Dear Wallenstein family,
We have been back in Ecuador a month now and feel like it has been ages since we were in Canada. We hardly remember what cold feels like because of how hot it is here.
We want to thank you for your prayers for us during this camp season. Your generosity in funding one of the weeks of camp has been a huge blessing. We have had two weeks of camp and they went very well. Raul was director for one week and Jessenia was a counselor one week and in charge of crafts the next.
Camp theme is God’s faithfulness and an Argentinian missionary came and shared for the first youth camp. We also had a group of Bible institute students (from where Raul had studied) help out as counselors. Youth were challenged through the story of Joshua to “choose whom they would serve” and whether they would be “conquerors” in life or not.
One of the counselors, Javier, goes to our church and has just been getting plugged in this year. He threw himself into the role of counselor 100% and when he shared about his experience on Sunday at church, we found out that having to lead a group of youth made him loose his fear of being up front. So much so that he shared at church for 15 minutes instead of the 5 that he had been given! He also said he was really impressed by the other counselors from the Bible institute who got up early to read their Bible. Joyce, a girl from our senior youth group, must have noticed this as well because we soon saw her doing the same thing. So, camp is not only challenging to the youth who go, but also to the councilors and our church ends up blessed by it.
We were rather rudely woken up one early morning by the earth shaking twice. There were 3 tremors in Ecuador that morning and we felt two of them. Though some of the campers were really frightened, nobody was hurt. The ocean was very rough and during the youth week we were only able to go out into the water one day. In spite of these things, we are thankful for God’s faithfulness at camp and ask for your prayers for the next two weeks of camp which will be for the children and youth who we work with in Bastion. Raul will be directing one week, and then the last week we will be hosting a team joining us from Halifax.
Thank you again for partnering with us in the work here in Ecuador,
Raul and Jessenia Espinoza
