I just want to share a few random thoughts and adventures from the last couple of days. We currently have a team of 61 people on the ground. It’s not the largest team Youth World has ever had, but it’s far and away the biggest Quito Quest team ever, so even things that we’ve got down pat like feeding and transporting and debriefing large amounts of people are really complicated. It’s been a challenge just keeping up with the logistics sometimes, much less learning 61 names and faces and personalities and stories. But it’s been a blast working with them and seeing both how much they are able to accomplish and how much they are able to grow. It’s an emotional roller coaster some days, even for us hosts.
For example: as I posted on Facebook earlier today, I started my morning trying to wave down our bus as it drove past me on Av. America and Dana pointed out the window and laughed. I was thinking her face was priceless, but as I tend to have a rostro expresivo myself, she was probably thinking the same thing about me. After I did manage to jog back to the bus, make it to the seminary and pick up our team, I (only semi-) accidentally got 65 people into the Mitad del Mundo monument for free. I didn’t feel that bad about it because a security guard watched us and 70 school children walk in, and the gringos bought some souvenirs. We also took the opportunity to hop on a chiva, which is basically a party bus. We thought we’d be getting a nice little ride around the Ciudad Mitad del Mundo, but it turns out we got a ride around the actual ciudad. For a dollar a person, we got a 20-minute excursion back through the parish of San Antonio de Pichincha, ducking power lines and waving at everyone we passed, all the while blasting music from Spanish reggaetón to the Black Eyed Peas. We made it back to the monument just in time to join the rest of our gringo group in dancing to “Foot Loose,” “Mambo Number 5” and “YMCA” as it blared over the speakers while curious and amused latinos photographed us all.
Then we went to El Refugio for lunch and an hour and a half of solo time. Having done a significant amount of that last night, I sneaked off and went to staff meeting, and the worship session there was exactly what I needed. After that I caught up with some of the rest of our team hosts and El Refugio staff and hid out with them drinking coffee in the Grace Center to relax, get to know each other’s plans and stories a little better, and process and plan. Then it was time for debrief.
Fortunately we’d had that little bit of transition time, because although debrief wasn’t as deep as I would have liked and hoped, it’s getting there. We had a few tears, but mostly just youth hashing out what ministry and relationships with each other and God will look like back in Canada. Having Christy back with our debrief group after a couple of days away for various reasons, I took the chance to take some notes for my own personal processing time and to pay attention to each member of the group and figure out who needs time outside of our normal plans to get deeper. We can pretty easily pick out the internal processors and the ones who are really wrestling with things. But being an internal processor myself, sometimes it takes a while to be able to jump in there and help somebody hash those things out.
Right now I’m tired, both physically and of processing. Therefore, this isn’t going to be one of those deep posts with a moral attached. But to sum it up, and despite my really low amount of energy right now, I will say this: as a certain former Quito Quest host once said to me “I love teams!”
best 20 minutes of your life, Sugar Daddy.
Thanks for making me laugh, while sitting alone in a cabin, in the middle of nowheresville, CO.