World Race/Expatriate Tip #3: Cold showers aren’t actually that bad—especially when you are sunburned because you’re the lame kid who always forgets to wear sunscreen.
(man those bugs and that rain in Ecuador is a killer! Good thing I've got Spam to keep me safe! Thanks Spam Man!)
So we’ve been at our ministry site for about two weeks now and every day is still a surprise! I read my squadmates’ blogs (you should too! They are incredible!) and see so many of them have a schedule and set things they are doing every day. I don’t know if I should be jealous or thrilled at our freedom! But here’s a glimpse of what my schedule kind of looks like:
6:55am Roll out of bed, splash cold water on my face. (on Saturdays we have church prayer at 6am so move the schedule up an hour so roll out of bed 5:55am—yippee…)
7-8am Team devotions. We are doing the “radical experiment” from the book Radical so each morning we read a section of the Bible—we’re going through the whole book this year and we’re praying for a different country each day so we can pray for the whole world this year. We also pick another W squad team and pray for them.
8-10am Breakfast/get ready time. We leave each day between 8:30 and 10 and don’t find out what time we’re leaving usually till the day before. Also fun is sometimes we’re told we’re leaving at 9 but really we're leaving at 8:45 and sometimes it's 9:01 and sometimes it’s 9:20. I am now trying to always be ready 15 minutes early just in case.
9-4pm Ministry time! This also changes every day. Start and end times are random at best. As for ministry we’ve: painted benches, visited members of the church to encourage them to come to a baptism service, went on this crazy field trip to buy fish for the meal at the baptism service, gone to a baptism service, led outreach groups to an indigenous community (I got to work with the little kids and I LOVE THEM!) And we’ve handed out tracts in the neighborhood of the church. Fun story: I was told to just tell people God bless you since my Spanish is…how do you say? Oh yes, atrocious. Well that’s Dios le bendiga. One time I said dias le bendiga. Day bless you. Awesome. I’m sure there are more activities I’m missing.
12:30-3pm Lunch! so.much.rice.so.little.time. Usually I’m able to fit in a quick nap or play a card game! Sweet!
3-5pm On the days our ministry doesn’t go through lunch this is our down time! I love those days.
5-7pm Travel to church service. Sometimes it’s right where we’re staying and sometimes it’s up to 2 hours away. Last night it was an hour away and I rode there and back in the back of a truck. It was scary (lots of bendy roads) but incredible with millions of stars above us!
6:30-10pm Each church starts and ends at a different time. But they all follow the same pattern: prayer, songs, prayer, Scripture, songs, one of us speaking, announcements from Pastor, tithe, song, prayer, socializing. So we’ve all preached at least once. My teammate Jeff has been doing most of the translating and it’s exhausting so it was suggested on my night that I use Google translate and just write it in Spanish and read it. I have a basic knowledge of Spanish so I said ok. So I preached in Spanish. It was pretty tragic, I read way too fast and it was a million degrees and I was a little nervous so I was sweating in just an unfortunately excessive amount. Next time I’m begging Jeff to translate! We’ve also been to house churches, tiny churches, bigger churches, a church that was more like a Bible Study meeting in a courtyard of some tenementish buildings than a church.
7:30-10:30 Travel home.
8-11pm Eat dinner. So very late….
10-11pm Family time! A time for our team to get together and hang out socially. We’re still working out the kinks but I think this is going to be a time I really look forward to each day.
11-12am Feedback. We talk about our day, our thoughts and feelings and call out any issues we may see. It’s intense and exhausting and we’re still trying to find our groove. Be aware, when I come home I’m probably going to want to process daily everything in our lives. Sorry!
12-12:15 Fall into bed absolutely exhausted.
So that’s what my first two weeks of ministry has looked like. Today we start commuting back and forth to KM17 to do some project out there. I have no idea what we’re going to be doing every day. I know for safety reasons we have to be back to Lago Agrio on the 6pm bus, which leads me to assume that we’ll also have time to continue our nightly preaching schedule. The following week we are helping with a VBS here and then it’s off to Chepen, Peru! Crazy! Rumor has it that it’s near the ocean. AWESOME!
(One night Lauren had to drive to church in the back of an SUV. Awesome.)
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