Saturday afternoon the team and Carmen Bajo hosted a youth event at the Nazarene Seminary here in Quito, where the group was staying. Tons of people from different churches came, and several from partner ministries and from Youth World. When Cameron showed up around lunchtime, she told me “I feel like it’s been a day and a year since the last time I saw you.”
You totally lose your sense of time when you are hosting a team. I actually turned to Christy in the bus on the way home last night and said “Is it still Sunday?” It was several seconds before she answered, giving me the Jack Sparrow stare as she thought about the question. Running with a team means that your days are incredibly long, both because they are action-packed and because you really are awake for an ungodly amount of time. But then you drop off 35 people at the airport and hug and cry and smile and think “Wasn’t I just here picking them up?”
So here I am, back to work before 9am the day after a team. And there they go, headed back to Canada to lives that I hope will be greatly affected by a week and a half in Ecuador. I would say that for the 70ish people directly involved in this whole operation, we’re probably all a little stunned it’s over. For the last eleven days we’ve walked up hills that would be illegal in North America, painted, lugged bricks, and mixed concrete. And it’s amazing what you learn about people as you work alongside them. But we’ve also given out shoes and cooked food and shared testimonies and put on presentations and VBS and worshiped together in church services and just by living life. It’s amazing what you learn from people when you plug into each others’ existence. I hope this is not the last time I see the Pueblos Unidos team, but if it is, it won’t be the last time I think of them.
