Are you ready for a really long blog? Because here it is!
I have been away from home for a week now. No family or friends besides a FaceTime call or 2. I don’t wake up every morning and drive my car to work. I don’t snapchat my friends everyday and I can’t text the people I used to.
I’m sure that a lot of you are wondering what I am doing here. I wake up with Brooke sleeping above me. I shut off my alarm at around 7 am. I go to the bathroom where girls are lined up to use the bathroom, standing in front of foggy mirrors and doing their hair and makeup. I get into a warm shower. Get dressed into clean clothes and go downstairs for breakfast with my squad. Yeah. I am living in luxury for being a missionary.
After breakfast my team gets together and prays before we take a 7 minute walk to the bus station, where we pay .25 to take the bus to downtown Quito. Sometimes, before we get to the bus, we stop at the tienda at the top of the hill and grab a croissant from George and Jenny. After a 45 minute bus ride of mostly standing the entire way, we walk to Carolina Park, where inside lies Covi, the ministry that we are working with for the next 3 months.
Right now, the older kids don’t really associate with us. They avoid playing games with us and will really only listen when we give them structure, yesterday we taught them The English alphabet and the days of the week. The older kids are the ones we have in the morning.
The way that Ecuador has their school system set up is that half of the kids go in the morning and the other half in the afternoon.
In the afternoon we get the smaller kids who love to play jump rope and soccer, but can’t stay still for 5 minutes. They like us, which is fun.
Throughout the day we clean, help cook, serve the kids a meal, try and help with homework and play with the kids.
Then we go home. We eat dinner, have team time, and live in constant community. So far, it’s great.
I know that this is a pretty broad overview of what has been happening the last week, but the thing about being a missionary isn’t only about the organization that you’re helping with. I’m sure that there will be plenty of other stories from Covi that I will be sharing with you. But this whole trip is about living in constant mission and growing the kingdom.
On Sunday, we went to church at an English speaking church. It was awesome being able to hear someone other than people on my squad speak English for an hour. The language barrier is REAL here, but I’m getting better and better at my Spanish every day.
We then went to a coffee shop to discuss our plan for ministry for the week, and made our way back home. On the bus, we ran into a performer that we had seen a few days before. He was a rapper and he sang the exact same song that he sang the day before. We stand out here in Quito. People stare, they talk about us, and people have asked us to take pictures with them a total of 2 times so far. It’s weird being the minority and having people be fascinated with your skin color. Anyway, so the rapper saw us and began trying to speak to us. He told us that he was from Columbia, he offered to take us there and that he would welcome us. Then he offered to teach us how to salsa. We told him that we weren’t allowed to leave the country. We then began to tell him that we were missionaries, and what we were doing. Earlier we were talking about how cool it would be to just sing praise songs on the bus, even if no one could even understand us. We told him that we could sing and he asked us to. So we started singing “Your praise will ever be on my lips” in the middle of the bus. Once we finished the bus pulled into the station. He picked up on the fact that we were singing a “Gospel” song. After we got off we could tell that he was eager to speak to us. We stopped, and began to talk to our new friend, a rapper named Stephen. We asked if we could sing with him. He turned on the music that he raps to, and we began to sing “You are good, you’re good, ohhhhh” He would stop us and begin to rap. What he was saying, we don’t know, but it was a super cool experience. He was skeptical when we asked to pray for him, but allowed us to anyway.
We walked back to Casa Blanca, where we are staying. Brooke, Rachel, another girl on our squad Jordan, and I were sitting around a table when Brooke told us that she felt in necessary to go back to the bus station and just worship. We decided to all pray to see where God was going to take us. While we were praying, Jordan and Brooke saw the tiendas at the top of the hill. Brooke and Rachel saw visions of a person. Rachel saw a man carrying a trash bag. Brooke saw someone with something blue over their shoulder. I saw a random house which may prove to be something later, but is insignificant for this story.
Anyway, so we head out. We walk to the tiendas and didn’t really get the vibe of staying. So we walked down the hill to the bus stop. As we crossed the road to the bus stop, we see a small ecuadorian man, carrying a blue straw bag over his shoulder, walking into the bus station. The presence of God was overwhelming. We followed the man, I promise we weren’t creepy Americans, into the bus station. He turned a corner, and Brooke and Jordan went to talk to him. His wife pulled him away to catch a bus, but apparently the man was very nice, but they didn’t have the opportunity to get into a conversation with him.
So there we were, 4 Americans standing in the middle of Carcelen Terminal, playing and singing along to praise songs. We were praying, asking God to open our eyes to be his. Remember how Brooke saw a blue bag? Well we started to see blue everywhere. In the skirt of a woman who Jordan talked to. A man in a red sweater kept checking us out, not sure of what we were doing. Cesar was very kind, and has been in Quito for 40 years. Rachel and I told him that we were missionaries, and prayed for him. Once our conversation with Cesar was finished, we saw Jordan and Brooke with lollipops in hand. There was a young guy, holding a kid and with another girl in front of him. We offered the kids the lollipops who took them. The guys name was Alejandro. A 17 year old who was traveling home, 8 hours away from Quito. We asked to pray for him, and once we were done, he was beaming and thanking us. He started to leave, but Brooke felt like we weren’t finished yet. She asked Alejandro if he was sick, he said no, but his little cousin, the girl, had severe asthma. They had to go, but we prayed that God would heal the little girl.
At that time we decided that it was time to go home because it was getting dark. We then met David, a person who we either think was Mormon or thought that we were. It was an odd conversation, but a learning experience for all the people involved. It was really cool because i could understand most of the things that he was saying. But that gift has disappeared because I literally can’t understand any of the children that I try and talk to.
That has been my week. God has been moving, in very little and very large ways. I can’t wait for the next 3 months at Covi. Thank you for all of your support and getting me to this point. I wouldn’t be here without you all. I love my team, as we are getting to know each other so much more. I love my squad, and the dynamic that we are creating (right now we are just kinda loud, which is my place to be). I have only $1700 until I am fully funded! Thank you for all of the prayers, and encouraging notes. Talk to you soon!!
