Ecuador: Arriving and Babahoyo

We planned an epic siblings trip to visit my parents on their mission in Ecuador. I'm amazed we were all able to coordinate our schedules and visit at the same time. We were originally all going to meet in Miami and have a direct flight from there, but a hurricane changed those plans. We had to scramble (and stress) the day before we were supposed to leave and change our plans. We all ended up flying to New York instead and flew to Guayaquil from there. The Utah people ended up with a crazy long travel day but mine wasn't too bad. We just had a long layover in NYC and then a red-eye to Ecuador but we were just happy that we made it! (Erin joined us a few days later.)

We took a crazy taxi ride from the airport to the temple. It was so fun to see my parents' apartment on the temple grounds and the beautiful temple. And of course my parents! I loved seeing them in action all week, doing an amazing job speaking Spanish and seeing how much the people there loved them and the love they had for the people. We rested a bit and then one of the ward members was our driver for the next week so we piled into his minivan and drove out to the country to visit the town of Babahoyo, the very first place where Steph served her mission. We saw lots of banana plantations on the way and saw all the homes on stilts. We even ran into the sister missionaries while wandering around town!

We headed back to Guayaquil and had dinner on the "boardwalk" along the water where there are lots of restaurants and then we stopped at a monument up on a hill that had a great view of the city.

We stayed in one of the rooms they use for temple visitors who have to travel far and need to spend the night. 

We were laughing about the endless line of older Ecuadorians who were waiting in wheelchairs for our flight. There must have been at least 30.