Hi friends!
Since you heard from me last I was finishing up my time in Frutillar, Chile. Since then, I have travelled from Antofagasta to Calama, then to San Pedro, Cusco, Machu Picchu, to where I am now, Lima, Peru. From Frutillar to Lima directly, it’s about 2700 miles up the coast of South America, which is more hours on a bus than I would’ve cared to spend, but, this is life! Tuesday, I will hop on yet another bus for a 37 hour bus ride to Quito, Ecuador (add another 800 miles) for the start of a new month.
One thing that we practice & teach to racers on our squad is an idea we call living missionally. This idea strips all of our definitions of what a missionary is & their responsibilities (I usually think of a person specifically called on a religious mission, probably handing out tracks, teaching english, leading a church service, etc.). & flips all of those expectations upside down & inside out. Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-38, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is the great and first commandment.” What Jesus is saying is that God’s greatest desire for us as followers of Him are to love Him with everything inside of us, & to love everyone we come into contact with in our day-to-day lives. We can’t clock in & out of loving our neighbor, & on the race, we can’t put in our six hours a day of “ministry time” & say that we have fulfilled our calling as missionaries & as followers of God. We believe that when you decide to follow Jesus, it’s your full time job to simply love your neighbor, everywhere you go, be available, & be interruptible to how God wants to move.
Living missionally is what we have been intentionally practicing in Peru, where we spent about a week in Cusco as a squad experiencing life on the race without a host (& the set up ministry that comes with a host!). They took time to put their dreams & desires for Peru into writing, with specific goals that would stretch & challenge them! One of my favorite times was when one of the teams brought a guitar to the city center. This was a place with lots of street vendors, locals & tourists, benches for sitting & people watching, the hustle & bustle of the city! Abby played some songs that the team sang along with, & we got to meet some of the sweetest people as they stopped to watch. There was a moment when almost each team member had met someone else to talk with & encourage, & it was so beautiful to watch as the music joined so many different cultures together.
Here we are in the plaza (Team Burrito & I) with two friends we met there!
On another note, WOW guys!! I got a new camera & I never saw it coming!! Thank you so much to EVERYONE who donated, & a special thanks to Tammy & Sarah for organizing all of this & blessing my socks off!! I have been so so blessed the past couple of weeks to have a camera in my hands, snapping photos left & right.
We got to see Machu Picchu while in Peru!! It was quite a process to get there on a budget, but absolutely stunning!!
Our mentor Tammy has been traveling with us for about 4 weeks which was such a blast! From the left: Tammy, my co-leader Alyssa, Me, co-leader Patrick
Much love,
Em
