Mission to Ecuador - 1999

In August 1999, 28 members and friends of the First Congregational Church left for Guayaquil, Ecuador, on what has become an annual trip to build bathrooms and refurbish houses in the barrio of Guasmo Sur. In 2001, approximately 42 members and friends of First Congregational Church will make this trip. For most of 1999, we had been raising money for this project, which was called "Adopt a Family". Shortly before we left, a grant from Rotary International provided additional funding, and the scope and complexity of the project increased. We arrived in Guayaquil late one night, hot, tired and cranky, and wondering why we had chosen (or were chosen for) this mission.

Sunday morning we stuffed ourselves and our luggage into a VW van (26 people) and into the back of a
pickup truck, and drove to Guasmo, which is in the southern part of Guayaquil.

As we pulled off the paved highway, and onto the dirt roads of the barrio, everyone fell strangely silent, lost in their own thoughts and thinking about the week ahead. The barrio stretched as far as we could see, a city within a city, and as Dorothy once said "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!"

We were all terribly nervous at first about the poverty, the stray dogs, the trash fires burning in the streets, the open sewage ditches. The press had learned of our visit, and TV and newspaper reporters were there to film our arrival. They had come with a police escort, and there were a half-dozen flak-jacketed policemen, armed with semi-automatic machine guns, their fingers on the triggers.

 Within minutes of our arrival,
 we began to make new friends.

First Congregational Church 1009 Main Street
Branford Connecticut
203-488-7201