Month one done! Bye bye Colombia and all the memories and fun times; off to the next adventure: Ecuador!!
We arrived to this beautiful country on October 12th and a lot has happened since then:
First, we met our main host family for the month: Fabi and Mabi! They are a wonderful married couple who are crazy cool and crazy in love with Jesus! They are very funny and make all the food, just the two of them, for us whenever we are staying at the main house!! They are wonderful people and make some pretty fantastic homemade peanut butter!!
Second, we had our first adventure day of the month like right away on the 14th and 6 (one of the teams this month is in a different location so it was only 6 instead of all 9) of us guys went on a crazy awesome adventure! It started with us jumping on a few buses that we are on for two hours. Then something really crazy happened…we all jumped on the back of a pickup truck that we rode on for 45 minutes which took us into this really beautiful forest! We hiked in this forest along trails and stopped by little swimming areas and such. At the end of the trail was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in nature…there was this huge waterfall!!! It was so crazy cool to see that and how massive it is, and the fact that God made that is just crazy awesome and cool! We had a short time with Jesus in the midst of this waterfall and I got the revelation that even though that waterfall is so huge and beautiful God made us and it and values us so much more!! Needless to say, it was a real fun time with the guys and just being in God’s creation!
And Third our ministry. Now above I was saying our “main house” and that is because my team will not be staying there for the whole month! We are actually spending two of the weeks at a farm! The ministry we will be working with for the month is called Camp Hope, and it is a ministry for people with special needs and they have a facility in the city near where the main house is that for half of the month my team will be serving at! Now for the first half of the month we will be serving at a farm which actually provides the food that they serve at Camp Hope which is really cool and Awesome! As I am writing this we are actually four days into our ministry here at the farm! Our host here doesn’t speak any English so it’s real fun trying to communicate with him, however he is a really awesome guy and is very chill and nice! Our days at the farm are scheduled pretty loosely but something like this: we wake up and have breakfast between eight and nine then we work for about three hours and have lunch at around twelve, then we have a ciesta which is like a little break time where I usually nap, then we get back to work around two or three and work until either four or five then have dinner! The first day we were here we only did work in the afternoon, but we spent that time picking up all of the horse poop on the property and there was a lot! The second day we moved this huge dirt pile from one part of the property to the other which took the entire morning and two hundred twenty-five wheelbarrows full! That afternoon we started on this huge project of weeding an entire garden which has taken the rest of the time here to do and we still aren’t quite finished but are so close! It’s really cool but also really hard doing this work on the daily, but it’s a prime example of what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 12:12 (ESV)- “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body though many, are one body, as it is with Christ.” Us being on this farm and doing a bunch of maintenance essentially is a good example that not all ministry looks like feeding the homeless or playing sports with kids or going out and evangelizing. Those are all important parts of ministry and farming is also a part of that because it provides for a ministry! So, us doing this farming is just as important as feeding the homeless or playing with kids and loving on them or evangelizing! That’s what’s been really cool about the farm and serving here with just my team!
That’s a little glimpse of what I am up to here in Ecuador so far! Can’t wait to see what God has instore for us the rest of the month and what He’ll be teaching me!
PS. I am only $1,400 away from being fully funded which is absolutely fantastic!! Thank you to all of you who have donated I couldn’t thank you all enough! If you feel led and would like to be a part of this crazy adventure with me you can donate at the top of my page!!
