It blows my mind that we are starting our second week of ministry. Somedays I feel like I have been here for 2 months and other days it feels like I left home yesterday.
It has been one full week of ministry and already God is doing some crazy things. For our ministry this month we have been helping at a church in south Quito called Dios es Amor, and it has been amaaaazzzinnngg!! We have been living with our sweet sweet contacts at their home/at the church. Our contact and his family have been so incredible! We have been building a new church for them starting from scratch. Literally we broke ground and picked the weeds and everything. In helping them I have been so encouraged and inspired just by seeing the joy it is bringing them to finally get started on this new church. They have been waiting for 20 years to build it and I can’t believe I get to be a part of it!
Our contact and his family have been so great and they have shown us so much love. In the last 7 days I have learned so much about family and true love for one another just by being around them. They live in a community home/building type thing with different little houses all in it almost like a mini apartment building. All the sister-in-laws, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters, and mom and dad all live together. It is so warm and there is so much joy that just overflows out of them. They have so much love for the Lord and for what He is doing in them and in their church that you cant help but want the same passion. They cook us incredible meals everyday and every night we go to someone from the churches house to have dinner with them. When we go to the different houses the families always set the table with their best dishes and most of the time the table cloth is a christmas table cloth. One night a couple of days ago we mentioned something about it and the man we were eating with told us he put out all his best stuff and his christmas stuff because having us there was just as important as having Christmas! It broke my heart to hear that. Knowing that just by us being somewhere means so much to someone, knowing that what God is using me for is just as important to people as the day their Savior was born. That is what makes all the 23 honking horns and the 15 fighting dogs and the 8 roosters I wake up to every morning, worth it! 🙂
As part of building the church we have been having to dig holes and move dirt. And when I say dig holes I’m talkin 3 meters deep in the ground holes, thats deeper than burying a body. haha.
It started out as just digging and has turned into something so much more. In digging deep and removing the dirt, God has been digging deep and removing dirt in my life. He has been showing me things that I didnt want to know until further on down the road. He has been pulling things out of me that if it were up to me, they wouldnt have come out until about month 4 or 5. But God is funny like that and He has a specific time for everything.
I have been discovering new identity in Him. I’ve discovered that in my weakness He is strong, in my pain He is my comfort and when I am tired and worn out He is my renewed strength. I knew I wanted to be shaken and for God to rock my world, but I never knew it would happen in the first week! I’m hoping to go more into detail about this in a blog that is soon to come 🙂
As for my team and how we are doing, we are doing GREAT!! We are all just figuring each other out and learning new things about each other everyday. I have learned so much from them just by seeing how they work and how they act. I’m so inspired by this team and I’m inspired by what God is doing in their lives. In preparing for the world race I read alot of blogs talking about community and spending every second of everyday with your team and I can now say they weren’t lying. We are with each other ALL the time and it has been a challenge but an incredible blessing at the same time! Knowing that I have 5 other people around me at all times going through the same things I’m going through and pursuing the same passion I’m pursuing is just great! 🙂
Thanks for all of your comments and for reading my blogs. Hoping to post again soon. Until next time Te Amo Mucho Mucho Mucho and thanks for your continued prayers! Chow!!
PS sorry I couldn’t get my pictures to load but I will try them on the next blog pinky promise 🙂
