Greetings friends and family!
We have recently been traveling through the country of Ecuador and considered it a blessing to be able to connect up with Darwin and Kirsten Paccha, Luca Pillman, and the Berger family during our time down here. Last Friday, we pulled into Cuenca, where Darwin met us at the bus station for a long awaited weekend with them. We saw the Lord’s hand with us very clearly even in our short time being in Ecuador as when we had gotten out of the taxi, Nathan had taken his passport holder out of his bag to pay the taxi driver. Darwin had ended up paying for the taxi and Nathan had accidentally left the holder on the back seat of the taxi, thinking that he had put it back on before getting out of the car. The taxi driver had left us off near the market, and Darwin’s house was down the road just a little bit and then down the street to the right. Both of us, having 2 massive bags each, quickly grabbed our bags and proceeded to follow Darwin as he lead us to his house.
After arriving, we dropped our bags off in the main room and began to start talking and catching up with each other on some of the ways that the Lord had been working in our lives. About 25 minutes later, we get a doorbell ring and Darwin excused himself to go to the door….it was our taxi driver. He had seen the passport holder in the back seat of his car and had driven all the way back to return it, without even opening it (This contained money, credit cards, passport, etc.). We still have no idea how he found Darwin’s house as we had walked off of the road where he had dropped us off, but we are incredibly thankful to the Lord for His provision in bringing Nathan’s passport back as continuing along the trip without it would have been very difficult.
Throughout the rest of the time with Darwin and Kirsten, both of us were immensely blest as we were able to see the hand of the Lord amidst the ministry that they are apart of. Both of them are apart of mentoring different students, Darwin is doing a great job in leading both the youth and college age ministry at his church as well as preaching for the church on the pastoral rotation. Both Darwin and Kirsten are also teaching and working at the Bilingue, which is the Lutheran High School and Elementary School that is right next to the church. Darwin, looking at being ordained this coming Saturday, has a great heart for the people there and as the respect and love of all of those he is working with! Please continue to pray for the Paccha Family as they go forward in serving the Lord in the ministry in Ecuador.
Monday, after our time with the Paccha family, we traveled the 10 hours up to Quito, where we were going to be catching our plane up to Panama City. Tuesday, November 23, we woke up early in our hostel in Quito to go and climb Cotopaxi Volcano, the 2nd highest active volcano in the world at 5897 meters high. As we started off driving to the volcano we past by quite a large number of farms and forests along the way. The day was a nice 70 degree day and as we drove past the farmers’ fields, many of them were full with the up and coming crops. However, as we neared the volcano Cotopaxi, we found that this volcano was snow capped and it was actually snowing up on top of the mountain as well (We found out later that this was the most snow the mountain had received in 10 years). Driving up to the refuge, we got out of car to a couple inches of snow already on the ground and a nice blanket of snow readily coming down upon us. It was into this very same blanket that we set off into, hoping and praying that our bodies would not be affected by the altitude as we would be nearing the “No Oxygen Zone”.
Setting off, we trudged uphill slowly, thoroughly unequipped and unprepared for the amount of snow that we were encountering as we has tennis shoes on and just a t-shirt with a hoodie for warmth. As we made our ascent, we began feeling the effects of the altitude immediately as climbing up at 15,000 feet was pretty drastically different than what we had been used to. However, after quite a long hike, we finally made it up to the main base, where we were thoroughly exhausted and very ready for something warm to eat/drink, or really almost anything for that matter. After a great lunch, we began our slippery and icy descent down the mountain. Unfortunately, the altitude had started affecting Nathan and he began to get a pretty bad headache and had to take it slow on the way down.
Upon getting down to the refuge, the organization that was with us provided mountain bikes that we could use to do some intense mountain biking down the face of this active volcano. Both of us got onto the bike and began our pursuit down the mountain. Unfortunately, many people use these bikes on a regular basis and the brakes are all but completely gone. While this allows for a faster ride down the intense mountain, it also allowed for a pretty intense wipeout for Nathan as he tried to brake on a turn and flipped over his bike to slide for 6 feet on face along the hard volcanic rock. Getting up, he found that he had a various other scrapes o n his body and has slit his knee, but the left side of his face was really busted up. Luckily, one of the people that we were traveling with was a doctor (with surgical experience) and was able to provide medical services for us as we had to catch an airplane and trying to get to a hospital would be pretty difficult with the timing. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any needle and thread to sew up the cut near Nathan’s eye, but she was able to take scrub out the dirt that had dug itself into the cuts and place some Polysporin on Nathan’s face. Upon working with him, she had said that in every other situation, a local antithetic would be applied as it is excruciatingly painful, but instead she told Nathan to simply grab the door handle and the sink as hard as he could and apologized for the pain that was about to be endured (Nathan will have to apply half a container of Polysporin to his face every day for the rest of our trip)
Upon getting back from the Cotopaxi volcano, we headed to the airport and crossed into security at about 3am in order to get on our 6am plane to Panama City (layover in Columbia). Please continue to pray for the Lord’s hand to go before us and His protection both in the small and in the bigger things.
Only Jesus,
Nathan and Jon
