday, January 23rd

• Location: Woodside Bible Fellowship (Fellowship Hall)
• Cost: No Cost. Freewill offering.
• Breakfast Served from 8:30 – 10:30 am (sausage, eggs, muffins and more!).
• Auction starts at 9:30 am

Some items being auctioned:

• labour (for household jobs etc.), babysitting, wedding video services, personal chef services, computer services, reflexology session, new canon photo printer, and more.

Team members include: Dave Paisley, Nick Freeman, Luke Frey, Ben Brown, Zack Krasovec, Becky Martin, Esther Schwarz, Alex Smyth, Luke Hiller, Gord Ayton and Caleb Neumeister.

Hope you can make it!

Running & Reading

Thursdays from 3:30-5:30pm at Cedarbrae School in Waterloo
The KidsFest Running & Reading Club is a unique, life-changing program offered to socio-economically challenged children across Canada. The program seeks to enhance literacy skills, improve physical fitness, and increase social interaction among elementary school participants.
Get more info at RunningAndReading.ca

Sunnydale Connect

Wednesday evenings from 6:30-8:30pm
Sunnydale Connect is a teen drop in program situated directly in the Sunnydale Community. It serves to build self-esteem, leadership, and provide alternative activities for the teenagers of Sunnydale.

You’re invited to join us for a special fund raising event. Enjoy a delicious dinner, special musical entertainment and silent and public auctions.

Single Ticket: $10  /  Family Rate: $25

Sunday, October 18, 2009
4pm-8pm at The Cressman Barn
#1433 Berlett’s Rd., St. Agatha

For more information, contact:
Marie Weber: 519-746-8565
Alice Horst: 519-699-4055

Contact us at info@lifechangeadventures.org or check out our Ride page here.

– Dan Ballantyne

1. Entry into the Dutch Oven Contest

Last year we had 25 contestants and it was  a great hit.  My hope this year is to have 50+ contestants.  All first time contestants will receive free entry into the contest.  The cost is $10 for returning contestants. If you don’t have a dutch oven we can provide you with one.  All you would have to provide is the food for whatever dish you would choose.  There is a special category for first time contestants which is an open category (i.e.. it doesn’t have to be a dessert or main dish, whatever you choose).  Teams of two are also welcome to enter if you have someone you wish to do this with.  The time commitment would be from 2:30 PM to 5:30 pm.

(For those of you who don’t know what a dutch oven is… it is a heavy cast iron pot with a heavy lid.  Food gets put in the dutch oven and cooked like a normal oven dish.  Heat is added by piling hot coals on the bottom and top of the dutch oven and is controlled by how many coals you put on.  Any dish such a French bread, stews, or apple pie, can be made in a dutch oven.  We will have experts that will be available to help out if you need a few pointers or have questions.)

2. Purchase Tickets to the Fundraiser 

The fundraiser is an enjoyable time to sit around, enjoy some food, and learn about what Crane Lake is doing.  The cost for tickets is $15 for adults, $5 for 6-12 years, and free for 5 and under.  There are many activities provided for children.  If you are interested in tickets please get back to me and I can provide you with some.  Email me at brian@lifechangeadventures.org

Thank you for all your support.  Please pass this on to anyone who you feel might be interested or call/email me back with questions.

Cheers,

Brian Stubbs

Living in Onzole are 500 descendants of African slaves whose ship crashed on the shore of Ecuador many generations ago.  There is no running water or indoor plumbing. Showers are just a bucket of rain water and toilets a bucket of water poured in for the gravity flush. We spent the week sleeping on Thermarests on the concrete floor. After the 35 hours of transit from my home, the accommodations almost felt comfortable.

How do you describe an experience that stretched you physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually? An experience that required your very best effort and still seemed to be asking for more? Perhaps the best way is to break it down and provide just a few highlights in each area. It doesn’t come close to doing it justice, but it’s a start.

Physically
Going into this trip I was feeling pretty good about my fitness and strength. In September, I joined the YMCA and had access to a personal trainer once a week. I knew that rebuilding a school in Ecuador would be physically demanding. Swinging a pick axe (when the sun was beating down on me I could only do about 10 swings before needing a break!) and mixing concrete with shovels all day pushed my back to the limit. What I didn’t know was that I would see seventy year old men with abs of steel and muscles to match in this tiny village. Hard physical work on the land around their homes and a diet of rice, plantain, and fish gave them incredible physiques.

