June 2011 – dannypeck.net

Bus Buddies (or Tuning Out and Tuning In)

This is going to be a long one, but it’ll be worth it to read all the way through. Trust me.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It blows my mind that I can go literally weeks without unexpectedly bumping into someone in Elizabeth City, a town of 18,000 people, and yet in the 2,000,000-person city of Quito, I can’t walk down the street without running into multiple people I know. This phenomenon has resulted in being accompanied by friends on every single one of my bus rides for three days straight.

First Miguel rode with me back from Guajaló to my neighborhood, which resulted in another unexpected meeting with Roberto. Then the next morning I got on the Metro instead of my usual Trole adventure, and as I was standing in line, Jorge walked up. That one was definitely a God thing, because he explained to me that on the North-to-South route there is potentially more bus-changing involved than on the reverse trip. I wouldn’t have felt quite so much the master of Ecuadorian public transportation finding myself at the total opposite end of some random route I didn’t know I was on.

At the end of that ride, I walked into the tienda and just behind me was Maria Jose (who had apparently been chasing me… I need to take off my headphones when I get off the bus). I had just been wondering when I’d get to see her, having already run into her brother and sister more than two weeks before, so it was just another bit of amazing timing. And then at the end of that same day, I was thinking it strange that I still hadn’t run into her mom, Maggi. But after hanging out upstairs with Adrian that afternoon, I “happened” to choose the 30 seconds that Maggi was downstairs to leave. Lo and behold, Maggi became my third consecutive Bus Buddy for the week, as she was taking the Ecovia almost as far North as I was.

There are several reasons that it’s fun to have someone to ride the bus with, especially since I take these long rides on a regular basis. Not the least of these reasons is that if you are talking to someone, you are much less likely to get asked to give up your seat (being a young, male, gringo, I’m at the very, very bottom of the pecking order for seats on the bus, regardless of the fact that I’m riding it literally from one end of the city to the other). But more than that, you just get to have some real conversations and find out what’s going on in people’s lives. I thought I was tired the other day until Maggi mentioned she had been off one job just long enough to go home for a bit, but now it was 5:30ish PM and she was heading to her other job at the hospital until 6:00 AM (Oish!).

Now we’re getting to the reason that this post has such a Tolkien-esque title: because it’s almost two separate trains of thought. Just pretend it’s a Family Guy episode, where the second half is always completely unrelated to the first.

Anyway, The time that I’ve spent on the bus/Trole system this week has remnded me a lot of the time I spent on it last year. And I spent a lot of time on it last year. In fact, as I was fond of saying, I spent my life on the Trole. And in one of my meetings with Brad (director of Youth World, and one of my supervisors last year) we were talking about that. He said something that I really took to heart, which was pointing out that I wasn’t exactly driving for my commute to and from the office. I was not, in fact, doing anything other than sitting (or hanging on to the “‘Oh, crap!’ bar,” before I figured out how to get a seat that old ladies wouldn’t take from me¹). The point was, especially since the Trole isn’t really book- or laptop-friendly for various reasons, it was (is) a great opportunity to take some quiet time.

“Quiet time” is, of course, a very relative term here. The Trole is never quiet. Aside from the honking and squealy brakes and the recorded voice telling you the next stop (which I now have memorized thanks to hearing it so much), there are people talking, and generally someone selling something or singing. And when I say they are selling something or singing, I don’t mean in an unintrusive way. It’s generally at the top of said someone’s lungs, and prefaced with a long story, and ends with them shoving their way through the way-too-crowded space collecting money. You can’t possibly hold a conversation while this is going on, or even attempt to ignore it without headphones. So even as easily-distracted as I can be, that was why I started taking my iPod on the Trole.

I know I can probably sound a little cynical when I talk about “ignoring” people and “tuning out.” And I certainly don’t want to seem that way, either to the two of you who read my blog anymore, or to the people I’m talking about. But that is an entirely different post, so suffice it to say that it’s on my mind, both as a topic to write about and as a conscious effort in my life. So back to the “quiet” time.

After the multiple times I’ve been pick-pocketed and held up in Quito, taking my iPod on the Trole is probably slightly stupid. But I figure if I’m actually listening to it, I’ll know if someone messes with it when I suddenly go from listening to “The Sound of Silence” to the literal sound of silence. So I throw on some Hillsong or Jeremy Camp, cram my earbuds in to the point that I’ll have no sense of hearing by my 32nd Birthday (I picked a number more random than 30 so people wouldn’t think I was implying that that’s old), and bask in the lack of overly highly-pitched sales pitches.

