The Woodside women - plus ER leaders Ed and Dawn

A team of 9 women from Woodside Bible Church in Troy, Michigan travelled to Cape Town, South Africa to work with ER partner Living Hope. The team worked with over 350 women (and a few men) from the Living Hope Support Groups. These support groups exist to support those dealing with HIV, AIDS and other illnesses. Each of the 4 support groups meet in various townships in the Fish Hoek area. Most of the women they worked with are HIV+. The team did a wonderful job empowering, encouraging and loving these women who have known so much sickness, poverty, death and abuse in their lives. (for more information on Living Hope go to: www.livinghopeusa.org)

They also had the opportunity to encourage the 25 women (and a couple men) at the New Beginnings Development Center in the Woodstock area of Cape Town (www.newbdc.com). These women are enrolled in a free training course for unemployed people. The goal is to train, educate and empower individuals in an effort to alleviate poverty. The Woodside ladies had a great time getting to know the New Beginnings students.

Thank you Woodside Ladies!

House in the Masiphumelele Township

Woodside team member Deb with 2 of the ladies

Meeting at New Beginnings

Red Hill Township

The meeting at Red Hill

Christina makes a new friend at Ocean View

Extreme Response welcomes Calvary Church of Pennsylvania to Quito this week! A team of 18 adults is here working in partnership with the El Inca Church. This group is building a 120-seat auditorium for a new church in the La Paz community, just north of Quito. Each day the team is busy mixing and pouring concrete as well as welding the steel roof trusses. A team of nationals will continue with the roof structure and corrugated panels once the team has finished their week. A special thanks to team leaders Steve Kirsch and Norm Emery, as well as each of the team members for serving in Ecuador!

Submitted by Bill Hedrick- Teams Coordinator

We welcomed a team made up of three families from The Chapel in Akron and Green, Ohio, to serve with Extreme Response in Quito, Ecuador from July 22nd to August 6th. The team arrived in stages. Dr. Dave and Linda Hoff flew in on July 22. Dave and Linda are dear friends of ours from Akron, and having them here was like welcoming family. This was their sixth trip to Ecuador, and they handle it like pros! For six days we put them to work doctoring patients at the nursing home, working at the medical clinic at the dump.. On July 28th, the rest of the team arrived. The Lingenhoel and Miller families arrived prepared to conduct a Kids Program at Pan de Vida, a local soup kitchen serving about 1000 families in the Quito area.

The team was prepared for 100 children (Now where have we heard that before?) and we actually ended the week with 70 children in regular attendance. This was a good thing, as it allowed us to connect with the children (and maintain some semblance of control!). We ventured into new territory with this team, taking two field trips during the week. These are street children who would never have the opportunity to do anything like this. Both were to local museums…one of them was positively amazing. There is a new interactive “water museum” here in Quito. We arrived with 70 children and 15 adults. The guides were excited to see us. They talked to the children like they were real people. Our guide got down on her knees so that she could look our little ones in the eyes…at their level. Our kids were engaged from the moment we entered the building until we boarded the bus to go home. Throughout the rest of the week, the kids in my group chattered endlessly about how much fun they had at the water museum.
Many thanks, to The Chapel, for serving those in need here in Ecuador!
Submitted by Dan Maloy

A team of 24 from Omaha, Nebraska is hard at work in Quito, Ecuador helping out with many ER projects and partners. Half of the team is doing construction - building a house for Maria, Segundo, and Diana. They are a family that has been working at the Quito dump for many years. The home will really impact two families. The new home will allow the second family move into Maria, Segundo, and Diana’s existing house. Maria said each day seems like a dream. Their grandchildren are having fun with the team and are pitching in on the work. The house dedication is set for Monday the 10th of August. The team plans on buying beds, stove, sofa, dinning room table, pot & pans, and food for the dedication.

The non-construction part of the team has done a program at the Betania Old Folks Home, taken the children from the Zambiza Day Care Center to the Zoo, and will be doing a Kids Program at Nuevo Amigos. The team is being joined by the boys from Casa Gabriel (home for former street boys). These boys are doing a fantastic job serving with the teams; two are with the construction team and seven are with the non-construction team. The non-construction team will also do some painting at the Casa Gabriel house. It is awesome to see the boys impacting lives.

