I didn’t exactly know where to start this update, but I figured I would go all the way back to April of 2019. I posted this caption with some pictures from my time in Ecuador on my own Race. I fell in love with Ecuador and really felt like the Lord was calling me back….at some point in time. I just didn’t know that it would be so soon!
That brings us to just a few weeks ago, January 3rd to be exact when I boarded a flight from Tallahassee to Atlanta, where I met up with some of my squad to go join the rest of the squad in Gainesville, Georgia at Adventures in Missions main campus.
I spent the next few days getting a little bit more training, getting tested for Covid, and preparing to leave the country (this means A LOT of paperwork)! I am working pretty closely with our Logistics leaders that are on the squad, so we got the super fun privilege of writing up our travel day email. Let’s just say it was so great that it ended up in the email inbox of the president of Adventures in Missions!
Our last night in Gainesville, the squad and I knew that we had to get up at 3:00AM so we decided that we would go to bed at 9:00PM….that very obviously did not happen. I think that we ended up going to bed at 11:00ish!
After a bright and early wake up call on January 6th, all of Gap E made it to the Atlanta Airport to begin our travel day to Quito, Ecuador. It was honestly a really smooth travel day despite it being in the middle of a pandemic!
We arrived in Quito around 8:00PM, so as we flew in we got to see the city lit up. Also a fun note, it had been raining and freezing in Quito for the two weeks leading up to our arrival. But the day we came in, the weather was and has been perfect!
We stayed the first few days at the Adventures in Missions base, with our wonderful hosts, Mabe and Fabi. We did lots of cooking, cleaning, and projects around the base to help them prepare for the other squads that they have coming later in the month. I have a special place in my heart for this house because this is where I had my Parent Vision Trip on my Race and got to share it with my parents!
After a week at Mabe and Fabi’s, Teams Ecclesia and Resilience, along with one of my co-leaders, Katy, and myself, headed to our ministry for the rest of the month, El Refugio. El Refugio is a gorgeous 300 acre campus full of trails, rope courses, rock walls, and honestly everything that you can imagine.
We have been doing a lot around the campus to get it ready for El Refugio to start having camps again. The group pictured below is working on replacing the roof on the main administrative building that was built in 1942! It has been an interesting experience to learn construction terms in Spanish!
El Refugio is nestled in between several different mountains in a small town called Calacalí. Almost every afternoon, the clouds roll in bringing a slight drizzle due to us being so high in elevation. But then there are afternoons like today, where the sun is shining and going on a walk is a must!
There is also a lot of room for us to be reminded of just how good God is. Tonight we sat around a bonfire and worshiped Him, even after the speaker died, not once, but twice. Here at El Refugio, it is so easy to see how creative God and relish in Him creation.
Over the next month, I am looking forward to seeing how God moves in my life, as well as in the lives of the Racers that I am leading! I can tell that He is pressing us into something new in this season of being on the World Race during a global pandemic.
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