A group of Lancaster County residents recently spent more than a week in the Amazon Rainforest on a mission to teach.

However, the doctor and four high school students quickly realized they were the ones who would be doing the learning.

Dr. Paul Brubaker, 64, of Manheim, made the nine-day trip to Ecuador with Elizabethtown High School students Alex and Andrea Faus and Jessie and Laura Shenk, all 17.

"We were sent on a mission to teach, but I think it was more a mission of learning," said Brubaker, who specializes in family practice in Elizabethtown.

The group, which was in Ecuador from June 13 to 22, worked with New Community Project in cooperation with Selva-Vida Sin Fronteras, or Rain Forest-Life Without Frontiers.

New Community Project's mission, according to its website, www.newcommunityproject.org..., is to live "more sustainably with the earth and more fairly with its people,"

Selva-Vida Sin Fronteras, its website, http://selvavidasinfrontera..., says, "gives what it takes to provide concrete and viable solutions to the serious human and environmental problems affecting vulnerable ecosystems of universal significance. Most of our activities are concentrated in a geographical region that comprises the headwaters of the Amazon Rainforest and River Basin.

"I had been out of the country before, but nothing like this," Laura Shenk said. "It was a great experience. I really enjoyed it.

"Although we couldn't communicate that well with the people there, because of the language barrier, we became friends," she said.

A major concern within the Amazon is the drilling for oil. This is a rising concern, especially water pollution.

"I found out how our actions, here, can affect a country a continent away," Alex Faus said.

"What really made me realize the problems the oil drilling is causing, was when we saw the first oil pond that was unlined," he said. "When we passed by the oil pond, children were playing in water close by that could have be contaminated by the oil."

According to Brubaker, "Approximately 50,000 gallons of toxic production waters enter the Cuyabeno reserve, a humid tropical rain forest protected zone in the Sucumbios Province, on a daily basis."

The first people the group met were the Cofan.

"The ancestral land, community health and social cohesion of Cofan communities in Ecuador has been severely damaged by several decades of oil drilling," according to www.orgbyvio.com/cofan/.

"There were a few oil companies that tried to barter with village leaders, offering them canoes with motors to drill on their land," Brubaker said. "Some of the leaders took the offer, but it turns out they were not the ones that had the authority to give away any land ... ."

Despite some of the trip's doom and gloom, everyone who went plans to continue such charitable work, wherever it may take them.

"Ecuador was a beautiful country with a fantastic culture," Brubaker said.

"We had a lot of fun. All of the wildlife was amazing, and the trees we saw where enormous," Jessie Shenk said.

"The biggest tree we saw was what the native people call the spirit tree, it was gigantic," Shenk said.

"The trip taught us a lot," Andrea Faus said. "It taught me a lot about myself. I found out I could do much more then I thought I could, especially dealing with huge bugs."