I’d like to say this before anything: about this time last week I became fully funded from everyone’s love and support and I can’t express to you guys enough on how thankful I am for you. I am half way done with the race and have already experienced a tremendous amount of growth. The gracious support I’ve received from home has definitely made the hard times here significantly easier and it’s given me this really awesome drive to finish off this beast of a missions trip.
I think it would be good to give you guys a little update on how I’ve been doing here and what sort of ministry we’ve been working with. To start, whilst being on the race, my emotions have been a literal rollercoaster. This has been one of the most spiritually and mentally challenging things i’ve ever done and it’s been a huge learning experience for me. Before the race my mentality was honestly extremely immature with most things I did (it’s still not perfect but I’ve matured a bit since being overseas) and I love the growth I’ve seen in that area. I have learned to better communicate with people who might strongly disagree with who I am and what I stand for, to live with those who might have opposite agendas then me, love those who wouldn’t say they felt the same towards me, better exemplify and share my faith and my relationship with Christ, appreciate the little things in life (ex. Ice, hot water, Long car rides at night, solitude etc.), and ultimately love the Lord whole heartedly and truly recognize him as my father. The first couple months of my race I was hit in the face with a lot of things I had no idea I was getting myself into and it was pretty overwhelming. I was extremely homesick and and really closed off to the idea of setting my pride aside and looking like a Jesus freak. But if I were to speak a little bit of “christianese”(not sure how to spell that) God has really broken me down and has slowly been rebuilding me piece by piece. Now we’re currently in a place called Quito, Ecuador and I’m on this amazing spiritual high! I feel that this is the most I’ve ever personally known the Father and it’s been such a cool experience. He’s shown himself to me more than ever and it’s just because I’ve been willing to pursue him and everything he has to offer me.
Our ministry that we work with is in the middle of the city and just our guys team gets to serve at a before and after school program named covi. It’s been very challenging to go from Impact Africa which was strictly evangelism and very relational to this program which is generally working in a garden all day. It really has pushed us to search for ministry in the little things. Overall my experience here has been really amazing and physically/mentally pushing and I’m so stoked to be half way done!! I love you all so much. Thank you for all the support!
