The mission trip for March had all the ingredients for a good learning experience about Ecuador and sensing God's presence.
The first part of the team arrived with me, Guido, and my daughter Isabel on March 4th. We had some difficulties as we had to get things ready along the way.
Because we arrived in Ecuador at the same time as the team, we had to buy all our supplies and materials upon arrival.
We praise God that everyone was very patient and kind as they waited for us to get everything together. One dear soul even found his way to the camp all by himself!
With the first part of our 24 teammates we accomplished:
new lines for all the bad parts for the septic system,
we bought most of the building materials for the other teams,
we cleaned the roofs and fixed some of the leaks in the dining room and the cabins,
cut down the trees that were damaging the septic system,
fixed the water problem replacing the pipe in the main house.
By the time are second team arrived on March 9th, almost everything was ready for them to start working.
They continued with the septic system and started the work on the new plumbing for the bathrooms.
The teams finished the work in two of the cabins and those cabins are now completely repaired with hot and cold showers, and ready for the remodeling process of the walls, floors, and ceramic. They made new cement lids for the check points of the septic system which required a lot of mixing cement and sifting sand. The rainy days did not help in this matter, but the team managed it well. We landscaped some of the areas were the tress were taken down as well and it looks great! We got the laundry-room cleaned up and into good working order. We had a volunteer who decide to stay a few more days to finish the 3rd cabin. Mike Dragon from IN stayed with us until the 26th and finished the rest of the work. The girls enjoyed Mike’s presence here, and loved on him as their grandpa.
With these two groups, besides working, we had two birthdays, Magan and Mike, (I wont tell the ages) but we had a great time working together, and getting to know each other better.
In total we spent almost 4 weeks working. We made 7 trips back and forth to the airport in Guayaquil from the camp. We piped (plumbed) 17 showers and 16 toilets. We cleaned 4 roofs and laid almost 150 feet of pipe in the ground. We poured 12 bags of cement, 100 pounds each one. We spent $2500 in building materials; we spent $1500 in food, $930 in transportation. $1000 in hotel, $200 in hired workers, and other expenses. The expenses were close to $7000. The camp is now in proper working order. We will be buying the appliances for the kitchen in the coming weeks, as the roads improve so they can be delivered. We will be closed for the month of April as we continue remodeling and cleaning up and the camp will be open again in the month of May. We are scheduling more teams for the coming months for the rest of the projects and some camps that are coming from the cost area as well.
If you would like some further information about these March teams feel free to ask. You can also see the 2008 calendar on the camp’s website:
www.camppallatanga.org/ 
We hope to be done by the end of these month, alongside with the implementation of the kitchen appliances.
