This month is going to be a hard good-bye
Thursday was our final day working with Cru and we went out with a BANG!
But to start, since I haven’t really gotten a chance to talk about our ministry, I’ll sum up what we did real quick:
-Cru is an international organization that disciples college students all over the world, including the United States.
-Our job for Cru was to a) evangelize to college students using various tools, and b) find Christian students who can become key leaders in Cru.
-We got to have fellowship with students already in Cru, like bowling, Galentine’s day, Valentines caroling, playing soccer in the park, and worshipping together.
-Each week day, we would travel to one of 5 different campuses around Quito to do some combination of the above mentioned activities.
-We got to partner with 3 Cru interns from the States as well as student leaders of Cru. They are all such amazing young people with a contagious heart for Christ. It was such an honor getting to know each and every one of them.
Alright, so that was our month of ministry in a nutshell. This was such a great month to dig into what evangelism is using many different methods. Last month, evangelism horrified me, but after this month, I feel a lot more prepared to continue evangelizing on the race! This was also a month of a lot of awesome relationships. We got to meet with different students already in Cru and hear their testimonies. Some of them had been Christians their whole lives, and some people didn’t start their faith journeys until college through Cru. Regardless of their past, though, all of them radiated the love of Christ, and just getting the chance to hang out with them and do ministry with them was such an incredible blessing, and I am going to miss them dearly.
So on our last day, we did a combination of things we had been doing all month and brand new activities. We started the day traveling to the Central campus, which is the largest public university in Quito. There, we met with students from campuses all around Quito along with the students from Central. We had some games, a devotional, and prayer time. The devotional was about trusting in God in all things and not leaning on our own understanding. Since most schools in Quito haven’t started classes yet, he was encouraging everyone that once classes start, to lean on God in times of stress that will inevitably happen during the school year.
We then went out to eat ice cream with cheese on it. I got a cup filled with strawberries with a scoop of coconut ice cream on top and shredded mozzarella cheese on top. It was an interesting combination of flavors, but I think I liked it! During this time, we got to talk to the students some more and just have fellowship with them.
After that, we evangelized a bit on campus together and had an awesome. We found two students, one who was a strong Christian and one who was a Jehovah’s Witness but whose family left the faith 3 years ago, and he was left feeling really confused about God. We had a great time with them and we were able to encourage both of them in their faith walks and the girl said she was so grateful for the time we had to talk with them.
Many other groups also had great experiences evangelizing together, and it was so cool to just spend the day with them. Going from bible study to ice-cream to sharing the gospel was such an amazing experience, and that is exactly what Christian fellowship should look like.
After that, we walked with 2 girls and Derek, one of the American Cru interns to the artisan market to barter for some sweaters, and we all got some pretty good deals! Then we said goodbye to the 2 girls there to go to Derek’s appartment to hang out before our next adventure.
Well, at least that was the plan…
We got to the appartment and Derek realized he forgot his keys, but one of the girls who lives nearby with the other American intern had spare keys, so she took a taxi to her appartment to get the keys, but when she brought the spare keys back, they didn’t work either. Although, even though we never got into their appartment, we got to spend some time talking to Derek and getting to know him, as well as sharing our own stories, so it was certainly not time wasted.
Then we went to an Indian restaurant and we talked about how the month went. Derek and the other 2 inters, Bri and Sean, shared some of their favorite moments from the month, and we told them how much we appreciated them and their ministry. It was a really great time. Then from there we went to a Salsatech and learned very quickly how to salsa! I wasn’t at all sure what to expect, but we got there and it was AMAZING! The way it works is normally guys come up to girls and ask them to dance, then they teach you how to correctly salsa since we’re gringas and don’t know what we are doing, and then after the song is over, you find a new dance partner. By the end of the night, I think I was pretty good at salsa-ing, and I think the rest of our group would agree, too! Some of the Ecuadorians with Cru came, too, so it was nice to dance with some guys we knew, too.
We got home a little after midnight, but it was quite a way to say goodbye to our friends at Cru with worship, ice-cream, shopping and dancing! Fortunately, we have these last couple days off and we are going to try to hang out with them some more while we do some touristy things. Last night we went to a little bit of Carnival with 2 guys from Cru and it was great! They were able to explain some of the history behind things that were happening, they could translate for us, and best of all, when people would try to spray us with foam because we were tourists, they made great shields!
Ecuador is an absolutely incredible country with amazing people and an awesome culture, and this is not good bye, but see you later.
