This morning I woke up COMPLETELY REFRESHED after four hours of sleep (disclaimer: the first part of this sentence is not at all true), and after I got out of bed and started getting dressed, I noticed that I was a wee bit – OH, HOW DO YOU SAY? – weak in the knees.

(Sorry. That whole “HOW DO YOU SAY?” thing was a tribute to the lovely Ms. Kathleen Turner. I believe we’ve discussed her love for the “HOW DO YOU SAY?” before. It makes me so happy.)

Apparently I was responding unfavorably to the altitude (Quito is very mountainous, a fact that was completely lost on me until, well, today), and at breakfast Keely told me that I needed to drink coffee (this is one instance when caffeine is my friend) and lots and lots of water. I didn’t really know what to expect in the way of coffee, but I ordered a cup and just have to say this:

THANK YOU, ECUADOR, FOR YOUR COFFEE.

It is magical and delicious.

However, it is not magically delicious, because, well, that would be Lucky Charms.

After breakfast we hopped on the bus to travel to Cayambe, a mountain town about an hour and a half away. I am notorious for not really thinking things through until I’m in the middle of said things and have no real way of changing the course of action at that point, and that is why, about 30 minutes into our trip, I looked at Melanie and said, “My. My, my, my. Ecuador is very mountain-y. And these roads – well, they are very twisty.”

And then I had to quit talking for a few minutes because I wanted to sit back and really enjoy the experience of my entire face turning green. Kelly was having a similar reaction to the twistiness, and I thought that if she and I both were in such poor shape less than an hour into the trip, it did not bode well for the second half of our journey.

Maybe this would be a good time for me to show you a map of our route that I drew this afternoon. I feel that it might be a helpful visual aid.

It’s totally true to scale. And you may have noticed that I marked a few milestones on the map. Perhaps I should elaborate.

The first milestone is that Kelly and I were both somewhat ill (I believe I’ve mentioned that already). But the second milestone is that when we stopped at a convenience store for a restroom break, Kelly and I were the last two off of the bus (what with trying to stand up without wobbling and all), and when we stepped onto the parking lot, THERE WAS A BULLDOG THERE TO GREET US.

A REAL-LIVE BULLDOG!

And get this: I WAS WEARING MY MISSISSIPPI STATE RAIN JACKET.

Listen. If I’d had my cowbell with me, it might have been the happiest moment of my entire life.

The combination of the bulldog and the fresh air worked wonders on the car sickness, and when we hit the road again, we decided that a snack was in order. Kelly opted for the Ecuadorian Doritos, and when I saw the bag, there was no way that I wasn’t taking a picture.

Mega Queso. If you ask me (which, granted, you didn’t), the world needs more Mega Queso. And I think I just may try to order some Mega Queso the next time I’m at Chuy’s.

After the bulldog and the Mega Queso, I felt the day had already far exceeded my expectations, but then there was a little something called the Equator.

We only had about two minutes to take in all the Equator goodness, so it was all very Griswold-esque. But still: THE EQUATOR. Not exactly a normal stop when I’m running my Monday afternoon errands at home, you know?

Our next stop was Cayambe. And that, my friends, was the hands-down highlight of the day. No question at all.

Cayambe is a beautiful little town situated on the edge of a mountain, and we went straight to the church that ministers to the kids at the Happy Face Child Development Center. It was so neat to hear how they’re serving their community, and they told us that out of the 400 kids they serve, about 100 of them don’t have sponsors yet. The church even started another branch of their Compassion project to serve an additional 100 kids at the top of the mountain. Many of those children still don’t have sponsors, so their expenses are covered through Compassion’s Unsponsored Children Fund. Their care doesn’t differ in any way, but they’re missing that one-to-one relationship with a sponsor.

After we heard from the church’s pastor, we split into groups and traveled to three different parts of Cayambe. Kelly, Patricia and I rode in the back of a pick-up (OH YES MA’AM WE DID) to visit a precious family where three of the seven children are sponsored by Compassion. Compassion normally has a one child per family sponsorship policy, but the poverty in this part of Ecuador is so extreme, so profound, that they’ve made an exception to the general rule.

The nine members of this family live in a cinder block home with no indoor plumbing, and while they do have bedrooms, they don’t have mattresses. They sleep on pieces of plywood, and the kids’ rooms don’t have any lighting at all. Despite the difficulty of their circumstances, though, this family has hope. This family has Hope.

