On July 2, Kyrstin and I hopped into a vehicle with my friend Ruth and we drove to Calgary to stay there for a couple of nights with my friend Jean who had been my matron of honor at our wedding nearly 25 years ago. It was great to spend some time with her. She had just sold her house in Airdrie so she was busy packing and selling many of her things as she was downsizing into a much smaller home close to downtown. We got to see her new place which is super cute. :) It was great to visit and catch up. We had an amazing supper at the Olive Garden and witnessed an incredible sunset from her backyard. She was a dear and got up at 3:45 am to have us at the airport by 4:30 to begin our day of flying to Quito Ecuador with Compassion.
The flights began with flying to Dallas Texas first with a two hour layover there. Then we continued on from Dallas to Miami and got into some really rough turbulence there going into land. Apparently Hurricane Arthur had left some interesting weather pattern which we drove around in order to land. The clouds looked pretty wild from up in the sky. We were thankful that there weren't any delays in our flights from here. When we left Miami a couple hours later to fly to Quito, we flew over a thunderstorm so that was pretty neat to see the lightning under us and I was able to get a couple rough shots of it.
We got into Quito Ecuador at 11 pm and had a one hour bus ride to our hotel. It was beautiful! Loved our room and the view from the 6th floor was lovely. We were thankful for our long but enjoyable safe day of airports and flying. Loved meeting all the people in our group and are looking forward to a great week.
Day 1 of Ecuador with Compassion
After a wonderful sleep, we began our morning with a delicious breakfast and an orientation where we heard many facts about the country of Ecuador and what all the wonderful things that Compassion has done and is doing here. There are 222 projects in this country with 63,900 kids/30,000 families in 16 of the 24 provinces registered in their program. We will be visiting 3 of the projects this week up in the mountains. After the orientation we began our drive to Riobamba where we will be staying at the Hacienda Abrasprungo. It was great driving out and seeing the country. So beautiful! We stopped at The Cow Place for an incredible lunch and some souvenir shopping. At 7 pm we arrived at our destination which was breathtaking! Such a gorgeous setting and beautiful orange decorated room for us :) I love how God gives me those sweet gifts like that, knowing I like orange. I enjoyed exploring the grounds and the restaurant. After supper we also gathered together to sort out all the wonderful gifts people had brought for the 3 projects we will be visiting...toiletries, educational supplies, household items, hair accessories, toys, shoes, eye glasses...these projects will be so blessed! The project we will be visiting tomorrow has never had people visit so we are super excited to go visit them and be the first ones! Now it's time to stop keeping Kyrstin awake (or so she says :) and go to sleep :)
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