Breakfast for the Elders- Zone Leaders

After breakfast was served and cleaned up we headed for the bus station. We have a long bus ride today to Tena.

Dad did a presentation on the emergency plan for the missions.

March 30, 2011
We are leaving on our trip to the Jungle today but first we helped serve breakfast to the Elders. Seems the missionaries must be nourished both body and soul to function. The missionaries are doing so awesome they have had over 200 baptisms every month this year.

Fundación D.H.Ex. Ecuador - Computers

March 29, 2011
We met today with the Hearing Foundation we are working with. Two lap top computers were delivered. Ximena Carrera S. created this foundation to help children with hearing difficulties. We are working on getting more equipment so they can do screenings for school children to identify those with hearing problems earlier so interventions can be started.

RELIEF SOCIETY BIRTHDAY

Someone went to a lot of effort to create this hanging of the Relief Society Theme.


Our Relief Society Birthday activity.


The presidency preformed a skit about the organizing of the the Relief Society.


Saturday March 19, 2011

At 6:00 a.m. our ward Relief Society had a birthday commemoration. We met at the church, sang an opening song outside then had a short skit by the sisters in the presidency. Everyone wrote a card of their testimony of Relief Society to be put in a book, mine is in English so may not get put in the book. Then they were serving a breakfast, Sister Pettingill and I had to leave so we could go with the others to Mindo but I was glad we attended. The sisters here are sweet but the communication barrier is difficult.

MINDO

I just really liked this picture and wanted to share, hope you enjoy it too.


Dad hangn' in the cloud forest.


The beauty of Mindo, I set this picture as the background for my computer.


The Rio Mindo


A bridge we crossed going to the zip lines.





Cocoons and Catapillers this turn into butterflies.




An Ecuadorian drive in car wash. The driver just drove into the river and washed his car. We all got a good laugh.


It is hard to imagine the beauty and pictures do not do justice.


This was a house in Mindo just down the street from the butterfly exhibit, notice the satellite dish.


A butterfly with transparent wings


I love the clouds and the mountains.


Lupines on the side of the road, some century plant stems in the picture.


Hummingbird statue in the park.

I have posted a couple of our Mindo adventures but there were so many great pictures I thought I might just add a few for your viewing pleasure.

MARIPOSA - BUTTERFLY & COLIBRI - HUMMINGBIRD

It is kind of difficult to see the birds but I thought the video was fun anyway. Does anyone know why Vimeo doesn´t put my titles on I always put one in?

Untitled from Brenda Yost on Vimeo.

Dad watched the hummingbirds for a long time while I took pictures of flowers then while I was getting pictures of hummingbirds he and the other Elders took a rest.



These little birds are so much fun to watch. There are 130 varieties of hummingbirds and 115 of those are found in Ecuador.



This hummingbird was outside the window of the restaurant where we had lunch.

This is an owl eye butterfly, they are large and when there are lots of them together it looks like lots of eyes staring at you. The inside of their wings is the most beautiful iridescent blue; I could not get a picture of the inside of their wings. If you google olw eye butterfly and go to images there is picture of the inside of their wings, the picture was copywrited so I did not post it on the blog.


These butterflies have transparent wings.

During our trip to Mindo we went to a butterfly and hummingbird exhibit. We have since learned there is a bigger better one just outside of town, so next time we will visit that one. This one was very small and there was not a lot of variety but it was interesting. The biggest challenge is trying to get pictures of these little creatures as they move very fast. We especially enjoyed the hummingbirds. Dad liked the hammock.

MINDO AND ZIP LINES

WELCOME TO MINDO!

Untitled from Brenda Yost on Vimeo.

Dad in his attractive helmet.


Dangeling over the cloud forest.


Mom heading back.


Dad is on his way.

Harnessed up and ready to go. We took our name tags off so they wouldn´t get lost in the forest.

Saturday March 19, 2011
We have had a busy week but the Senior Missionaries had planned a trip to Mindo on Saturday and we did not want to miss it. Mindo is in the cloud forest on the northwest side of Pinchincha volcano. A cloud forest is like a rain forest but at a higher elevation. It is famous for mariposas (butterflies), quindes (humming birds), cascadas (water falls), zip lines and the telebita, a metal cage that goes on a cable over a large gorge. We hired a van for the 8 of us and left about 8 a.m. arriving at about 10:30 a.m. After a brief stop in town to decide what we were going to do we headed up the canyon for the zip lines. All but two of our group did the zip lines. Four of us did the over and back basic package. Elder and Sister Geldmacher did the thirteen line full package. I did not get any video of Dad or me but I am posting a video of Elder Geldmacher so you can see what it was like.

Guayaquil Meetings Thursday March 17, 2011

Mr. Lautaro Aspiazu Wright, Sister Yost, Elder Yost.


Elder Yost, Elder Maldanado, Luis H. Rendón, Fernando Aguirre


Andrea Balda director of Foundation JUCONI.

This was St. Patrick’s Day, but we totally forgot about it. We had an appointment at 9 a.m. with the JUCONI Foundation. They help to get children off the street and back in school. They work with the families of these children to teach them the importance of education, how to break the cycle of abuse and to generally strengthen the families. There are children as young as 4 on the streets selling goods to help support their family. We met with Andrea Balda, a graduate from John Hopkins University; she is passionate about this organization and was delightful to visit with. This project is in and going, we are donating school kits and hygiene kits.
At 10 a.m. we had a meeting with a councilman from the Prefectura of Santa Elena; they also want to do a wheelchair project. He is a member of the church and the meeting went very well. This area looks very beautiful and I hope we can visit there.
At 11 a.m. we had a meeting with the gentleman Mr. Wright who is the head of a very large charitable organization here in Ecuador. They are doing a wheelchair project with us and we needed some documents completed. He was very cordial and fun to visit with.
All of these meetings went very well and we hope to be able to do these projects. We visited Iguana Park again; I got some more video if anyone would like to see more Iguana´s just let me know. We checked out of the hotel had lunch and headed for the airport for the return to Quito.