Sometimes it’s still pretty hard to shut things out. There might be somebody leaning on me (we’ll come back to this example momentarily), or making out directly in front of me (and I do mean directly, and not far enough away), or I might see something out the window that sends my A.D.D. mind in another direction, or I might just get too caught up I the words to the song that’s damaging my eardrums so. But the goal is to tune all of that out. Because as Quito Quest reminds me, I don’t ever want to waste a day when I can be growing or just worshipping. And as Mrs. Dwan taught me, having God time is less about taking the time you have, but about intentionally making time and setting that aside just for Him. Because there are tons of other things Brad could have suggested I do in all that commute time. And sure, God doesn’t function on my schedule. But when was the last time I made time for something other than a song and a half of Taylor Swift between Winfield and Ehringhaus Street back in Elizabeth City? I can’t think about ridiculously long bus rides now without having the positive thought of “Hey… God time” now, and that is a great thing.

So I’ll round this one out with a return to the “Bus Buddies” subject and the aforementioned potential somebody leaning on me.

I’ve been super unlucky with the Trole rides since my string of bus buddies that I actually know ran out on Thursday. I accidentally hit on a girl on the Trole today (Si estás leyendo esto en Español por Google Chrome o algo así, el frase “hit on” en Inglés significa “coquetear,” o “flirtear,” no “golpear”). But still much worse than that was the guy who sat down next to me yesterday afternoon.

This guy took the seat next to me when its previous occupant got off the Trole. The previous occupant was a rather large woman with a baby. I don’t know how, but this single old man took up literally twice as much space as two people, one of whom was twice as wide as him. I guess it’s just one more way that the Trole is not real life. Conventional physics do not apply. So aside from the fact that this guy was leaning on me and had no “bubble” whatsoever, he had a briefcase of sorts with him, which he felt the need to open. This necessitated throwing his elbows out to either side. The side I cared about, obviously, was the side that meant his right elbow was basically up my left nostril. And my right ear was already up against the window, so it’s not like I could have done anything to rectify the situation short of saying something to him.

Now, something that I learned from my dad (despite my mom’s best efforts) is that you never ever ever ever ever complain to someone, no matter how obnoxious they are or how uncomfortable they are making you. And I also recognized the war going on in my heart and my head between his culture and mine. My culture has large personal bubbles his culture has very small bubbles. In his particular case, no bubble. Now the fact that he was old could have pushed me either way. Because I think you should just be nice and respectful to old people. However, you know how some old people are just cute? This guy… Not so much. The words that come to mind were more like “chapped” and “oozing.” (Aren’t you glad you’re still reading at this point?) So while agedness was pushing me not to say anything to him, gnarliness was pushing me to say something. Gnarliness won out, but it won out in the sense that I didn’t say anything for fear of his potentially gnarly reaction. But at this point I was quite simply seething and I had to do something.

So I started praying. And it might have been the most selfish prayer of my life. Rather than asking for patience or some other virtue that would mean I had to continue putting up with this situation while I learned that patience, I asked God to impart the knowledge directly into this man’s brain that gringos have bubbles and he was all up in mine. I truly believe that God was listening and answering, because a few seconds later, oozey geezer man put away his briefcase, and fell asleep. On me.

So God taught me some patience after all. And fear. Because the old man got really still for a while. And I started thinking, “What if this guy dies right here on the Trole… on me?!” It may sound like a leap of logic, but you didn’t see this guy. So there I am frantically praying that God’s sense of humor not be as sick as those of a couple members of my family, and scanning this guy for any movement at all. His fingers twitched a couple times, but that just made me worry that these motions were really tiny death throes. Finally, as it was becoming more and more likely that I’d be the one having a heart attack or something, he grunted and titled his head to the other side, and from there on out he’d open one eye and check our location out the window every time the Trole stopped, so at least I knew he was alive up to the point I had to climb over him to get off at La “Y.”

All that to say, he became my most recent Trole Buddy to encourage my relationship with God. And extra 25 cents or not, I’m sticking to the Ecovia route from now on.

¹You try properly punctuating that parenthetical sentence on an iPad!

Block 1 in Review

I realized a few days ago how little I’ve been blogging since ijve been here. Obviously I’m doing better than I was for the last ten months that I was back in the States. But I forgot just how little time you have when you’re hosting a team. I hung out with teams last summer, particularly in June and August. But I didn’t really think about the fact that I hadn’t hosted a team since last March. So now that I’m not quite so sleep-deprived, I’ll recap what I’ve been doing since our team hit the ground.

