Ecuador. I don’t even have words for you. Since day one I have had a sense of home here. I feel like there is just so much life and joy. I came in really optimistic after the last month of realizing we really don’t ever know what it is we’re doing or what it will look like at all, and if I’m honest, month 1 in Colombia was really hard. Which brought a super hopeful expectation for Ecuador. When we got here a couple weeks ago we found out we were doing a special needs ministry at a place called Camp Hope and I honestly immediately went “okay Jesus what are you trying to do here, kill me?” I had never done special needs ministry in any shape or form and felt super ill prepared and equipped. So I started praying. Hard. That the Lord would give me a supernatural love for this ministry that made me so very uncomfortable. And let me tell you… He wasn’t playin’ around because that love grew FAST!
We had a 30 minute walk to ministry every day that in and of itself brought so much unity for our team, where we got to just talk, pray, and shed light about what the Lord gave us for the day. When we got there we would do odd jobs in the morning to try and upkeep the place for them, which was sometimes hard, and most other times it was so life giving just to get to hang with my teammates and listen to Jesus.
It would hit lunch and we would go get “our children” from “our class” and bring them to lunch, feed them, then go back to brush teeth, do physical therapy, change diapers, and kiss their sweet faces as much as humanly possible. They are amazing. And where the challenge of getting passed the fact that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing was big, the reward of letting the Lord do His thing was FARRR immeasurably more. We had our last ministry day there a few days ago because we’re leaving to go do another ministry for the last week and a half that we’re here, and forreal forreal… my team and I were a mess. Even better than that though, our teachers and staff we had worked with were too. The relationships the Lord let us build there in just two short weeks with such broken Spanish was only of Him. And now the ministry that scared me so freaking bad at the beginning makes me BEAM with joy every time I think about it. I am going to miss it so bad but I truly cant help but believe that they wont be able to get rid of me so easily and that even if its just by prayer (for as long as until the Lord might allow me to come back) I am still so with them praying for them in FULL. Love those people so hard and couldn’t be MORE thankful for the phenomenal challenge of a ministry the Lord allowed us to be apart of this month.
I can’t post pictures of the kids faces but I can give you a few from ministry!
