Hey y’all Becca here again!
I’ve already been in Ecuador for two weeks (ish) what!! This past week has been filled with heartbreak, conviction, joy and so so much beauty.
Thursday:
We serve with Pan de Vida daily and every other Thursday they serve the Venezuelans. If you don’t know what is going on in Venezuela let me catch you up(also I highly recommend you google and educate yourself further). In Venezuela their money is worth basically nothing and because of this you can imagine their society is crumbling. Peru is equally bad so Ecuador is the closest and safest place to flee. This week alonethere were 70,000 Venezuelan refugees coming to Ecuador. We served only 100. Pan de Vida opens their gates like they did this Thursday to the Venezuelans giving them clothes, food (probably their first meal in days), a message, legal advise on immigration, and a children’s service. I worked the clothes table, handing out what was needed. This day weighed SUPER heavy on my heart as well as the hearts of my squad mates. After seeing those people I felt super convicted. Signing up for the race meant abandoning my comfort, my people, my home, and almost everything I knew. At first leaving and choosing to abandon that was hard I love my comfort, my people, and my home. I know that I have the freedom to choose this, the security to know that on the 29th I will get on a plane God willing and fly home to AR. These people, they may never go home, never see their people again and this wasn’ttheir choice. They didn’t have the freedom to choose this, this chose them. So how selfish of me to have struggled with adjusting when they there are here by circumstance, not by choice. So I let this weigh too heavy on my heart….
Friday:
Friday and Saturday we have as free/rest days and this Friday we had the opportunity to adventure to Quilatoa. I highly encourage you google Quilatoa Ecuador lagoon…it’s most likely the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. At home here in Quito we are around 10,000 ft above sea level and Quilatoa is 13,000ft so on our way up we literally drove through the clouds. We saw the top of a rainbow…yes the top- if that doesn’t make your jaw drop I don’t know what will. So we hiked down and saw the lagoon (breathtaking) and on the way up we got to ride donkeys haha!! I literally could not stop laughing it was so fun and funny! During the ride we realized how hard these donkeys were working and how much weight they were carrying and it reminded me. Thursday night after our rough day we told Fabi our ministry host about serving and he listened intently and responded “just remember we are not donkeys”. “These things that weigh heavy on our hearts we cannot carry them, we have to take them in, give them to the Lord, and never forget them.” So while I know that I am learning so so much on this trip, I cannot carry the weight alone I have to give it to him. Because HE is big enough to carry it.
Romans 8
Much love talk soon,
Becca