Amalia and I were working with Christ Church Episcopal School from Greenville, SC. I had met a couple of team members last year, particularly Elizabeth, the team leader, when I was working with them in Riobamba, Ecuador. Amalia had actually hosted them, so there were a few returning team members she already knew pretty well, so that was a nice little head start. It was also cool working with Amalia. We’ve known each other for a while and knew already how each other work. I can handle her silliness and she can handle my sarcasm, and overall I think we did a pretty good job of splitting up the work.

So the team got here on Monday night, June 6. Tuesday was a pretty normal day of orientations (see this post for more), and then we headed out to Carmen Bajo on Wednesday. I love being back there, especially since this was my first chance to see a lot of friends who I hadn’t seen since last August. But as a team host, something really cool was seeing the group really plug in there. They all tried out what Spanish they knew, to the point that by Thursday I just found a single job and stuck with it, rather than running around to translate. I figured if they needed to figure something out, they knew where I was. This also allowed me to get to know some of the guys that I was working with (seems like that always takes me longer when we don’t start out the week with a six-hour bus ride out of the city).

Another thing was seeing how much the team members got out of their comfort zones in ways other than language. Thursday morning it was our turn to lead morning devotion, and different people variously played guitar, taught Scripture, and shared parts of their life story. Especially with the sharing stories part, that’s not necessarily stuff they were used to (something to which I can relate), so I was really appreciative of their participation.

While we were out at Carmen Bajo, our main project was to move a pile of sand that would eventually be used to mix concrete. Now that might not sound like a big deal from a North American perspective, but it was. Sometime before Tuesday morning, a truck had dumped the sand in front of the project building. This meant moving it up by wheelbarrows to the patio on the first floor, where it was shoveled up into the back corner out of the way. Once about half of the truckload had been moved there, we started moving it again, from the patio directly up to the fifth floor via pulley. One bucket at a time. You also have to imagine this pulley. When Jose rigged it up, he looked to me and said in Spanish, “I have a job for someone. Someone who doesn’t have vertigo.” Whoever was at the top of the pulley system had to reach over and grab the bucket full of sand. Jose’s suggestion was to sit on the ledge with one leg hanging over the 50-foot drop. Not a job for me. Fortunately, our North American boys were all significantly taller than Jose, so they figured out eventually how to do this while standing (semi-)safely in the inside side of the wall. But safe or not, it still took a took a looooooong time. There were only a couple of buckets dropped accidentally (and one very wet sponge dropped several times very purposefully on unsuspecting heads).

Over the course of our three days working at Carmen Bajo, we got all the sand at least up to the patio, and most of it up to the fifth floor. I know it was hard for some of the team to not see the project 100% complete, but in some ways that’s a good thing. I hope we were able to help them see that they were a part of something, and that missions is not about building something and putting up a plaque with your name and the date on it. Because while they were moving all that sand, they were giving wheelbarrow rides to kids. They were laughing with the adult workers. They were speaking as much Spanish as they could and learning about lives and families and culture and faith. And they were sharing their own.

And even more importantly, we had two more days to go to Carmen Bajo even after our work time was up. Time to spend with people, and time to spend in worship.

We went on Saturday to the market, and then to Casa G (an interesting juxtaposition that I hope was noticed). Again, I have to say that I was impressed with the way the team plugged in with the boys. Phil had a couple of guys share their testimonies, but in between each of them he asked some team members to share. We hadn’t warned them that this was a possibility, so there were some awkward silences, but someone volunteered each time, and I think that the back-and-forth was one of the things that helped build such a strong relationship between the boys and the gringos. Especially thinking about teams I’ve taken to Casa G in the past, I really loved seeing the interaction between two groups people that I also love. I even left for a while as they were playing soccer to pop into the Alliance Academy senior day to show support for Hannah and to see her sister and my first-ever Quito Quest pareja, Sarah Miller.

Hanging out and catching up with her in person was pretty great, but so was taking the team back to Carmen Bajo with the Casa G boys for a concert at the church. Roberto’s band, Gedeón, was playing, and some of the boys performed dances and raps, and a couple of guys from CB also sang and rapped. We got to catch up with another Quito Quest team (some of whom I’d met last summer) and their hosts (who were shocked at my newly-shaven state and helped me with possibly the most ridiculous Spanish food order/phone argument I’ve ever had).