Mentally
I spent most of the trip wishing my limited Spanish vocabulary was more robust.  On two occasions, a small group of us were invited into the home of one of the teachers to share dinner with them. We had a few gifts for the family and I was trying to figure out how to explain it to them and express my gratitude.  All I could manage in my tired stupor was to say “familia” over and over again as I placed the gifts on the table.

Socially
One of our students on the trip, a recent graduate from Queens, remarked that we have a big personal space bubble in North America. We can find ourselves uncomfortable just sitting on the same park bench as someone else. While in church on our first day, a few of the kids slipped under the bench and sat beside me. At one point, I felt a prickling sensation in my left shoulder, only to discover one of the little boys pulling my shoulder hair! This progressed to include my underarm hair as well, and over the course of the week I had kids poking my innie belly button (another novelty) and rubbing my chest to see if there was any skin beneath the hair on my chest. Talk about having your personal space invaded!

Spiritually
My role on the trip was to work alongside Nikki Horne (who can usually be found running the sponsorship program for the school in Bastion) to help the participants in this trip learn from their experience and to make spiritual/life applications. We were there to make sure that this wasn’t just a cool trip to help some people, but a life changing experience for all. We wanted to help them figure out how to apply what they had learned here to their situations back home. We sought to come alongside the participants personally, to get to know them and help them process what they were experiencing.

To Sum up
We mixed and poured a lot of concrete to fix the school foundation, built huge dividers for the classrooms, painted others, and parged walls. We worked with the people to fix up a school that was falling apart and didn’t have the funding to continue. Life Change Adventures, along with Nikki Horne and Dale Horst, will be continuing this work with the next group to put on a tin roof and finish what we started. They have made a commitment to see the school completed and to decide with the community what the priorities are in terms of health care, water systems, education, and work skills.

Just before we left one of the mothers stood up, and shared the following with us through a translator:

“What you have done for us is bigger than huge.  It is enormous. We are an isolated community and the government has forgotten us. But you Canadians have remembered us. As you go away please, please, please, please don’t forget us.”

Those words are a little haunting to me as I return home to the busyness of my life. I am glad to say that Life Change Adventures has made an ongoing commitment to the community, and who knows maybe I will return someday to help further their efforts.

Thanks for being part of the community of support we so desperately need around us. We can do so little alone.

Sincerely,
Dan

We were finally able to sleep after unloading the bus, going to our assigned rooms, getting acquainted with our Ecuadorian roommates, and setting up, with much frustration and confusion in some cases, our protective bug nets. The next few days were spent in getting acquainted with the ridiculously hot sun, getting to know the Ecuadorians through fun games and playing “a la playas” (at the beach), and learning how to effectively show God’s love and share the gospel with the campers who would be coming in a few short days.

These sessions proved to be incredibly interesting as half of the sessions were not translated. God has blessed our team with teammates who are fluent enough in Spanish to help the rest of the team out when situations prove to be incredibly difficult regarding our understanding of the Spanish language. It’s safe to say that our Spanish-English dictionaries have been put to many, many uses! Others, including myself, have found the language barrier to be quite overwhelming as most of the Ecuadorians speak very little English and communication is extremely difficult. But the Ecuadorians are most understanding and they love to help us with our pronunciation and understanding of the language. 1

As the days have passed, I have seen many team members reaching out and really trying to work the language. Sure, a few laughs are most certainly sure to follow, but trying to understand and experiment with the language really helps to make relationships with these beautiful people. Ecuadorians are absolutely hilarious! They love to have fun, make jokes, and laugh! Everywhere you look our Ecuadorian friends are always accompanied with a smile, which is incredibly refreshing for those of us who are extremely tired! It is so humbling to see the way these people are so open to new comers, how they welcome you with open arms, and how they accept you no matter what. They are truly inspiring and God has challenged me many, many times in the past few days with regards to my behaviour, my thoughts, my actions and anything else that could be challenged.

Participating in this mission’s trip has already been amazingly full of blessings of all types and sizes. Blessings in the form of health concerns (colds, mosquitoes, voices being lost etc. to help us rely more on God and his amazing power), relationships being formed with Ecuadorian campers and leaders, and unity within our own team. God is really amazing and his presence is definitely apparent in this beautiful country.

I feel like this letter does no justice for our actual experience. It is so hard to express in words everything that is going on and it’s also extremely hard to pinpoint all the emotions we are all experiencing through this mission’s trip. But I know for sure, we are all having a blast and learning more about ourselves, God, and this beautiful and unique culture.

Thank you so much for all your support and prayers as we have embarked on this incredible journey – we appreciate it very much!

Mucho gracias! Ciao!

-Alex Smyth