Martin Chambers Ecuador Trust

Paradise Park has been opened! And football reigns there! We had a great opening day on Saturday with typical Ecuadorian touches to the organization. Firstly we had been promised a ‘personality’ to come and open the proceedings; all week I had been getting and making messages to follow this up; only to find on Friday night that the promised “personality” was not going to materialize. We opened it ourselves! Not before we had waited an hour and a half for the speaker system to turn up, only to find that, when it did turn up, it didn’t work! Once again, we did it ourselves. I did a short blessing ceremony, blessed all parts of the pitch and then played in the first match. We got beat 3-2. However, it was fantastic to see a full pitch and people playing on the pitch from early in the morning till late at night! Well done on all who donated towards the building of ‘Parque Paraiso’, especially the support we received from eth Celtic Charity Fund. Of course, building work continues at the school. With the school year about to start in three weeks, there is still a lot of plastering, painting and cleaning up to be done. At various stages the work has been hampered by the incessant rains: one problem in the school yard is that the school water pump has overflowed as the level of rain water has increased. The only way round this was to divert this excess water out onto the street and hope that it dries up when the rainy season is over – if not we will have another neighbours revolt on our hands! This work should be finished on schedule before the school year starts. So they say that there is never a dull moment here. Yeah, that’ll be right. There I was on Thursday night moving towards an exhausting end to another day – we had just had the Pastoral Council to make final arrangements for Holy Week – when I turned the corner in the car to find that a bus had gone into the side wall of the Church. What? As I made my way up four steps at a time to see what the damage was, I could see that the driver had wanted to do a three-point-turn and had lost control, letting the bus bang into the outer wall of the Church grounds – not the actual Church. Still, it could have been worse, if he had been going at a faster pace, he would have gone through the wall and fallen down to the lower floor!!!! I try to get out and about as much as I can, walking through the shanty streets. And one way of doing that is fulfilling my visits to the sick and housebound which I have been doing since I cam back from Scotland. It is always great to see them so full of hope in the midst of obvious poverty. They remind me of why I am here and give me a spur to get on. Of course the curse of the week was the mud!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yesterday I had had quite a busy day in between the opening of the football pitch and then the Masses but at 6pm I found myself unusually free. So I decided to go and pick up the cupboards which Felix, one of our Catechists, had been making. Since there were seven and awkward to carry, I was going to have to make four separate journeys back and forward through muddy rivers to his house. Things were going well until, on the fourth journey, I decided that I would take a new route …… AND ENDED UP STUCK (NO, LODGED) FIRMLY IN THE MUD! By this stage it was now 8.30pm and darkness had fallen. We tried ourselves to get the truck moving. To no avail. Then we got chained up to a water truck. Nothing. A bus – same. The great Fr. Tom Oates – even there nothing. Finally the police (who had just caught a guy brandishing a knife outside one of our chapels) – still nothing. There was nothing for it but I had to abandon the car – since it was near Felix’s house, he volunteered to stay with it. In any case, our own water truck was going to come at 5am to pull me out. No sleep as I waited and waited for the water truck. It never came. So frustrated, I went off to do the three palm Sunday morning Masses. It was only after that that we got picks and shovels, got ourselves covered in mud again. And, finally after a further hour, the truck was freed! Two muddy pairs of shoes, two shirts and two pairs of trousers! Thanks to so many guys for helping free the truck – I shall go the other way in the future! Oh by the way, I nearly forgot ---- at San Ignacio chapel they gave me a donkey for the Palm Sunday procession. I managed to get up and down no problem but there were a few hairy moments as we made our way round the local streets, praying and singing. The only problem was that some people were genuinely asking “but which one is the donkey?”