Hi there! Long time no blog! Sorry folks I did not have wifi at my last location so blogs were not as easy to maintain. Needless to say wifi was not necessary in order to communicate. Our hosts in Quito, Ecuador were Fabi, Mabe, and their beautiful 7 month old, Allegria. From the minute we stepped into their home and quickly removed our shoes we were welcomed with wide reaching arms and an extremely gracious love that follows them everywhere they go. They are exceptional servants of God that I am especially thankful to know. With their hands already full from constantly having to entertain a 7 month old they were still there anytime that we needed to them to answer our questions, feed us amazing food, and just listen to our stories. Fabi and Mabe are the leaders of this home, which is a base for World Race, so they have a constant rotation of new people coming in and out of their house. They are constantly turning over beds, doing laundry, and learning new names and are doing it with smiles and dad jokes the whole time. Even while my team was staying there we had two other teams come and go within the time. They made me feel extremely comfortable while I was there and they even had hot water and a dryer for our clothes. I felt extremely spoiled the whole month and hope to carry their generosity and graciousness with me as I continue on this journey.
For our ministry last month we were asked to teach English in two different private high schools (ISM and JESSSS) in Quito. At one of the schools we were individually paired with an English teacher to teach alongside of and assist in whatever way they needed. The teacher I was paired with was a 27 year old Iranian man who had a huge passion for teaching and it showed when he was interacting with his students. It was a learning experience for me because teaching teenagers is not a skill of mine but my ISM teacher really helped me to feel comfortable and relaxed in this strange environment. The kids in class spoke pretty good English already so I mainly ended up assisting in games and grading. At the other school, JESSSS, we were paired up to help one of the four English teachers and rotated between the different teachers throughout our time there. It was a good opportunity to get the know all of the teachers and to see different teaching styles. The students were more varied in their English levels so that created some difficulty in figuring out what the best activities would be but all of the kids really seemed to enjoy the games that they participated in! All of the teachers that we interacted with were a great help in teaching us about Ecuadorian foods, culture, and really found a lot of pride in their country. They told us all of the cool places to visit, mountains to explore, and even made us oometas! They were delicious and tasted like cornbread wrapped in a leaf like a tamale. There was sweet version and a salty version and I preferred the sweet version of course.
Because teaching was not my area of expertise it was even more relaxing to come home everyday to a warm, comfortable space at Fabi and Mabe’s home. Fabi is a trained chef and made us some amazing Ecuadorian delicacies for three meals a day, five days a week! Talk about spoiled! He had a different, tropical Ecuadorian fruit for us to try everyday and believe it or not there is a fruit called the tree tomato that does not taste like a tomato at all and is actually pretty good. It’s kind of like a small watermelon, if I’m thinking of the right fruit, there were a lot to try! We even got the privilege to have Thanksgiving at their house this year! Talk about things to be thankful for! As a team we all went to the store to pick up the ingredients we needed for our American side dishes and our hosts bought a turkey and roasted it to perfection! I made corn pudding (If you want the recipe let me know!) and cake mix cookies that did not stand up to the elevation (it takes serious skill to bake good things at a high elevation!) We invited friends from church to our dinner and enjoyed some great fellowship and way too much food! We had been eating really freshly prepared food with fruits and vegetables up to this point and when we all got done filling our stomachs to the brim with heavy, buttery American food we could really tell the difference! The Lord overwhelmingly blessed us this month and when it came time to say what we were thankful for I could not stop listing all of the things in my head!
Another way that I was blessed last month was by getting to go to an English church in Quito. It was called English fellowship church and if anyone has been on a mission trip before and sat in a church service that is being presented in another language than you know the struggle of keeping your focus on what’s important! The church was very missionally focused in the same way that my home church (San Jose Baptist Church) is and in a lot of ways it made me miss my church back home. In the service last week we started singing, Come thou fount of every blessing, and one of my teammates looked at me and asked if I knew the song! I said yes that I knew the song and that we sang it a lot at my home church. She said, “I feel like I’m at a Baptist church!” And I thought no wonder! It was a blessing to get to sing, praise and grow alongside an international group of believers in my own language and I’m super thankful that God gave us that opportunity. In case you’re wondering the church prints out the sermon on a large piece of paper with the English and Spanish next to each other so that everyone can follow. One Sunday we met a local public school teacher who asked if we could help her with correcting some of her students papers and we agreed. It was a great experience to see Ecuador from another perspective and see what God was doing in her life and the public school where she’s teaching.
We also had an amazing friend of Fabi’s, Monica, walk us to school everyday so that we wouldn’t get lost on the bus. She said that we were her angels this month because we helped bring her out of a dark time that she was going through. I think she was our angel too. On the last night we were there she invited us to her parents house where they made us hot chocolate, a table full of food, and she let our team decorate her family Christmas tree with all of her families ornaments and decorations. It was a wonderful time of all of us getting to be together and really made us feel special that we got to share this moment with her whole, beautiful family! I will miss them greatly and thank them all so much for showing us God’s love in that way!
When it came time to leave our overwhelming blessings of Fabi, Mabe, and their beautiful family I kept saying thank you/ gracias over and over again and it just felt like that word could not cover all of the things that God had given us through this family this month. I kept wanting to say more but not having the words to adequately explain how appreciative I was. I wished there were more words. God has the words and I pray that the blessings continue to flow out onto this beyond wonderful group of people that we had the gift of meeting last month. Fabi told us that we have family in Ecuador now anytime we want to come back and visit! Gracias Dios!
P.S. I should have wifi next month so the blogs shouldn’t be this long!
P.P.S. The song of choice – https://youtu.be/voNEgCKzves
