Last week our ministry put on a Christmas party for the community. We welcomed 300 people into Pan de Vida, played carnival games, fed them a meal, shared the Gospel, and gave them Christmas presents. IT WAS SO FUN! One thing I love about Pan de Vida is that they rely on local volunteers to make their programs happen. For any program they run there is around 20 local Ecuadorian volunteers that come and work their butts off to serve those in need. During the Christmas party we worked with a team from the U.S. and a bunch of local volunteers to make it happen.
At the end of the whole party all the volunteers met to share stories from the party and pray. Several of the Ecuadorian and U.S. volunteers got up and shared about sweet conversations they had had with the beneficiaries (what Pan de Vida calls those who receive help from Pan de Vida). A man stood up, one of the volunteers that I had assumed was Ecuadorian, and announced that he was from India. He is a pastor from India that had traveled to Ecuador to experience the Christmas season and help Pan de Vida run their Christmas programs. He shared,“In my country we cannot celebrate Christmas like this. We are not free to talk about Jesus. It is so beautiful to see people celebrating and proclaiming Jesus’ name.” That hit me. Where he comes from they are not allowed to talk freely about Jesus or celebrate His birth. He was so excited about Christmas, and flew all the way from India to help the least of those in Ecuador celebrate a holiday that he cannot.
It was just so cool. Standing in a room in Ecuador full of people from literally all over the world. People from Germany, India, all over the United States, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador all coming together to celebrate Christmas. People from all different cultures and backgrounds. Some people unable to proclaim the name of Jesus in their home country. The Indian man talked about how we serve a Global God. God is not just present in the country that we come from. He is present and working all over the world. It blows my mind that I have this opportunity to see it first hand. Thank you all for giving me this opportunity. I am blown away by the beauty of people from all over the world coming together to serve our creator and love His people.
Today was our last day serving at Pan de Vida. We ate a big lunch together with their staff, and shared stories from our month working together. Here is a picture taken by their founder and director, Oscar Aguirre, with our team and all of their full-time staff 🙂