When we got back to the Casa G house and ate with the guys, I literally had to drag some of my team out of the house to get debrief done at a reasonable hour. I pretty much consider any day a success when you are dancing out of your ministry site with the people you’ve been serving with.

Sunday was worship at Carmen Bajo. Fabian preached and Thomas got up and taught a little bit, and then suddenly it was time to say goodbye. Again, there was quite a bit of dragging to do, and translating and talking throughout. Another friend of mine (somewhat jokingly, somewhat seriously) doesn’t consider teams a success if they don’t cry. By that standard, Sunday morning was a pretty resounding success.

We took off Sunday for Hacienda El Refugio, Youth World’s training and retreat center just outside the city. While we had some work projects to do there, Sunday afternoon was all about connecting to God in that place. We had several hours of quiet time after our orientation, and at least for me, it was very much needed. My two favorite places on the property are at the top of the mountain where you can see all the other peaks around, and in this tree near Casa Grande that I just can’t help but climb. If you ever need a reminder how small you are and how big God is (and you’re not near the ocean), look at a mountain. Or climb a tree. You can’t help but feel like a little kid when you’re in a tree. I just sat there I. The branches after my hike and was still.

A cuy roast and 8 hours of “ocean” sleep-machine effects later, we were jumping into our work projects. Some of the guys poured concrete steps and then took them up to place on the path to the high ropes course. When they were done, they joined my group in the prayer garden digging ditches. We needed a series of shovel-width ditches 24 inches deep (which kept making me think of that old Jibbs song) so that the electrical could all be put down where it would not later be disturbed. This project lasted us the rest of our time on the property, and we were worn out at the end of each day. Especially the night that Amalia, Bryce and I shared our testimonies with the team.

Elizabeth asked us (Amalia and myself) to do this one night, and we dragged Bryce into it as well. Now I say “we dragged” because that’s how it seemed to come about. But hearing his testimony, I know it was a God thing. And as much as I still really don’t like telling my story, I know that that was a God thing too. I was really stressed out about it, but the only time I started to get choked up was while I was reading scripture, and I know that how much I chose to say (quite a bit more than normal) was guided by Him. There have been certain people in my life who have really been able to impact my faith through their stories. And while I’m certainly not a motivational speaker or anything, I know that God uses our stories in ways that we don’t necessarily expect or even see.

Fast forward to Wednesday, and we had one last action-packed day in the ground. We left HER right after breakfast (sort of) and went basically straight to Fundación Las Ganas, an orphanage in central Quito. We went once during training, and I knew that we were one of only two QQ teams going all summer. This is because Ganas is a new ministry site for us, and in short, we’re trying not to overwhelm them with gringos.

Ganas is a tough place. The kids that are there have had some really bad situations in their lives before being placed there. It’s also a place full of love and a place where more than just basic needs are met. But sometimes it is hard for the workers at the foundation to meet even those basic needs. This “recap” is already pretty ridiculously long, so if you want some more thoughts on Ganas, check out my friend Dana’s blog about our training time there by clicking this link. Suffice it to say that the team worked their butts off one last time. They were dropping like flies from exhaustion and various stomach problems, but they got an amazing amount of the work done, hand washing barrel after barrel of blankets with very limited resources.

Finally it was time for final debrief. We talked. We prayed. We cried (success!). We said goodbye. Because really, nobody is fully awake at the airport at 4:00am. I went with them to and through the airport, long enough to be sure they were checked in and their airport tax was taken care of. And then they were gone.

There were plenty of tasks to finish out the block. Debrief with the Maestros (aka Ghostbusters). Cleaning the hostal. Laundry. Laundry. Laundry. But the on-field time was over.

I hope the team saw God move in and through them, because I did. And I hope that this continues to impact them in Greenville and that they bear fruit in the post-field. Maybe some will be back next summer. Maybe some will come and do my job. Maybe some will just go home and love God and others in a new way. As Cameron said in Partnership orientation a week and N eternity ago, it would be silly for any of us to tell someone else what their fruit should be. But after 10 days on the ground with them, I am confident that there will be plenty of fruit to go around, whatever it looks like. And I hope I figure out what mine looks like as well.

Some Random Photo Favorites

This is a picture of Quito at night, as seen from Diana’s roof. I think next to the beach and the view from El Refugio, the millions of city lights are one of my favorite scenes.

