Another day of service at Puyupungo, so we get up, load our backpacks and walk the 30 minutes to the Ranchera. We’re excited to find it’s one of our friends driving today. God has shown us favor with some of the drivers and when they work, they tell us to always ride in the front of the truck with them. It’s a much nicer view, and a smoother ride! So, we hop in the front cab and head out. We were also blessed, yet again today, when we discover our friend is going all the way to Puyupungo, so we won’t have to walk to arrive at the church! God is so good all the time!
Service time was great with the Indians. They’re so excited about their church, and love the freedom they feel in the services there. After church, we rehearsed songs with the ladies, and also Yajaira and Rachel, who will all be singing specials at our ‘Fellowship Meeting’ next week in our Puyo church. They’re all really excited about it!
After practice, we all walked to the house of Sis. Maria and her family, to visit and eat. They had cooked for us, so we were happy to join them. Sis. Maria had prepared yucca and fish. Since they all cook on open fires, everything is boiled. Just drop the fish whole in the water and boil it. No gutting, no skinning, no cutting the head off.
They served us and the fish were quite small, but still not the minnows we’d had before. I don’t particularly care for yucca, so I tried my best to blend it with my fish and eat it together. But a few bites into my fish, and I noticed, little white balls, more or less. Yep, my fish had eggs in it. Ok, boiled fish with no seasoning whatsoever, not even salt, is not all that great anyway, but then to see it full of baby eggs, that was too much for me! I looked around at everyone else’s plates, thinking mine might be the only one that had eggs in it, only to discover that, no, their’s, too, were ‘chocked’ full of eggs and they were tearing their fish up!!
I politely apologized to Sis. Maria that I just could not eat another bite, and almost before I could say, “I’m sorry”, she grabbed my plate and handed my left overs to the children, who devoured them within minutes!
We left from there and went back to the church to work a little bit. Charles had to dig a drainage ditch for the rain water in front of the church, and I worked with the machete, cleaning up around the fence area. I also ‘mowed’ the lawn with the machete. Very hard work! But it looked really good when we got finished today!
Made it back to Puyo in the Ranchera at 7pm, then walked the 30 minutes to our house from there. I cooked us some rice and lentils and put away some laundry that I had hand-washed yesterday.
After a hard day, we were tired and went to bed a little earlier than normal. Once again, it had been a beautiful day in “la Amazonía” of Ecuador!
