Today, we met Vicente at the office gate at CMT#2 to go on home visits at 7:00 am. (Vincente drives the small CMT bus) We met Teresa a another lady who stayed with us for the day.
We drove about 1 hour (we had to drop two people off at various locations) to get to CMT#1 (which is in the La Marín section of Quito) to use the bathroom. The kids didn't want to use the bathroom, but I explained to them that they would not get another opportunity to do so until about 12 noon when we returned from the home visits. They finally agreed and we all took turns.
The first two houses we visited were in the South (Sur) of Quito in the Metropolitano area. The first one was relatively nice, there were 5 people in the family and they had 2 bedrooms, a small kitchen with a washing machine, and a bathroom. The living room area also had another bed set up in it.
The second house we visited was in the same area, it was 2 bedrooms, but 9 people lived there. The family owes a huge black pig and several chickens.
After visiting these two homes, we got back in the van with Vicente and drove to another neighborhood, Paquisha in the southeast of the city. This area was much hillier and rural. We walked down a big hill to visit the first house. It was small, only two rooms and a family of 5 lives there as well.
We walked further down the hill and visited another house. At that one, a young girl and her 2.5 year old daughter, Diana were there. The whole family are members of the Center, her mother just graduated from the program. They had lots of animals, a cat, sheep, guinea pigs, rabbits, goose, and several chickens.
We had to walk up an enormous hill (not really that big, but with the altitude, it feels huge, you get so out of breath so fast) to get to the van with Vicente. He drove us back to CMT#1 at La Marín just in time for Mass and lunch.
We stopped for a photo op.
Padre Juan said Mass, we all remembered to raise our hands so that we'd get communion and sang in Spanish. Claire said that she wished we could sing those kinds of songs at St. Matthias!
We went downstairs for lunch and tried to help, they put us to work dishing our soup and juice. I had a little girl helping me named Laureth who could say the Sign of the Cross in English! We ate lunch with the people, soup, rice, hominy, and tomato slice.
We were supposed to have a work project at 2:00 pm with someone named Angel Chisiluisa, but Teresa told us that he got sick and wasn't there. So Vincente drove us back to CMT#2. We thought we'd have free time so the kids scattered, some went to play basketball, some soccer, Maria took a nap, and I went to the furniture store downstairs to check on something. Later, Teresa found me and said that there was a painting project here. After gathering the girls, we learned that it was really a coloring project - some posters that needed to be colored in. (Pintar is the Spanish word for painting, I didn't realize that it was the same word for coloring!)
We completed that, had some free time, then reflection. It was an emotional day, full of shocks and surprises. We talked about how we tend to keep money at the center of our lives more than God is, and what we could do about that.
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