This week has been a week of firsts. Lived with an Ecuadorian family, did a successful blood draw, climbed to about 17,000 ft, walked through. Field of crevasses, ran at 10,000+ ft, got altitude sickness, and visited a remote native village. There has been a lot to learn this week and have certainly felt a bit lonely and down. Something that has been really good for me though is learning to rely on God for strength at all times through the good and bad. I find that talking to God is a relief from the mental aspect of being always attentive to the language and the obstacles of a new environment. Its calming and reassuring to know that God is with me through all of this and a refuge when I feel exhausted. This week has surely been eventful as we started drawing blood and collecting stool and urine samples from the kids in cayambe on Monday. Cayambe is a smaller town that relies mostly on agriculture for its revenue. Many of the families cannot afford any sort of healthcare for their kids. That's where we were able to help out at a compassion international sponsored church. We saw over 220 kids in the two days in cayambe which felt good knowing that we were making a difference working with the local church to do so. I mostly did labeling and restocking but occasionally getting to learn a thing or two like blood drawing as we went along. The next day, we were working at the clinic which is part of the Santiago partnership. That day all we did was inventory of all the medical supplies that they had. This was actually really helpful because everything is in English so none of the ecuadorians knew what they actually had. We worked alongside one of the project workers and labeled the supplies with the Spanish name for future reference. That night I went to the supermarket and hung out with my host family the pastors family. The wife was a wonderful cook and probably now thinks I'm a food addict. I got to sleep in this really cool attic that they had above there main room in the house. The views here have been absolutely breath taking from river valleys to patchwork quilted farms on the mountainside to highland scrub brush, pristine waterfalls, lush cloud forests, and the raw mountain ridges. Thursday I headed up the road with two other Americans who were helping at the clinic and two Ecuadorian guys from the church. We drove about 20km to the refugio cayambe. The road was mostly washed out stone blocks with potholes big enough to swallow an end of the truck. After making it through all the switch backs, we started our hike from the refugio cayambe at about 15,100 ft. We then hiked up about 2,000 vertical feet through steep boulders, slick mud, and ice while being pelted by rain and snow. We then climbed up into a field of crevasses on the glacier before heading back down to see an awesome lake and waterfall. On the way back after all this I got altitude sickness and motion sickness at the same time. Slept it off to wake up early to travel to oyacachi. A small village of about a 1000 natives which live in a tight knit sharing community. We did a blood draw for these children as well in a church there. The village is situated basically in a hole surrounded on all sides by tall mountains. It is incredibly lush there With rivers and waterfalls and thermal hot springs. They are basically self sustaining and the drive to the nearest village is about 1.5 hrs. It was really cool to meet and talk with these native people who could really teach us how to live and work as a family and more braodly as the body of Christ. They share and look out for each other in a way that we simply don't understand. Its been really neat to see all the things God has been teaching and doing over this past week. Hope all is well back in the States. Toodles