A team of 14 people from the Second Avenue Baptist Church of Rome, Georgia arrived in Manta, Ecuador late Saturday night. They are putting on a kids’ club in the small town of Pacoche. Just over 100 kids came the very first day (along with some moms too!). The team is also installing bamboo railings at the Montanita Verde Children’s Home and will help to paint some of the kids’ rooms. Wednesday they will visit the Manta trash dump where they will distribute food bags to those working in the dump.

The senior high youth group from Richvale Bible Chapel in Richmond Hill, Canada served with Extreme Response in Quito, Ecuador June 25- July 4th. The group of twenty teenagers and adult sponsors served with ER partner Nuevos Amigos in a very depressed part of the city. Their mornings consisted of painting the school building and several class rooms, also running a kids’ club for a total of three hundred kids in the afternoon. A highlight of the week was a morning of just playing with the children at the Zambiza dump day care center. This year’s team was the first ever from Richvale. Thanks for serving those in need here in Ecuador!

Submitted by Dan Maloy

The senior high youth group from Woodside Bible Church in Troy Michigan served with Extreme Response in Quito, Ecuador June 27- July 6th. The 17 teenagers and 6 adult sponsors served with ER partner Remanso de Amor  (Haven of Love) in the south part of the city. Their days consisted of making repairs to the school building there and running a kids’ club in several different neighborhoods. A highlight of the week was in serving a hot meal to the night shift workers at the Zambiza dump project. This year’s team was the third consecutive group from Woodside. Thanks again for serving in Ecuador!

Submitted by Bill Hedrick- ER Teams Coordinator

A team from Kensington Community Church of Troy, Michigan is currently on the coast of Ecuador, building a security wall around the Montanita Verde Orphanage.  They’re doing a great job with not only the construction, but also with building relationships with the children of the orphanage.  Thanks for all your hard work, team!

After months of planning and paperwork, fundraising and collecting of donated items, it seemed so surreal to finally be in Manta, Ecuador. I was part of a team of 11 Canadians from the Simcoe, Ontario area that flew to Manta to help put on the Christmas Outreach Events for 2008. We went loaded down with 22 suitcases, all weighing in at the 49.9 allowable pounds, ready to bring joy and encouragement to the poor people in the coastal area of Manta. We had brought with us toys, hygiene items, and school supplies to make up gift bags, for the approximate 600 children that we were to bring Christmas greetings to. We brought cash to purchase food supplies to make lunches for the folks at the parties and food baskets to take home with them as well. What a grocery shopping trip that was! Games were assembled for the parties. Simple things like plywood painted with cut out circles to allow bean bags to be tossed through. Stick fishing poles to play “Go Fish” were constructed. Plastic pop bottles filled with beach sand to toss rings onto. Laughter and love filled the room as the gift bags were put together. We were there in our minds, to bring encouragement to these forgotten folks. We just were not really ready for the 180 turn around that was about to happen to us as we set out for the locations of the Christmas parties. The big longing eyes, the smiles, the grateful hugs, the emotional out spring of thankfulness to us for coming. We saw children and adults together play our games, colour our crafts, and receive our gifts with enthusiasm as if we had taken them to Disney for the day. We thought we were to be the bearers of great joy, but I think we recieved just as much in return. I will never forget the encounter I had with one little guy and his mother. He had just received his gift bag, besides the toothbrush, toothpaste, face cloth, bar of soap, the bag also contained a little teddy bear and the “treasure of his eye” a shiny red Corvette Hot Wheel car. He turned to his mother so excited, she looked at him and then up at me. I asked our translator to have a quick conversation. The mother got up gave me a hug and told our translator…”thank you for coming far away from your home to bring us these gifts, I could never have enough money to be able to buy my son such a nice toy” To think that a hot wheel car that cost our team 64 cents a piece could bring so much joy. We all went back to Canada, lives a little changed…we live in the land of plenty, help us to be more generous to those who have nothing.