Another favorite sight in Quito is the simultaneous red and green lights. No, this is not the first time I’ve seen this. And I’ve heard from a couple of people who have been driving in Ecuador for a long time that they aren’t positive what to do upon encountering them either. I think I’d just have to treat it like a flashing red or yellow light and hope there was not a cop behind me.

Even after a team gets on the plane, you sometimes end up working just about until the next one shows up to finish out the block. But even so, you just can’t help but miss people as you match up 39 pairs of their socks. I was reminded of what my pastor at home referred to recently as the “Blessing of the Boxers,” and how simple (though maybe time-consuming) tasks can be ministries if you are open to the possibility.

I’m pretty sure this is the funniest graffiti I’ve ever seen. Especially in Quito.

Unexpected Day

A lot of times I get the question, “What is/was it like living with an Ecuadorian family?” There’s always one thing I say to which anyone who has ever experienced host family life can relate: Some days you find out that you are getting in the car and going on an adventure. You usually don’t know where. You can ask. And they’ll tell you. Probably more than once. And you still don’t know.

I’ve been plugging back in with Lourdes’ family this week. And today was one of those days.

Becca and I came over yesterday (Saturday) to hang out with everyone (Lourdes’ family and our friend Ruth, a Youth World intern who is the “new Danny” at Emaús). During the course of our visit, Lourdes told me the group was going somewhere in the morning. I didn’t quite catch it, but I figured Ruth did, so I made a note to ask later. Before I knew it I had been invited and had accepted, still not quite sure what I was getting into. After the day had gone by and Becca and I were getting ready to leave, Ruth asked “are you going with us tomorrow to… wherever it is we’re going?” If Ruth didn’t know, then my hopes of figuring out our destination beforehand were now certainly dashed.

I find this a good place to note that while I knew we’d be leaving at 10:00 in the morning, I was definitely not informed that there would be no church service beforehand. So I totally showed up and hour early in a button-down shirt after taking a rather expensive taxi ride to be here “on time” rather than what could have been a 25 cent Trolley ride and still been on time. I arrived to a house in which hardly anyone was awake, but I did get breakfast out of the deal, so not a total loss. But still, I just love the flow of information around here. Especially since the next surprise was that of not leaving until 11:00.

It turned out that the main adventure for the day was celebrating Father’s Day with lunch out at a restaurant in the family’s old neighborhood. I’ve never been anywhere out to eat with the family (except for two glasses of juice with Lourdes right before I left the country last year), so this was a pretty big deal. I’ve also never seen Ecuadorians unable to finish a meal, so when I say that we left with three carry-out bags, you should be shocked. Probably more shocked than some of you North Americans might be to know that Jose ordered cuy.

The above picture is of the lunch Jose ordered. I feel like this would be cute… if it were a pint-sized version of some less manly object than a grill. Like a legit grill. Those are seriously coals underneath.

Overall, this was on the low-key end of the adventures I’ve semi-accidentally had. And certainly on the delicious end as well.

What is Grace?

Sometimes you don’t know what to expect just hanging out with an Ecuadorian family. Sometimes you don’t know what to expect as you just live as a missionary. This one was probably a little bit of both.

I had just finished re-reading a blog post I wrote last year about Josué. The point of the whole thing was God’s love and grace. I had literally just closed the window with my blog when Lourdes waslked into the office and said to me in Spanish “Danny, what is Grace?” Miguel and I both gave answers ranging from “Forgiveness when we don’t deserve it,” to explainations like “It’s the will of God, not something we have to ask for.”

I think the question took us both by surprise and we had to think (especially as I was trying to answer in Spanish… and I try very hard not to have to speak Spanish before 10:00am). But even though she asked us in her preparations for her devotional later, I thought it was a great little question to keep thinking about throughout the day. Gina told us last week about a realization a non-Christian she met on her most recent plane ride helped her have. It was that part of doing God’s will is not being so cuaght up in our own busiwork (even as missionaries) that we don’t pay attention to how He wants us to serve Him. In the same way, I think that as we are totally dependant upon God’s Grace, we need to acknowledge that in our thoughts and lives, and whatever adventures today holds with the Familia Inapanta Flores, I’ll be thinking about Lourdes’ question.

First day in Photos

Just a couple…

Originally uploaded by danielwpeck

I suggested we get a couple of fruit salads to share. Apparently there was some difference of opinion as to how much sharing should be going on.

Engrish

Originally uploaded by danielwpeck

This is why you shouldn’t rely solely on Google Translate.

