After returning from Carnaval, the next couple of days flew by, and before I knew it I was on a bus to another city for another weekend adventure. This place is called Riobamba -- isn't that a cool name for a city?!
Well, the bus ride in and of itself was quite an adventure. I hadn’t been that car sick in a while. We were taking a bus to a city a couple hours north of Cuenca, and it is higher in altitude, so our whole journey was through the bumpy and winding roads of the mountains. We arrived kind of late in the evening, so after we got a bite to eat (at the “Executive Chicken” – Pollo Ejecutivo), we got settled into our hotel (which was nice and only cost $7 per person per night!).
The reason we traveled to Riobamba was to visit an orphanage started by a Canadian couple and their 10 (!) kids. That weekend they were celebrated their 10th anniversary. I just finished reading the book that Glenda, the mother of the family, wrote about all the missionary adventures she and her husband and family had been through. It is clearly only because of the Lord that this orphanage has been successful. They started out with just their family in a three-bedroom house with somewhere around 30 kids, and now the Lord has blessed them with a nice facility and reliable staff – and the parents finally have their own bedroom!
Before we went to the celebration, Diego (a guy from the Verbo church in Cuenca who is my age) took us around a bit. We ate a delicious breakfast at basically a bus stop, then we stopped by the orphanage (called El Arka…the Ark, referring to Noah’s Ark in Genesis) for a quick visit, and we even got to see the baby house, where they have about 13 infants. I even made a little friend! Then we caught a bus to a nearby town, Guano, known for rugs and leather. We went to a leather store, and a couple students from the group bought some things. We also at cholas in Guano – cholas are basically the mother of fig newtons: freshly baked bread filled with a sweet fig filling. Mmmmm… so good. We took taxis back to Riobamba to have enough time to eat some lunch before going back to the orphanage for the celebration.
The celebration at El Arka was amazing. The kids performed a bunch of dances from different countries, including Bolivia, Columbia, Russia, and (of course) Ecuador. It was beautiful. A few of the orphans who had grown up at the orphanage came back for the celebration as well, and they shared a little bit about their experiences. Later, there was some live music and slideshows of the early days of the Ark. I don’t know how they did it, but they managed to feed everyone – there had to be well over 100 people there to celebrate, plus the 40 or 50 people already at the orphanage! I was impressed.
I’m really glad I had the opportunity to see the orphanage. The family who started it has done an amazing work, but they continually give all the glory to the Lord for sustaining and protecting them.
Sunday morning we went even higher into the mountains (think: colder) to an indigenous village, Pulingui, to attend an indigenous church. John Guido, a missionary from the States and one of the elders at the Verbo church here in Cuenca, gave the message that morning. It was a really neat experience because most of the songs were in the indigenous language, Quichua. Most of the people also speak Spanish, but I think some of the older members don’t because I saw a few of them snoozing during John’s sermon. ☺
As could be expected, the people from the church insisted on feeding us before we left. That was a very generous gesture because there were 13 of us – a large group for a church of only 50 or so people.
When we got back to Riobamba, I decided to take up the offer to ride back in John and Marilyn Guido’s car since I had gotten pretty carsick in the bus on the way up. (John was going farther north to Quito instead of going back to Quito, and the Guidos sent their niece and nephew back on the bus with the group.) What we could see of the mountains on the way back was absolutely breathtaking. Most of the time we were driving through fog, but when we got through it was amazing to look back and see the fog down in the valleys. The mountains surrounded the sea of fog like a bowl. Not even pictures can do it justice.
