A Deed and an Opportunity for Someone

We left the Quito to get out of the city and go to the small town of Baños, Ecuador. It's actually a pretty cool town. After eating some breakfast we talked to the owner of the little cafe who told us that the closest thing they had to an orphanage was a city-run daycare for low income mothers. We weren't really excited about the prospects, but it seemed like an open door, so we tried to go through it. Unfortunately, several taxi drivers didn't know where the place was.

 

So, we thought about how in our conversation with the cafe owner had told us that she had given jobs to several moms with young children to help them out. We spent some time talking to the moms and found out a few of their needs. We were able to buy 100 diapers for each of the babies and some soccer balls for the older kids. It was actually pretty amazing but when we asked the moms what they wanted for their non-infant kids and they all said pretty emphatically that they wanted vitamins. They said that their kids were often sick because they couldn't get the nutrition they needed, so we were able to buy each of the kids a bottle of vitamins. I know that these aren't huge life-changing gifts, but they seemed to really make a difference to these women who were scraping by.

 

I think the most important thing was that we were able to share not only what we were doing, but why we do it.

 

Medical Need

I know that this is a long shot, but one of the boys who is 12 has a tumor and has had 8 surgeries so far requires catheters (1 every 3 days) and colostomy bags. These things are very expensive in Ecuador, so she has done her best to get them from the US. Her cost has been about $1000 per year (in a country where a GOOD middle class salary is $6000 per year.). We've taken a picture of the type of catheter he needs. If anyone knows anyone in the medical field that could get some of these donated, it would be awesome. To this point his mom has been trying to clean and sterilize them to keep the cost down as low as it is, but that has been causing kidney and bladder infections. Any help would be great.

Setting up a Computer Lab

Thursday we were able to do another good deed.  The Wesleyan church in Panama City has setup a ministry training program and they've been trying to setup a computer lab to do some online classes. The pastor is a computer guru who was able to work on the computers, but we installed electricity and bought the tables to provide workstations. We also did some other work in the church.  We put some bare wires in conduit, fixed some fluorescent light fixtures, repaired 2 bad outlets, replaced a bad breaker, and fixed a safety hazard in the breaker box. Overall, it was nice to get our hands dirty and we really enjoyed spending the day with the pastor.   Thanks to Ed and Daniel from Orlando Wesleyan for your donation!

Check out all of our good deeds at http://yourfundsatwork.blogspot.com

Sister Act (and some other good deeds)

Sept 1 -
We had a fun time today. We visited a children's home run by 4 really cool nuns. After seeing what they were doing, we realized that while the kids get lots of donations, no one was doing anything special for these women who have sacrificed so much. In fact, just before we got there, the nuns were talking about their need for shoes. They each had one pair and they were pretty worn. So, we were able to take them to the mall and buy them not only a pair of shoes...but really good quality ones. It was really cool.

Sept 1-
A child approached us in the mall food court in San Jose, saying that his family was having financial problems and asked for money for food. Since we had some money left over from the previous good deed, we were able to buy food for his whole family.  Thank you to Stephanie from Seminole for your donation for these two good deeds.

Sept 4 -
We are staying with a missionary in Panama named Perry Hubbard. Dan has been working with him and helping them with tech stuff for years.  We arrived and their computer router was in the fritz, so thanks to Larry from California we were able to get him a new one.

Feeding an Orphanage

We had been hearing about an orphanage near the Tica Bus Terminal for a few days and we were finally able to get over there on Friday. They have 37 kids and were out of all fresh foods and laundry soap. Thanks to a gift from our friend T.O. we were able to buy a week's worth of fruits, veggies, chicken, eggs, rice, plus some diapers and formula.  The pics don't do it justice.  See all the pics by clicking here.

Fun Little Deed

We went to a little mall for dinner tonight and while we were eating,
we were thinking that since it was early, we were going to try to find
a good deed to do for someone before it got dark. While the guys were
in a store, I saw that a lot of people were walking around with ice
cream cones. I asked the guys if they wanted one...it tasted pretty
weird. On our way out, some kids who were begging for money asked for
some of our ice cream. The security guard told the kids to leave us
alone. Since their mom was off in the distance, we had the kids go
get their mom and the security guard let us in and we bought the mom
and her 5 kids each a cone.

Then the funniest thing happened, the kids were so excited that as
they were running out one of them bumped into a business man wearing a
dress shirt. The man didn't notice that the kid got ice cream on his
shirt. I kept trying to give the guy a napkin, but he didn't want it,
so we all went off laughing. Thanks to the Mackey family for
providing this good deed.

Incredible morning

Last night we were sitting in our room wondering why God hadn't opened any doors for us to use any of the Good Deeds Fund yet. Then our phone rang and it was Pastor Armando from Iglesia Cuadrangular in La Esperanza, Honduras.  La Esperanza is the highest town in the country.  Thanks to the donation of the children at Gracepointe Church in Apopka, Florida we were able to feed 80 children this morning and leave them the money to feed the children for the next THIRTY Sundays.  

Slow start

We had a really slow start with the Good Deeds Fund, but people have really been catching the vision.  Now the fun starts.  Thank you for your generosity!