Martin Chambers Ecuador Trust

I feel as if my mind is turning around in circles. And mainly it’s to do with the forthcoming National Youth Day which will take place in Guayaquil next week. For my sins, I have been part of the organizing group and my part has been to find homes for 650 of the youth that will come to the city from all parts of Ecuador. It ahs been a bit of a task to go round the chapel houses asking for the priests to find thirty beds each and then to match it up with the groups that will come. As we speak, I am about to go and have another meeting about it. I am sure it will go well. And apart from that, I think it will be a great occasion; we have four parish participants but there will be many more going to the events that are open to the public: open air concert, procession with the Youth Cross through the city centre and a Mass with a Cardinal from Rome. Terry is coming to the end of his time with us and he stopped work at Maestro chapel on Tuesday of this week – this was to allow him a chance to get to know some of the teachers and kids at the school. Barriers of language have been broken down by his football skills (and by the fact that in a country of small people, he appears like a giant). Last night was his last Mass at Maestro itself and the people had got together and made him a card which they all signed and had chipped together for a large cake. So, naturally enough he had to “bite the cake” – a favourite Guayaquil game that ends up with the ‘biter’ being covered in cream. By the looks of Terry afterwards, he loved it all. Talking of cakes, Flor (who was in Scotland with our trip) had her birthday this week and she invited loads of people to her house last Saturday for a party. It was fantastic with plenty of dancing and the inevitable “biting the cake’ for Flor. I even learned a quick trick from Flor’s Dad about how to avoid a lot of cream. And, with a lot of the youth group there, it was a good way of getting to know them also. The work at the two sites continues apace and I was asking Pedro the architect when they would be finished. He reckoned around the 15th July and that would be great but I have learned one thing here and that is not to press the architect/workers too hard or they can start to make mistakes. So I will be happy if we can get into the chapels before I head for Scotland on August 4th. At this stage they are simply finishing off the plastering and details around windowsills etc before the windows come in and the painters arrive. As I said last week the next project will be the Medical Centre and I have moved on that one this week. Dave Cupery, an American business student has been trying to seek funding my Michigan, his home state, through his local Rotary group. They have been quite keen to help us in some way and thought maybe with equipment for a new Medical Centre – they don’t do construction. So that focused my mind this week as they needed an idea of how much it would cost. So I got together with the doctor at our present Medical Centre to see how we could work it out. We went into the city centre to the offices of Hogar de Cristo, the housing charity who also do health care and who run our medical centre. They are quite keen to increase their service but will have to look into whether it is possible. One avenue that fell through this week was the land beside the Nursery which is not ours but I thought I might be able to acquire/buy it from the local lawyer (the one who denounces me in public). Anyway, when I went to see him he told me that it was set for a fire station – the same story as five years ago – and I was quite happy not to have to enter into negotiations with him. So I think what we will be doing is rehousing the medical Centre in the Parish Hall for the three months that it takes to build a two storey new Medical Centre on the site where it is presently. The down side is that we will not be able to acquire that land for the school but the up side is that we will not now have to shelve out money acquiring land!!! Every cloud has a silver lining!!!!