The mama’s name is Rosa Maria (which I loved since I have a sister-in-law whose name is Rose Marie), and she told us about how Compassion offered counseling (through the local church) to her and her husband when they were going through a difficult time. She told us about how one of her sons – who doesn’t have a sponsor, by the way – was starting to act out and rebel at school, and the people at the Child Development Center stepped in to help. She told us about how she dreams that her children will have professional jobs one day, how she gets up at 4:30 every morning so that she can cook breakfast for them before they start walking to school at 5, how she would love it if each one of her children could have his or her own bed – and a mattress for that bed.

She’s a mama who wants God’s best for her children. Just like you. Just like me.

At one point during our visit we walked to the back of the home, where the family owns a small plot of land that’s adjacent their grandfather’s land. The soil was rich, the land was tilled – but the family hadn’t finished planting all of their seeds. A staff member from the Child Development Center asked us if we’d like to help, so Kelly, Patricia and I each grabbed a handful of corn. We’d turn over a section of soil, drop in four pieces of corn, then walk another foot and repeat the process. We did this over and over for about half an hour, moving from row to row, visiting with Rosa Maria and her children as we planted.

And on the third or fourth row, I looked down at what we were doing, and I thought, This is it. THIS IS IT.

Barring something totally unexpected, I’ll never witness the harvest of those seeds.

But.

I’m no less invested in the outcome just because I may not see it in person.

It dawned on me that child sponsorship through Compassion works in a similar way. A sponsorship plants seeds in a child’s life – access to good medical care, provision for school supplies and uniforms, love and care from committed staff members at the local Child Development Center, healthy meals at the CDC several times a week – and then the local church waters those seeds through discipleship. The staff of the local church will share the Gospel with that child through their words and through their actions – and in all these things the Lord is working to gather a harvest of believers in the next generation.

And while we may not see our sponsored child(ren) in person, we still get to have that one-to-one relationship with them. We get to write to them (and they write to us!). We get to invest in their lives, to share Jesus with them, to pray with them as they grow up into the men and women that God created them to be.

Those seeds are for their good.

And those seeds are for His glory.

There are so many ways that you can sponsor a child through Compassion. You can sponsor a child at the Child Development Center we visited today (and based on what we saw today, the needs in that community are huge). You can also sponsor a child in Ecuador who’s been waiting for a sponsor over six months (there are over 700 children in Ecuador who have been waiting that long). OR – you can sponsor a child in the country of your choice.

Every single one of those children deserves someone who cares enough to plant the seeds of sponsorship into his or her life.

And one day – Lord willing – there will be a harvest in that child’s life that will last for eternity.

It’s worth it, y’all.

It really is.
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Be sure to check out the posts by the other bloggers on our team – see y’all tomorrow!

All righty, everybody. We’re in Miami, and quite frankly I’m shocked that we haven’t seen Gloria Estefan yet.

I hope that the rhythm didn’t get her. But odds are that if it hasn’t, it’s gonna.

The flight from Birmingham to here was relatively uneventful with the exception of the fact that the heater was on full blast pretty much the whole way. It was basically like traveling in a rapidly moving convection oven, so as you can imagine I was refreshed as could be when we landed.

Honestly, I think that the Lord was preparing me for the Amazon. It’ll probably be the same level of heat, only with some spiders and snakes thrown in for good measure. And also a canoe, but we won’t talk about that right now since my plan is to stay in deep denial about the whole canoe thing – at least until Friday when it’s, you know, inevitable.

When we were about to land in Miami, I looked out of my window (and wondered what is it like out there, in a world where cool air circulates and the heat from the floor doesn’t burn the soles of your shoes?), and I saw what I think must have been the Everglades. I’m assuming that it was the Everglades, at least, because it was very marshy and murky and seemingly quite alligator-y. It was also much, much larger than I expected. I always think of the Everglades as being a couple of oversized canals – really just big enough for Tubbs & Crockett to speed through the area in an airboat.

The last of the big huge marshy area is in the far left of this picture. Try not to be impressed by my high quality photography that looks like something I would’ve taken with a disc camera back in 1984.

And here’s another sight I saw right before we landed:

My first thought?

OH! I LOVE THEIR BEANS!

Hold on. We have to board our plane now. I’ll be back in a few hours.

*****

ALL RIGHTY. We’re in Quito now. We landed around midnight, which means that I need to shut down this computer and get some sleep. Our day starts bright and early tomorrow, and we can’t wait to share it with y’all!

p.s. Sadly, I never did see Gloria Estefan at the Miami Airport.

p.p.s. I don’t really know why I would see Gloria Estefan at the Miami Airport.

p.p.p.s. I just thought it might be kicky and fun.

p.p.p.p.s. And I bet the rhythm is still gonna get her.

p.p.p.p.p.s. TONIGHT!

