First Sunday and a long wait

 President Galál visited our area over the weekend that we arrived. He is a CES employee who is a counselor in the mission presidency. Luckily, he flew in to Lago Agrio, met with the missionaries and flew out of El Coca. Here is the Coca Branch building. Although it has no air conditioning, the ceilings are tall and there are heavy duty ceiling fans.


We hope to divide the branch in two very soon.


We drove President Galán 90 minutes south to this building. This area is also known as Orellana, named after Francisco de Orellana who took his trip from here down the Amazon to the Atlantic.
Sacrament meeting was wonderful and I was able to play the piano for the first time in a long while. We met wonderful brothers and sisters who were excited to have us visit. President Galán asked us introduce ourselves in Spanish, which was probably a fun diversion for the congregation. Our Spanish is still basic, but they oohed and aahed in all the right places, especially when we said "Hong Kong." They were somehow impressed with that.

We saw some cuy on the side of the road being roasted. Not today!


Just before arriving in Sachas, we came to a dead stop. Something was blocking the road, but we couldn't see it. After waiting for an hour we thought we should try to conserve our remaining fuel. The air conditioning had to be turned off and the temperature was 95 degrees F.


After 3 hours, we started moving again. The accident was just up ahead from our location, on a curve, with a rolled tanker truck and a semi-truck, both in the ditch. Three ambulances had passed us in the interim. I don't know how this was resolved, but there was at least a crane on site.

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