Category: Church

Jungle revisited

It’s amazing to see just over a few weeks how certain things are constant and others change. This week has been my second visit to Tena, Capricho and Shandia. In the middle of June I stepped into Hotel Vista Hermosa for the first time, not having a clue how to get to Cafe Tortuga or Parque Amizonicos, or what the churches in Shandia or Capricho would look like. This time around I could lead 13 gringos anywhere we needed to go with no problem and I had faces in mind when I thought of going back to the ministry sites.

I have to say I learned a lot in the jungle this time around as well. I had a lot of practice figuring out songs by ear, which was particularly good practice for me when I’ve been uncharacteristically trying not to play guitar this summer. (For those of you to whom I’ve mentioned that, I think I’m over it). I also got to sit back and worship in church.

That’s a lesson I’ve been learning over and over this summer. Sitting back and worshiping. At home I’m used to being the guy doing the “important stuff.” If I’m at church I’m playing guitar (or another instrument) or singing or preaching or running the sound system. And through facilitating worship for others, you worship by giving back the gifts that God has given to you. But it’s really easy to get caught up in that also, and in many instances hard to find that sense of worship, particularly in the moment.

I saw that actually accomplished in Elysaul, in the way he played at the colegio in Babahoyo after giving his testimony. Tears streaming down his face and snot dangling all the way to the neck of the guitar, he sobbed and played gorgeous music, praying all along and knowing exactly how much his gift was affecting what was going on around him, despite probably barely being able to see what was happening through his tears.

This morning I learned the same thing by seeing and feeling something totally different. I listened to T.J. preach, and watched the group do their Prodigal Son skit. I hadn’t been part of the planning process for that except to listen out for cultural gaffes (and I was mostly asleep on a pew for that). I love just being and worshiping in the presence of God and surrounded by his love shown in the dedication of a baker’s dozen gringos and a church full of people who are still accepting of and excited about every single team of extranjeros that shows up.

God has a lot to teach us when we’re simply still.

Partnership in Ministry

Time off? HA!

Since getting to Babahoyo, the Beechwood team has had two main focuses: worship services at the Centro Cristian de Babahoyo and evangelism ministry at Colegio Eugenio Espejo.

After doing their prepared drama three times at the church and sharing testimonies (many of which I truly doubt would have been possible if not for the outpouring the Holy Spirit last Friday), Sarah felt led to ask the group to circle around the sanctuary for church members to come and pray with people one-on-one or in small groups. If I could sum up Partnership between C.C. de B. and Beechwood so far, that story would be it. I’ve never, even out of all the ministry sites and teams I’ve served, seen any connection like that. Ask me about it some time.

So when the drama and the testimonies were over at the Colegio, the one-on-one prayer thing became a part of the ministry. We perfected our plan of implementing that over the course of the seven programs we did in two days. By the last one, it was (for lack of a better word) and Altar Call with us praying alongside the miidle- and high-school kids who came to know the Lord.

Believe me (and we’ve had probably a half dozen conversations about this inside four days) I struggle with the idea of Altar Calls, but especially after a mind-blowing testimony from Elysaul and then Carely just ripping to shreds any thought of raising your hand because someone else had theirs in the air, I truly believe that God is working in that place and that there is enough of a support network in place between all the kids their and the church in Babahoyo that it will bear fruit beyond “that time 40 Gringos came and did a cool skit.”

And can I just mention the fact that the administrators not only let in 40 Gringo missionaries to talk about Jesus in a public school, but that they asked us to do an extra presentation so more kids could hear the important message of Salvation? Are you kidding me?

We were more than an hour behind when we pulled out, and still had a program to do at an elementary school down the road. I love watching the adults do “Father Abraham” when I play for the kids at church at home. If you think that would be funny to watch, let me just say that 40 Gringos doing Spanish Zaccheus and then Tutuwa (sp?) was ridiculous. It is encouraging though to see so many kids so excited about the Lord, and it’s also encouraging to see Him moving through the Colegio. I pray that that’s a much less dark place by the time those little guys get there.

Dinner overlooking the Babahoyo River from Restaruante La Carreta was awesome, the guy there was totally cool about losing track of how many plates we’d gotten for what’s grown to a group of about 50 people. It’s a good thing the church is cool about being on Ecuadorian time, because we were way late to getting back to the church as well, and it turned out that the group did 90% of the service again tonight.

Upon talking about it later, Sarah and I agreed that neither one of us has ever seen (or had) a rougher time leaving a ministry site. I know for me personally, praying in a group with Arturo just got to me. Half way through he just dropped to his knees (so I pulled the rest of the group down too) and prayed in Spanish straight out of his heart and totally lacking the energy to translate. The guy was just weeping, and when we all broke apart at the end he just grabbed me in a bear hug and said “My brother.”

Thank God for Facebook. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever see most of those people again. Elysaul is coming with us back to Quito, and I’m sure that Arturo and I will be tagging pictures of each other for weeks, but that doesn’t make it much easier to leave a group of people with whom you’ve been working and sharing and worshipping and ministering.

There have been some rough patches, and debrief tomorrow night will not be easy, nor will it be short. As for tonight, I told Eric I couldn’t imagine a bad debrief after that and said “Just do your thing.” For my part, I’m exhausted, I can’t wait to check in with Sarah, I’m looking forward to sleep and to getting to see the guys in Quito, but still not totally ready to leave.

