Day 2 with my Host Family - The Angamarcas

Tuesday 24th August
Hi Everyone,
I've begun to settle in more and have been speaking a lot of Spanish.  The Angamarcas are very kind and forgiving of my mangling of their language.  It's been good.  I'm getting used to their food too. It's cold here in the mornings.  We've been eating a lot of cheese.  They also eat plantain mashed and fried.  They call it patacon.  It's pretty bland but nice with something else. They drink powdered coffee here too which seems sacrilege  when they produce real coffee here.

Yesterday we went out into the hills around Azogues.  The scenery is very spectacular.  I took some photos which I will try to upload at some point.  The houses and farms are poor but very beautiful in a decrepit way!  I saw a woman in traditional dress (panama hat and wide skirt) dragging two cows by a rope down the road.  We also hit a young cow with our car.  It ran across the road in front of us.  It wasn't serious for the cow or us thankfully.  We had almost stopped when we hit it.  We visited some people who had heard the gospel recently.   There was a very old lady and her daughters one of whom is  a Christian. The live on a small farm.  They even had what looked a bit like Friesan cows!  Only one or two though.  Their kitchen was full of flies but they gave us coffee (instant!).  They listened as Pastor Sergio explained Psalm 1 to them.  He explained that if we live by a river of life we will have life but if we live by bad waters we will produce bad fruit.  The culture here is much slower (even than Ireland!) so Sergio spends  a lot of time chatting before talking about the Bible.  It's nice to listen to it all in Spanish.

PS
My nosebleeds have stopped so thanks for your prayers.  Please pray that I can be of use to the people here and not just a passenger.  Thanks.  Also, I hope you like my new Blog background.  I think it's more civilised don't you?

Hasta luego.

Welly (my name here)