Even the Stork in the Sky knows her Seasons: Lightbulbs

For our two weeks in Esmeraldas the church we’re partnered with “Reaching the Nations” has teamed us up with the town social service agency MIES. We spent our first days marching in a parade for the disabled and then we went on “tour” of all these little day-cares in the bad part of town. Our first week here has been spent working with MIES in the morning volunteering in the day-cares and painting, and then in the afternoons doing presentations in local schools, alcoholics/narcotics anonymous meetings, and juvenile halls and then at night we work with the church going to the services, giving testimonies at the youth group’s small groups and as always preaching in the services. While we had “free time” (or at least more recreational time) in Quito we’ve been going non-stop in Esmeraldas. It’s also a little weird for me personally since the town of Esmeraldas is 95% black people and I’m the only white guy here. People aren’t just calling out gringo anymore; they’re calling out “Blanca” when I walk by.

There have been times this week that I’ve known God is real simply because I’ve been in a good mood laughing at jokes or something when I should be exhausted and grumpy. I’ve been so impressed with our team and the positive attitudes that everyone is keeping, for how busy and uncomfortable we’ve been it’s simply amazing. The weather here is hot and humid, the kind of beneath-the-equator climate that you can wear shorts and a t-shirt around at 10PM at night in the back of truck on the freeway and still be uncomfortably hot. One day we spent 6 hours in this weather painting day care rooms in the slums Esmeraldas and everyone remained stoked somehow!?! We were singing worship songs and making friends with the staff and when we found out that we were being taken to a juvenile detention facility to do a presentation even though we were covered in paint and drenching in sweat no one was bummed. We gave our presentation to a hard looking group of kids that were definitely making fun of us as we were doing our opening dance number but after of a half hour of dramas and testimonies we had some in tears and 10 people raised their hands when we asked them who wanted to begin a personal relationship with Jesus.

The thing is, there is absolutely nothing “special” about the dramas we do. Basically they just illustrate that Jesus can save you no matter where you are in your life. When I see people accept Christ after watching them, that’s evidence that He’s real because our presentations aren’t very “good”. I mean our group was covered in paint, sweaty and gross; doing our dramas with budget little piece of junk boom box and a bunch of bad ass youth gang members came to Christ through it. God must have been in the mix for that to happen because you don’t raise your hand to accept Christ in front of everyone in a jail out of peer-pressure, the fact is you DON’T raise your hand out of peer-pressure. The verse that stood out and I wrote down in my quiet time journal the day before this happened was 2nd Corinthians 5:19-20

“That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God we’re making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

We’re definitely ambassadors of Christ here in Esmeraldas and during a time of intercession prayer one of our team member got an image of a light bulb as an analogy for our team. A light bulb with electricity is dead, it needs to be plugged in to work. By being committed to quiet times, team unity, practical service to the community, and encouragement to the existing ministries of the church we’re shining brightly for God and people are coming to Him. Something I was a little convicted about was that I shouldn’t be surprised by this. The Bible say that this is how it works. We had lunch one day at this techy Christian internet café where they had a Hillsong United concert playing on the flat screen while we were eating lunch and I bet people came to God at that concert simply because it was so impressive. They had the million dollar sound system and a dozen super good-looking Christian rockstars on stage and tens of thousands of people swaying to the music, sure I bet God totally used that to bring people to Him. But that all that fanfare was hardly necessary for success. What’s most important is to be submitted to God and to how the Bible has called us to live and we shouldn’t be surprised when God does the part He’s promised to do.

Boom! Right off the bat the team is issued T-shirts and we’re holding a banner and walking in a parade of easily thousands of people. Definitely a awesome way to start. By the way, expect to see me wearing the same neon green shirt in all of the pictures… oh man how I wish we had a proper washing machine to clean these shirts.

Here’s a picture I snapped of what an average street looks like in the Esmeraldas’ “bad-part-of-town”. I’ve definitely had more opportunity for “better” more gritty photos but out of respect for the people that what be in the frame I’ve refrained from taking the pictures

Here’s a picture of on of about 13 different day-cares that MIES has set up in the neighbor to take care of the hundreds of kids that need to be fed and looked after while there parents are working.