Summer interns Riva Macbeth and Anna Moate wrap a patient's foot at Hospital Vozandes-Shell.

(Sept. 5, 2013 - by Ralph Kurtenbach and Ruth Pike) Behind the newly constructed childcare center made of concrete and with shiny tile floors, an abhorrent scene greeted David Edgren. But this too taught him something about work in the developing world as he served as a missionary intern for several weeks in Ecuador.

Instead of piping the kitchen and bathroom waste water to an underground septic tank, followed by a drain field, the waste pipes led to holes that were easily accessed. "Kids had stuffed a bunch of toys down the hole from the bathroom and had clogged the drain," Edgren wrote to his donors and friends. "So now it was overflowing into a field behind the house and likely eventually into the river 50 meters away."

Then sparing his readers no detail, he told that upon examination the hole revealed live parasites, fecal matter and a dead chicken in what he deemed "possibly the most revolting thing I've ever seen in my life."

Mark Wagner and Kevin Ng practice surveying in Shell, Ecuador.

But a lesson appeared too, there in the waste hole in a jungle community known as Amazonas. The importance of coupling proper sanitation with a community's clean water system, and "how even small inadequacies can ruin an otherwise perfect system," had never been clearer to Edgren, a Wheaton College engineering student.

Having grown up in Ecuador as the son of evangelical missionaries, Edgren happily returned to his old stomping grounds. Also interning with HCJB Global during the summer were Anna Moate, Riva Macbeth, Kevin Ng, Raquel Velasco, Mark Wagner and Kathryn White.

For several weeks the interns helped the expatriate missionaries and Ecuadorians in their work. For instance, the healthcare interns put into its simplest form a talk on rehydration so that children could understand it. Engineering students, including Edgren, worked with people of the Shuar tribe in Washintza to protect spring water for use in the community.

L-R: Anna Moate, Raquel Velasco and Riva Macbeth singing a song with the children from the Shuar community of Washintsa after teaching a hygiene lesson.

Kathryn White, a marketing student from Omaha, helped out Adela Espin of the Hospital Vozandes human resources department in Shell. "I've seen God help me to speak in Spanish better than I thought I could," she said afterwards. "The people I worked with in the hospital all spoke Spanish so I could practice a lot more vocabulary and ways to say things." Moate, a pre-medical student, found that physicians took time to explain their thinking process on diagnosing helping patients.

Dr. Kim Barton, who coordinated the interns' logistics of housing and many other details, viewed her work as investing in the development of the next generation of missionaries, shaping their ideas about missions, ministry and dependence." Additionally, HCJB Global benefits from "our own exposure to enthusiastic, passionate young people," she said.

Wagner, an engineering student, called learning about development a real eye-opener and that overall, "it's definitely been a great experience being in a different culture."

"This summer I felt like for the first time I was able to contribute to the work of missions in Ecuador, having watched my parents do it for half my life," said Edgren, adding that firsthand experience of integrating engineering with missions was instructive. "This summer confirmed for me that this is one thing that I truly would be interested in doing with my life."

Source: HCJB Global