Day 3: Today our alarm didn’t go off AGAIN but we woke up just in time to get ready quickly and grab some frosted flakes in the hotel restaurant. We loaded on the bus and were taken down to the Society of Jesus Church which is where the first Working Boys Center was run out of the church attic.
The church is absolutely breathtaking…the entire inside is covered in gold. It took over 160 years to complete and is in the baroque style. We weren’t allowed to take pictures but bought some postcards, which really still don’t do it justice. Just imagine walking into a church about 3 times the size of St.Mary’s Basilica where every wall and the ceiling is covered in GOLD!!! It was beautiful. It was also the place where 15 children saw the picture of Our Lady of Sorrows blink and cry…the original picture is now located in a Jesuit high school in Quito, but they have another picture in the chapel and on the main altar. It was very cute hearing Padre Juan and Madre Miguel talk about their original days there. Padre says that the first few years he “lived the good life” until he got the wise idea to go to America and ask the BVMs to send him some help and they sent him Madre. She said she didn’t understand why when she first go there the Jesuits didn’t like her and Padre immediately said, “Has that changed?” They have a very cute dynamic and you can tell that God brought them together to do great things and that they recognize that in each other. Madre told us some fun stories about having to carry bins of water up 3 flights of stairs for water until they realized that between 4 am and 8 am they had water in the building and then they just filled bins and kept them up there. She said that this worked out great until one boy decided that he knew how to take a little power nap while the bin filled, but one morning overslept and flooded one of the Jesuits rooms downstairs. She said most of the priests were not to happy about having all these grubby little kids running around, and it wasn’t just a few either. Father said they started with a couple dozen children which quickly grew to nearly 250 “shoeshine boys” Ironically, as we were leaving two little shoeshine boys were in the street. One was 7 and one was 5. They were not members of the center and Madre Cindy said she could tell they were indigenous people from the mountains because of their accents. The little boy told Madre that he makes $12 a day to give to his mother which isn’t too shabby when you think that each shoeshine is only a quarter. Madre wouldn’t let me give him a quarter because I was wearing sneakers and he couldn’t shine my shoes so Padre told the little boy to give me a 25 cent smile I think Padre had my number. We went back to the school for mass which was just as cute as yesterday and after mass the little children put on a show for us…our little ones, the 3 and 4 year olds were dressed as flowers and bees and did a little dance. It was darling. Not surprisingly- little Mauricio was SURE that I got a picture with him as a flower! I then was attacked by a group of bees who also wanted their picture! Very cute! We had lunch and then were taken back to the hotel for a much needed nap. You would think that we wouldn’t be that tired, but you really do get really tired. I think Jenny and I were only back in our rooms about 2 minutes before we fell asleep. We both slept for about 4 hours. The bus picked us up at 6:30 and we went back to the Center to have a wine and cheese party with the volunteers. That was very fun and it was great to hear how the volunteers all got here and how much they love being part of the ministry. We came back to the hotel and it was raining….which was really nice. We have a big trip tomorrow out about 2 hours on the bus to go to the big market which is apparently world famous for their goods and carvings so we are making our list and checking it twice for people to get goodies for. It was a very wonderful day again in Quito.
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