While these first two weeks in Quito have been an amazing experience, if I am being completely honest, they have also been very hard. The first week and a half wasn’t so bad. There were definitely some struggles with adjusting to this new lifestyle, but I was overall excited about the fact that I was in Ecuador living as a missionary. Around Friday, though, things really started to turn south.
The fact that I am living in a house with about 55 other people was starting to get to me. All I wanted was a quiet place to be alone, but no matter where I went, I could hear people talking.
I have been struggling with the inability to have a serious conversation with someone without having to yell. With 50 people talking at once, it is always so loud, and more often than not, there are people singing as loudly as they can in the middle of the living room. As someone who loves and desires serious, one-on-one conversations, this has been difficult for me.
It’s so hard being constantly surrounded by people because it feels as though there is a constant pressure to be in a good mood and to have no struggles in my walk with God. It feels as though there is no room to really feel the negative emotions that I am experiencing in order to move on and work through them.
I have been missing home so much. I miss driving around with my sister, windows rolled down, and us jamming to music. I miss watching movies with my sister while eating pizza and ice cream. I miss watching shows with my mom and sister. I miss cooking dinner for my family. I miss being able to sit on the couch and relax with the house to myself.
It gets hard doing the same mundane, seemingly pointless activities at ministry every day. Sweeping a patio. Cleaning dishes. Painting a room. Sweeping the patio again. Painting the room again. Scrubbing the walls. Mopping the floor. Painting the room again.
It gets tiring playing with the kids at our ministry site. It’s tiring lifting them up to the monkey bars and getting them down over and over until it feels like my arms are going to fall off. It gets tiresome having my hair pulled out because the little girls want to braid it. It gets tiring having the kids asking me to run around with them when all I want to do is sit down.
All in all, this is a seriously difficult experience.
The things is, though, while it is a struggle, there are so many great things.
I love the deep, intriguing conversations that I have had with some of my squad mates – even though I sometimes have to yell to have them. I love that I can go downstairs at 12am and find one of my squadmates furiously scribbling in his journal, and then proceed to have a long, fascinating conversation about scripture, life, and my desire for justice in this world (true story).
I love that there is a random Canadian man living in the house with us, who gives me sips of his Tim Hortons coffee and tells the best dad jokes.
I love seeing the guys on my team being so kind and joyful when they’re playing with the kids at our ministry site.
I love all the times I have seen God do amazing things. I love thinking about the night when I felt God telling me to tell one of my squadmates that she is not alone and is so loved, only to find out later that she was feeling extremely alone in that moment. I love thinking about when I was locked out of a gate with no hope of getting in, and I prayed that someone would come to let me in, and 15 seconds later someone happened to show up.
It’s so incredible to me that I am currently sitting in Quito, Ecuador while writing this. It baffles me that 3 weeks ago I was living in Edmonton, and now, as soon as I publish this, I will be leaving for a volcano.
The time that I have spent here has been a rollercoaster. If I’m being honest, there have been a few times where I came scarily close to going home. There was a day when I broke down crying while at ministry because I couldn’t see how I could do this for 9 months. I knew that this trip was going to be hard, but it’s a lot easier to say that it’s going to be hard than to actually experience the difficulty. It’s hard to realize that when I pray for God to help me grow, the process of growing is actually very painful.
Despite the difficulty of this trip, I’m so glad that it has been so hard. After I broke down crying, I spent the following day at home praying and immersing myself in scripture. Through that, I realized that for far too long I have been living my life leaning into my own strength. I have been reading the Bible and praying just enough that I could tell myself that I was walking with God, but I was really just looking at Him as a supporting character in my life. I’m so grateful for the difficulty that brought me to realize that, because now I’m actually craving scripture and I have a constant desire to be reading my Bible and praying.
I have resumed the incredible love story that is a deep, intimate relationship with God, and I am so grateful for that (even though I had to go through a bit of hell to get there).