A few nights ago I was on the phone with my friend Daphne, and she mentioned that when she spent some time with our friend Elizabeth a couple of weeks ago, they would pretty much laugh their heads off when my trip to the Amazon would come up in conversation. Both Daph and Liz have known me for most of my life, so they are well-familiar with my very consistent pattern of Avoiding All The Nature.

Suffice it to say that the irony of this trip to Ecuador – well, it isn’t lost on them for one second.

Anyway, Daphne and I talked for ten or fifteen minutes about some trip-related stuff, and in the middle of our conversation I remembered a critical detail I hadn’t yet shared with her.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Have I told you about the canoe ride?”

“What canoe ride?” she asked.

“The 40-minute canoe ride we have to take in order to get to one of the projects we’re visiting.”

“YOU’RE riding in a canoe? YOU’RE RIDING IN A CANOE?”

And y’all, I couldn’t even answer her, because my sweet friend Daphne must have laughed for the next five minutes. Cackled, in fact.

Honestly, I don’t know when I’ve heard her sound so delighted. Except for maybe the third quarter of the State / Ole Miss game in 2009. Now that I think about it, that may in fact be the most delighted that any one human has ever been in the history of all time ever.

I finished telling Daphne about the canoe, and we laughed some more, and at some point I said, “You know, by the time I put on all my Amazon clothes – my shirt with SPF built into it and my collapsible hat with a brim all the way around it and my cargo pants and my hiking boots – I’m pretty much going to look like I’m dressed up to go to some sort of costume party. Like when we were at State and had that swap with the Sig Eps.”

“I REMEMBER THAT!” Daphne said. “It was a jungle-themed swap! You’re going to look like you’re going to a jungle swap!”

And then she laughed some more. With me, of course. Not at me. With me.

I hadn’t thought about it in years, but as soon as Daph and I started talking about the jungle swap, the memories came flooding back. I wore some sah-weet khakis from Banana Republic (back in the day when Banana Republic had a big Jeep parked in the middle of the store), plus some faux-hiking boots that were really just flannel-lined booties but nonetheless lent a air of realism to my outfit. And since I apparently felt like any time spent in the jungle would result in contact with a lot of foliage, I somehow attached a large branch of magnolia leaves to the back of my head.

Because, yes. Magnolia trees. You’ll find them all over the Amazonian terrain. Of course you will.

Daphne and I eventually wrapped up our conversation, hung up the phone – and about ten minutes later, she sent me an email. With a picture attached.

For the record, the picture made me clap my hands.

First of all, WAY TO GO WITH THE PERMS, GIRLS.

Nicely done.

Second of all, if you look closely you can see two large magnolia leaves behind me. They were a part of the aforementioned branch. It’s a look I’m praying that I don’t replicate in the Amazon, because if I wind up with a branch in the back of my head in the Amazon, it will most certainly be the result of an unanticipated run-in with a tree and not because I PINNED A BRANCH TO MY HEAD FOR A PARTY.

Third of all, the guy in the middle is my husband’s best friend, Todd, and I have to say that when I saw this picture a few days ago, my very first reaction was “OH MY WORD HE’S A CHILD. WHAT IS HE DOING AT COLLEGE?”

Now he’s all grown up, though. Happily married father of two. Which is no small feat considering that his parents clearly sent him off to college when he was nine.

Tonight I remembered a picture of Emma Kate and me from that same swap, and I’m so tickled that I found it because, well, just look.

That’s a whole lot of leaves on my head. And do you know what I love the most? The fact that Emma Kate opted to wear a big white bow in the jungle.

Also: PLEASE TO LOOK AT OUR BANGS.

So tomorrow I leave for Ecuador. And I keep thinking that if anyone had told the 19 year-old (with the bad perm) in those pictures up there that she was gonna find herself on a real-live airplane to South America in 2011, she probably would’ve rolled her eyes and said, “Do they, like, have When Harry Met Sally in the movie theaters there? Because I really, like, need to have access to When Harry Met Sally at, like, ALL POSSIBLE TIMES.”

Oh, I was a real ray of sunshine, I was.

I’ll be updating here as much as I can while we’re gone, and you can follow our group on Twitter, too. There’s also that’s a hub for everybody’s posts, so if you like a one-stop shop, it might be a good option for you.

I’m so grateful for each one of you and appreciate your prayers for our group more than I can ever say.

I’m also so grateful that the Lord has delivered me from my poor hair-related choices in the late 80s. I was foolish, but He is faithful.

, y’all.