First Team's First Days

I’m not even going to attempt to go back and blog individual days since our team has been here. So much has happened, but I will try to cram it all into a single entry.

First off, our team just kept getting delayed and delayed and delayed. We basically gave up rewriting their schedule until after they finally made it on Friday after 7:00, about 24 hours after they were supposed to originally arrive. Their luggage didn’t make it until Saturday night, and what we didn’t tell the team at the time was that we didn’t expect it to make it at all. Dana said Saturday morning “It will be a miracle if it gets here today, and it will be a miracle if it gets here tomorrow.”

God’s timing is something that just continually blows me away. The verse for the day in our Luke bible study for the interns was in Luke 9 where Jesus sends the disciples out without luggage. That was even the verse that Pastor Jennifer read at our commissioning service at Christ Episcopal last year. The team loved it when they heard that, and they had such fantastic attitudes all day despite dirty clothes and a general lack of toothbrushes.

By the Grace of God (and Bryan and Dana and the Suburban) it was in the meeting room of the Hostal seven hours later and we were able to leave for Tena on Sunday rather than canceling our entire trip to our primary ministry site.

Hostal Vista Hermosa in Tena is aptly named. It was beautiful, and our meeting area looked out over the jungle community and was covered, but otherwise pretty much open air and was perfect for debriefs every night. We arrived Sunday and Juan Carlos took us over to the church in Shandia for an evening service in which the team gave their testimonies. I felt during our run-through in the afternoon that a few of them felt like it had to be a certain length or that they had to impress somebody. But standing in front of all those loving people, having kids crawl all over us and just loving them and them loving us, none of that came through. Every one was very genuine and heart-felt, and you could tell that the people there could tell and truly appreciated it. We felt very connected and truly all brothers and sisters in Christ. Several songs (in English, Spanish and Quechua) and many handshakes and hugs later, we headed back to the Hostal.

Monday morning was work in Shandia. We sanded the entire outside of the church and painted it. It’s amazing what a coat of paint will do, and that place looked fantastic when the joint gringo/Ecuadorian team finished up. It was definitely hard work getting the walls smooth and doing some of the hard-to-reach areas on the doors, but we had a blast doing it, and even got some of the little kids to help, which was hilarious (they were all skipping school because the gringos were around).

Sarah spent much of the morning treating minor to semi-major medical issues in the kids there. It’s sad to see how lacking in medical supplies the community is, and some of the really horrible medical conditions some of these kids just put up with. They are seriously tough, but they are still just kids, and some of the infections we saw were not something I want to imagine ever dealing with, much less see a five-year-old go through. I was really thankful for Sarah’s nursing studies and I know she was too. It was truly amazing to see God work through her two years of training and a very basic first aid kit to touch them.

After lunch was VBS. We spent a lot of time in training going over “how to save a VBS,” so it was refreshing that the team (thanks very much to the two very brave Spanish-speaking team members) was not only prepared but just poured out their hearts through that part of their ministry. Even the people who said that their “primary” job was the work team or sports was on the floor making crosses out of paper hands and loving the on the children and being Jesus in the same way we got to see Palabra de Vida doing that for the Huaorani. Hannah and I went back to Tena during the afternoon to get water (we never have to tell these guys to drink water. 24 people went through 25 gallons in one day!) and when we came back everyone had kids in their laps and tons of natural face paint on them, obviously drawn by children. (I’m thankful I missed that, solely for not having to wash it back off, but it was really one of the highs of my day to see).

Capricho was basically the same as far as ministry, but we walked around the town first inviting kids to the VBS. Unlike Shandia, the church is not very old and faces a very strong opposition from the local Catholic church and problems like witchcraft and substance abuse in the community. It was encouraging seeing how many kids did come back with us, though  and how connected the group felt to them, but it is definitely a harder ministry site and harder anyway when you have to deal with feeling ripped out of a site every single day. Somebody asked if the kids realized we weren’t coming back the next day, and it really hit me that we wouldn’t be coming back, which was a tough pill to swallow.

Tomorrow is Mitad del Mundo before El Refugio for a much-needed Sabbath, and we still have Carmen Bajo left as a ministry site. I’m looking forward to seeing how God continues to work through the team here in Quito.

Lacking a "Linebacker"

First off, this will make a lot more sense if you’ve seen the “Evangelism Linebacker” video. YouTube address (dispite my loathing of YouTube for a multitude of reasons all stemming from their liberal interpretation of handling copyrights) is below. For posterity (you know, if my dream ever comes true and there is a Constitutional Ammendment to ban YouTube) just search for “Evangelism Linebacker” and I’m sure you’ll find it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvYFvhx1dcY

Blog entry proper:

I’ve not been the most patient person lately. I want everything to fall into place for Ecuador this summer. I want my International Teams fund raising account to hurry up and catch up with the count in my head. I want to be done with work and exams already so I can go to the beach, or maybe Vermont. I can count twenty pleasant things I’m eagerly anticipating and fifty more unpleasant ones I’d like to be over with.

But as much as I want work to be done with, I’ll feel like there’s so much I would rather be doing myself than delegating when I drive by Albemarle Music. And I’ll miss everybody there. Well, not John. (Just kidding, John. I know you account for 80% of my readership by yourself). And much as I want to be in Ecuador, I’ll miss Adan, Bayron, Brittany, Damaris, Eddie, