End of my first week in Ecaudor.

Well, my first week in Quito is coming to a close and tomorrow the team is waking up at 5AM to take our bus to the coastal town of Esmeraldas. We finished painting the church and the moral of the team is high; we’re also excited to be re-united with our (now healthy) teammates tomorrow. Personally I’m really going to miss the church we partnered with, we really felt the love this week and were fed incredibly well by many different families in the church (I was especially surprised with how serious they take breakfast in Ecuador!). I’m almost afraid to write this but I was extremely surprised with how little I was attacked spiritually as compared with last week and the mini-outreach before. My mood stayed so positive and I think it has to do with me getting better at quickly recognizing the ways in which the devil tries to discourage me. For example, when we were going door-to-door telling the neighborhood about an event we were putting on I started to feel worthless because I couldn’t talk as casually as everyone else could but instead of keeping my mouth shut and getting discouraged I found spots to throw in a sentence I did know. A solid word I received in one of my quiet times this week was 1st Corinthians 12:14-15 & 22

“Now the body of Christ is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem weaker are indispensable.”

Not being able to play the role I wanted in the team used to be such a source of discouragement for me (especially since in an English speaking area I’d feel like I could excel) but now I’m beginning to understand that if I keep a positive attitude and do what I can the team operates better and I’m much happier. Maybe having a token white guy in the team that it fearlessly trying to say what little he can is going to get someone in Quito’s attention in exactly the way God wants it too. On the other hand though my Spanish is still improving and I’m getting pretty near conversational. Our team went to one of Quito’s hospitals one evening after a day of painting and Estabon and I led a woman to Christ, I asked if I could pray for her and even though Estabon was translating my prayer he didn’t translate her story that she had told us before that I’d totally understood. Thanks to everyone whose been praying for me in this area, the prayers are being answered and I’m getting it, but don’t stop!

I thought up a little nugget the day after we’d gone to the hospital that I thought was kind of profound. You know how there are certain things that you might tell your therapist but may never tell your best friend, or even your parents? I feel like missionaries fall into a similarly “special” category. Some people might be completely unpersuaded to put faith in Jesus from a friend or family member but when they’re talking to a missionary things change. When the team spilt up into 4 groups and talked to people in the hospitable every single one of them said the prayer to put their faith in Jesus. The question remains, how can you keep the “missionary status” after you come back home?

After we finished our painting project the pastor took us for a day of sight-seeing before the nighttime church service we were participating in. This place is exactly in the middle of the world on the equator. Strange things happen here…

Because of the way gravity works in the very middle of the world you can balance an egg upside down on the head of a nail! Also, check out my sweet new acquisition I found in an artisan bazaar in downtown Quito. A necklace made out of no doubt illegally poached endangered coral from the south of Chile in an Ecuadorian silver setting.

Check this out, only in Ecuador will you find “El Golpe”, a mix of potato chips, pork rinds, and dehydrated fried banana slices. Just too weird to not share with you guys!

Check out this view! These were taken at the geobotanical reserve Puluahua.

Some of the church members came to the hospital to pray for people with us and they snapped this picture of the women I talked about above.

These pictures were taken after our outreach in one of the highest neighborhood in Quito, I made friends with the kids pretty fast.

This picture was taken this morning after the last church service we had, they let me play harmonica in the worship band and sing in English. We worked hard this week but in many ways I felt spoiled: WIFI, washer & DRYER, sight-seeing, lukewarm showers, and maybe one of the best weeks of food I’ve ever had. I don’t know what the next location will hold but I’m going to do my best not to have the same expectations and just remember how good God is. Below is a short video of me getting the Egg to balance at 0’ 0’ latitude and longitude, the only place in the world an egg will balance on the head of a nail.