Ecuador 2011 or Here I Go Again (On My Own)

Wow it has been a long time since I've blogged. but anyways... So in 2 days I will be leaving to go on my 6th trip to Ecuador and my time going down there on my own. In order to get you up to date with my experiences in Ecuador I will go through some details of my past trips down there. The first trip was a missions trip through my school (Valley Christian Academy) in grade 11 in Febuary of 2002. There are many good memories of that trip. Then in 2005 I went with one of my friends from school and the boyfriend (now husband) of a girl I went to school with, on another 2 week missions trip. On this trip, I met my good friend and Honorary "Papi", Darius Guerrero, whe my friend Josh had befriended on his previous trip. WE have forged a friendship thatI hope will last a life time. Then in 2006 Myself and three friends from school went down for a 1 month trip. This was longest I had been away from home, and I really enjoyed this trip and all the differant things we were able to see, as we traveled and ministered in many different places throughout Ecuador, Such as Puyo (Dario's home town) where we worked doing construction at his home church, and the "Nigeria" neighborhood in the southern city of Guyaquil (he got this name from the large population of African people), and then we also went to the coastal town of Manta, where I was able to go into the ocean for the first time. On our way back to Quito from the coast we took a 11 hour bus ride, followed by a half hour taxi ride, where Josh and myself ended up getting into a accident in which a suv hit our taxi and then sent it crashing into a brick wall. I did not realize that we had hit the wall initially due to the fact that when the car was hit, I was flung down across the seat (I had no seatbelt int he car) and my glasses were knocked off. Once I put them back on and sat back up, I saw the bricks on the hood of the car. Praise the LORD for his hand of protection on us, as there were no injuries. I had really felt the prayers of the people back home at that point. On our way home from this trip, our flight from Ecuador to Columbia was delayed and we would have missed our flight to Toronto, which only flies out every other day. It was only after I had to phone home to tell my family that we wouldn't be home yet, that i got homesick. In order to make up for this, the airline put us up in the Hilton hotel for 2 nights, with an all you can eat buffet for every meal! For 4 guys in their early 20's this was a dream come true, and a good way to wind down a great trip. God was so good to us. Then 2 years later, in 2008, I went down for a 2 week visit to Dario with Josh and a Mutual friend oh Dario's from Saskatoon, Pettiya. This was a good time, nadhelped establish my Friendship with Dario more. In 2009 Dario got Married to Juanita, my Honorary "Mami", and I was honored to be a Groomsman in their wedding! After some...interesting delays (on our way from Toronto to Bogota, approxamately over Cuba, our Pilot informed us that there was a problem with landing gear hydraulics, that would prevent us from being able to land in the high altitude of the Andes mountains, so we had to turn around and fly back to Toronto) on our way down I had decided that would never fly to Ecuador on standby (My friend Josh is a airline employee and we would fly down on standby as it is cheaper, but not always, how do I put this, relieable going to a place where they only fly to once every 2 days. But none the less, this was a great trip and a beautiful wedding. It was on this trip that I had adopted Dario & Juanita as my parents, due to the fact that when we picked up our suits that we had made for the wedding, my suit had been labeled "Steven Guerrero", so myself being the goofball that I am, decided to call Dario "Papi" (This also goes back to a incident at the Bogota airport, where a little boy called for his father saying "papi, papi, papi..." for quite a while, whic entertained me.) While on this trip, I assisted Dario and Juanita with showing their friends and family around the country as I had been there a few time before and I really enjoyed helping in this way. After the wedding, when we were on our way home, it appeared as though we would not be able to get seats on our standby flights, so Josh aranged new flights for us, including my purchasing a flight from bogota to miami, and the standby from there home, while he left a day earlier. Somehow, due to some very helpful airport workers, I was able to take my originaly planned, even though, because I had not been with Josh I should not have been able to go on this flight. Due to this I was able to actually get home before Josh did, and when he got back he, not knowing that I had made these flights, was checking the passenger list for the flights he had rescheduled for me. When he didn't see my name on the list and coupled with the fact that the last thing I had written on facebook, was that the taxi that had be ordered to take me to the airport didn't show up (I wasn't able to access my facebook after that for some reason) he was quite worried that I was lost somewhere. He was quite suprised that I actually beat his home.Now this brings me to this trip. This trip has been a year and a half in the waiting as I originally planned with Juanita to come in November of 2010 to suprise Dario on his birthday, but fue to the birth of his niece and the 2 of them going to visit friends and family in the USA (Juanita is from New Jersey, and Dario is Ecuadorian and this was his First trip to the States and he got his citizenship while he was there.) So instead we arranged to suprise Dario in New Jersey, which we did. It was a great suprise. So I decided to go this October, as in January Dario and Juanita will be moving to Columbia to start Training in Linguistics so that they cand join "New Tibe Missions" and get set up with a unreached tribe somewhere in the world, and learn their language and translate the Bible for them. So this will be the last time I may be able to visit them in Ecuador for some time. So after some grief with booking tickets, I finally got this trip on the road. Then in August, Dario was able to come out to Canada for the first time! It was a good time and an answer to prayer as Dario had been trying to come up here for many years. So when I get down to Ecuador I will be staying in Dario and Juanita's "maid's quarters" in their apartment that Juanita set up for me (Gracias Mami!!!!) and we will be traveling around Ecuador. A couple of the places we will be going to are Mindo (a cloud forest where they have have a bird watching and ziplines, among other things), Cuenca (a city in southern Ecuador that has a very European style), Banos (a town in the mountains close to the active Volcano Tungaragua, where they have hot springs. I have gone here on every trip except 1), and Puyo (Dario's home town). I hope to do some missions work on this trip, even thought the main purpose of this trip is visit/vacation. So that should be everything for now. I will do my best to keep you updated on my trip, and I hope you all enjoy reading about my adventures.