I’ll be the first to admit, these first two weeks in Ecuador have been hard.
Ecuador was a country that I had insanely high expectations for and that I thought would definitely be one of my favorite months. However, at the time that I thought that, I didn’t yet know how much I would fall in love with Colombia, and how difficult transitioning to Ecuador would be for me after that.
This month my team has been in Quito, Ecuador. A city that very honestly looks nothing like I pictured the capital of Ecuador to look like. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. The city is absolutely gigantic, but is spread outward and not upward. There are no high rise buildings, just an insane amount of normal sized buildings stretched between two mountain ranges in a way that you can get on a bus, leave Quito, be on said bus for several hours, and still be in Quito.
We were supposed to spend the month partnered with CRU which is a college ministry. However, when we arrived in Ecuador there was already a group working with them and we got reassigned to a High School instead. For the last two weeks we have been working with a “Christian” High School, serving as assistants to English teachers.
Reading this, your first thought may have been “why would they need missionaries for that?”.
No offense taken, that was my first thought too.
Coming from the streets of Colombia, a place of such incredible need, to a private Christian school honestly didn’t seem like ministry to me.
But (WOW) was I wrong.
God quickly made it very clear that He does nothing without purpose and that my puny opinion of what ministry should look like was nothing compared to his vision of what ministry was going to be.
This month, God has shown me that darkness comes in many forms. In the streets of Colombia the darkness may have been more apparent, but the hallways of this High School are in just as desperate need of the light.
Take away point: ministry is not defined by a time or place, it is a way of life. Whether we are praying in the bus in the morning or walking home from a gathering at night, the mission field is wherever our feet are.
In the past, I spent years believing the lie that I couldn’t make a difference until I did X, Y, or Z. So let me tell you, regardless of what you are telling yourself, whether it’s that you have to finish school before you can serve the kingdom of God, you have to be with an organization to be a missionary, you don’t have enough time in your day to make a difference, or that where you live or work doesn’t need any help, it is a lie!
“Inadequate” and “inessential” are two of the enemies biggest lies and easiest deceptions.
He literally does nothing other than make the people of God feel unqualified for the work to be done or believe that there is no work to be done. If he can accomplish that, then he wins. Not because he did anything great, but because the people of God failed to do anything at all.
Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.
He doesn’t say that he needs people that have graduated college, or work in a certain area, or have lots of free time. He just wants us to say yes, right where we are.
This month I have seen God move in some of the most miraculous ways on a city bus with someone that was a stranger 5 minutes earlier. I have seen God use recess to begin to open the eyes of a teacher that has spent his life as an atheist. I have become best friends with a Venezuelan refugee I met outside the supermarket. I have seen lives absolutely rocked at a coffee shop by simply choosing to sit by the guy in the corner.
The one thing all of these encounters have in common is that we were willing to say yes to God in an ordinary situation and God moved in extraordinary ways.
“Every heart without Christ is a mission field, every heart with Christ is a missionary”.
What is your mission field?
I challenge you to step out in a new way this week and see what God will do.
What would happen if you took off your headphones on the bus and talked to the person beside you? What would happen if you slowed down on your run through the grocery store to ask an employee about their day? What would happen if you stopped casually living next to people and actually started intentionally investing in them?
I promise you, the harvest is plentiful.
