So here we are at the night before the first ever National Youth Festival in Ecuador. It has been a lot of fretting getting to this stage. My part was to arrange the accommodation for 650 of the young people that are coming from all parts of the country. One of the phrases that has stuck with me was from the Archbishop at one of our many meetings – “there will be plenty of things going wrong at the last minute but we are the last people that should lose our cool!” I think it is a good phrase for so many moments of life. And, of course, it has helped me get through many phone calls with volunteers asking so many questions. In fact the only irate customer was Sister Cecilia from Guayaquil’s Schoenstatt who, when I asked her if everything was all right for her to receive her twenty-eight youth, she went into a bit of a tirade telling me how hard she works and she couldn’t possibly do any more. I kept my cool and told her that, yes, she was well known for being such a hard worker!!!!!!! So I hope it all goes well for tomorrow and Thursday.
Ecuadorian bureaucracy came to the fore this morning as I went to get my car road tax sorted. Under the system here you need to get a tax disc for the current year but you can get it any time until the middle of the following year. So, although it was absolutely necessary, I decided the time was right. So I went with ‘my contact’ to the road tax offices where we were refused at lane 4, then again at lane 1, and then finally told to go home. We took a trip round the corner, came back, went to a new lane and then got the disc within minutes. Now I don’t know if they were friends that went back a long time or even that money did not pass hands, but I was certainly glad that I did not have return to this form of Ecuadorian bureaucracy. Oh and I had a new tax disc.
One of the disturbing sights of the week happened when myself and Terry went to visit Pedro, a really nice old man who lives just down from the school. He is around 75 and lives in a bamboo hut with no proper bed or cooker. And he often doesn’t have money for food on a particular day.
Anyway, we went to see him and he showed us a large cancerous growth on the underside of his arm. He was going into hospital to get it sorted so we shall be praying fro him these weeks until he comes.
And so it was time to say farewell to our good friend, Terry. Last week was taken up with a few farewells: at Maestro chapel with his workers where we prepared chicken and rice; at the school where we got – you guessed it – rice and chicken; and at the youth groups where there was sponge cake coming out your ears….literally. It was great to have Terry around and, as with all the guests that have been out here, he left a little bit of himself behind with us. And, with Terry working at Maestro chapel build, he will be remembered every time I look at the walls. Even the people at Maestro chapel (who are the poorest people in our area) gave him a presentation with a home-made photo frame. Thanks, Terry, muchas gracias!!!!
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