As promised, it’s time for an update on life here in month 2. We have been in Ecuador now for over 2 weeks. I wanted to give you all some details on this month and what it has looked like.
As you probably know, we are in Ecuador. Specifically, we are in the capitol, Quito. This month looks a little differently because it is an all squad month. What that means is the entire squad, including our squad leaders and our awesome content manager, are living here in Quito in the same house. (imagine 58 people in the same place). We are staying with the ministry Inca Link, specifically their branch called Casa Blanca. Here at Casa Blanca, they are housing all the girls in bunk beds and the guys are sleeping in the yard in their tents. During the day, we join with our teams and go to our various ministries around Quito.
My team and I are working alongside a church here in the part of Quito called Carapungo. At the church, we have helped with a lot of various housekeeping projects (for example: cleaning and organizing parts of the church that need some TLC). The girls on our team who are musically talented (not me J) have helped with the church’s worship during services. The main thing we have been doing, however, is teaching English. We have 2 classes every day. We spend the morning having tribe time (team time together), the afternoons are spent preparing for English classes, passing out fliers for English class, and then at 3:30 we start the first of two classes, each are an hour and a half. The people who come to the English classes are eager to learn and it has been so much fun to be able to teach them some English while simultaneously weaving gospel related things in with them. For example, we have been having their memory sentence be a bible verse for each class. The goal of the church we are with is to get people to start coming to said church, using the English classes as a window for invitation. They don’t want people to come simply to have bigger church services, they want people to come so that they can experience the life-changing reality of the Gospel. The pastor we work with is a very Christ-centered man. You can tell this by the way he is always pointing back to scripture and to the truths that we find there. It has been a blessing to get to know him and his heart for the community that the church is located in.
This is a community that has experienced a lot of transformation over the years. The street the church is located on is a street that has seen a lot of bad, from prostitution and drug trafficking. It was filled with bars and nightclubs and all that goes along with those environments. Now it is a street where hope (Jesus Christ) is at work heavily. The Lord has already begun transforming this part of Quito. The hope for these English classes is for people to come to the church and to hear and learn more about the Gospel.
Nevertheless, teaching English is our mission this month. It has been challenging to teach a language you do know, in a language you don’t know. There have been times of frustration, but also a lot of joy. The people of Ecuador are shy but so full of love and care for us. We have also had a lot of opportunities for unplanned ministry. We get to have a lot of impromptu English lessons with people we meet on the streets. Impromptu lessons arise when we meet people who can’t make it to the classes but show a desire to learn more English and spend more time with us. Some people we have been spending time with are a little 6-year-old boy whose mother wants him to learn more English, am atheist man who was selling peanuts and candies from a basket, and a Colombian man who longs to travel to Africa and Europe. These people long to know English and they might not know it but their hearts are yearning for more. They yearn for things we can’t give them, but we can show them. They long for their Abba and it has been our pleasure to show them Him using English lessons. Our English lessons and our month in Ecuador are almost over, but God is not done here in Carapungo. He started working here long before we came and He will continue long after we are gone.
Please join us in praying for this church we are working with. Pray for the pastor and his family. He does this work solely because God has called him to it. Pray for Jose, Kevin, and Charlie, the people we have been able to spend deeper time with. Pray that they would come to know Christ. Pray that the people who come to English class, come to church also and that they experience Christ there and they get to experience community along with that. Pray for us as we experience God’s goodness in the grand things and that we never cease to praise Him in the simple things. Pray that we can continue to stay on this journey and that people are prompted to give to us so that we have that opportunity. God is working. He is working here in Ecuador, He is working here in our hearts, He is moving and we don’t want to miss out on it.
Please seriously consider becoming a prayer partner for myself and my team and my squad. Prayer is powerful. Please also consider donating so that I can stay on the world race, continuing in this mission God has called me to. I am currently about $1,500 away from my 3rd goal of $13,000 and about $5,000 away from being fully funded. Please remember me in prayer as I fundraise from a continent away and share what is happening here with the people you know. I appreciate you all so much and can feel the prayers you’re already lifting on my behalf, my team’s behalf, my squad’s behalf, and Ecuador’s behalf. Stay tuned for another blog soon about some deeper things from my heart.
God is good.
-Emma