Inca dome

Originally uploaded by danielwpeck

These guys found out that this is where Incan ritual human sacrifice used to take place… So of course they had to try to see inside.

Preparations

Last night our first team arrived in the country. But before they get down to business, so many things have to happen. They would never have gotten here without packing bags and buying plane tickets, and ultimately having a personal connection that led them to Youth World. And we had a ton of things to get done on our side as well.

As a team, our staff spent over a week together building relationships and learning (or relearning) how to host teams. We visited ministry sites. We took the Trole. We facilitated debriefs and translated and got and gave orientations and paid for food all over Quito and the oriente.

The thing that really separates Youth World and its Quito Quest program from other short-term missions organizations with which I’ve come into contact is the focus on doing short-term missions well, and with integrity. And even though there were some sections of training that I wanted to snooze through (“We’re going to read through the manual together? Really?”) I know that we can’t simply jump into having a team on the ground without being ready for them in every possible way.

So back to today, with our team (Christ Church Episcopal School from Greenville, SC) on the ground. It was their first full day, and we did a lot of “touristy” things. Sometimes this is hard for groups, who want to get off the plane and immediately go to a ministry site and start mixing concrete or painting or doing VBS. But the reason we sit around the hostal or the office and hear orientation after orientation and then spend several hours walking around historic Quito is not just to kill time. We want the groups to be familiar with the Ecuadorian people to and with who they are serving, and the culture in which they are doing so.

It hit me pretty hard today that I can’t just assume that because I’ve done is job (so many times) before that I’m going to nail it every time. I forget things. I screw up words and phrases in Spanish. I can come up with much better solutions to the myriad minor crises as I endlessly replay them in my head from the safety of my couch at 10 PM. But because I’ve done this job before, and because I’ve learned from others who have hosted tons of teams before me, and because I’ve spent over five weeks of my life doing some form or another of official Quito Quest training, I can handle this job much better than I could if I just got off the plane without having any clue what to expect.

And in that same way, I hope our day of “sightseeing” has helped give our 22 South Carolinians what they need before we go to our first day of ministry at Carmen Bajo in the morning. The time they need to adjust; the perspective that will help them understand; the attitude that will help them learn, grow, serve, and worship.

Testimonies (again)

There have been a lot of things throughout training that have made me feel like Forrest Gump (“…so I went to the White House again, and I met the President again.”) I know I’ve written about Life Stories/Testimonies before, but I’m going to do so again.

For the last three years, Life Stories have been a big part of Quito Quest training. Some people make a distinction between a Life Story and a Testimony, but I think our vocabulary around here is more to keep from scaring the Methodists and Episcopalians. At any rate, every day during training, we have heard one or two life stories from the various summer staff and full-time missionaries. Today was my day to share.

Now (being Methodist), I didn’t even know I had a testimony until I was about 21 years old. And I’m still not particularly fond of sharing it. Especially when I have to go after somebody with the sob-inducing kind of story. I joke around sometimes that I wish I had done drugs or something so my testimony would be more exciting (not even remotely funny, I know, Mom).

One of the things I’ve realized over the course of the last four years, though, is how God works in every experience in our lives. I had a really good resource sent to me when I was preparing to tell my story at IT training two years ago¹, and it is really cool because of that being able to look back at some of the things I never realized at the time impacted my life and my ongoing journey of faith. It’s also cool to see the questions or comments I get later and see how even though I feel sometimes I don’t have much to say, it still allows me to impact people and for all of us to connect as we find out things about each other.

My friend Dana wrote a blog post about this very phenomenon last year. As she put it after a day of testimonies at a you event, “Through powerful testimonies we were able to better see God’s characteristics like His provision, faithfulness, tenacity, and love.”² Those words are much more eloquent than anything I can come up with with this much sleep-deprivation, but that’s how I’ve felt this week, even with my lingering apprehension up to my turn this morning. What we do here as missionaries is never about what we do, but it’s about what God does in and through us, and it has been a lot of fun finding out about some of those works I never would have known of otherwise.

¹Going back to look through related blog posts, I realized that it was exactly two years ago this morning that I was giving my testimony in Elgin, IL. It’s interesting to notice how my attitude and what I include in that story have changed between telling my story to Rich, Kelsey, and Ted, and telling it to a room full of Quito Quest staff today.

²I’m planning on getting her permission to use those words after the fact. It’ll be fine. She knows she loves me. And my bloggy-mcblog-o.