Quito, Ecuador
At the beginning of our race, my squad was informed Ecuador would be added to our route between Peru and Columbia. In my head I thought to myself, “Oh, just a place we are passing through,” but was I wrong; I fell in love with that place. My team got to stop in Quito, Ecuador for 10 days to break up our long travel from Peru to Columbia. Ecuador was a place where I learned a lot about myself, was pushed to be bolder, and was a place where I gained new friendships.
After a 40 hour bus ride from Lima, Peru, we arrived in Quito late in the night. This week was “Ask the Lord” time, so our team prayed for opportunities and pushed into whatever the Lord had planned for us. While in Lima, my teammate, Brandon, was praying about our time in Quito and felt called to partner with CRU ministry, an organization that he was involved with back in college. It was a huge blessing and answer to prayer to work with this organization. Worldwide CRU ministry has many different parts, but this week, we worked with university ministry.
There are three awesome interns working with CRU from the United States living in Quito that took us under their wing (Shout out to Sean, Derek, and Brianna). Right now their focus on the college campuses is to find students that are passionate about Jesus Christ, so they can invite them into a Christian community and disciple them to become leaders on their campus. The end goal is to find students that want to become leaders and lead the movements on these campuses when the interns leave.
So each day, we walked up to students on campuses and asked them if they were passionate about Jesus or if they knew of anyone that was. After conversations we got the students’ contact information to get them in contact with the interns or student leaders. We prayed as a group each time before we went out. One day in particular we prayed to find 5 students that were passionate about Jesus. And that day alone, on that one campus we found 21!!!! WOW! That was all God.
This time really pushed me out of my comfort zone. It was oh so different than any form of sharing I have done. But God stretches and grows us the most when we are outside our comfort zones. Yes, it is awkward, but if you never take that leap of faith, you will never experience all the goodness God has for you. Yes, it was hard and uncomfortable at times, but I got to have really sweet conversations with people and tell them some of my story and share with them that there is so much hope in Jesus. We split into group of 2 or 3 to go talk to the students. At first I was super nervous. I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to say what I wanted to when my spanish isn’t the best. So each time we went up to a group, one person would do the intro and we would have the conversation. So the time rolled around… it was my turn to talk…. Butterflies filled my stomach.. But then I went. I asked them if they were passionate about Jesus in Spanish. Then they responded to me in English! Oh Happy Day. We laughed that my spanish was not superb. After that we got to have a super awesome conversation.
On one of the weekends, we took a day trip with the CRU interns and about 20 of the students. We traveled on two different buses up the mountain to Quilatoa. Quilatoa is a volcano that last erupted in 1280. Now it is a filled lake area at the bottom. We got to hike and kayak around. Super beautiful! The day was filled with so much laughter, sweat, and awesome conversations in spaniglish. During lunch, I ventured and tried guinie pig. I got many laughs from the Ecuadorians from my facial expressions. Overall, it was a fantastic day getting to go explore with the locals and see some of their favorite places.
Now my team is back with the entire squad for all squad month in Medillin, Columbia. The Lord is already working in big ways, more updates to come shortly.
Blessings,
Catie Collins Smith
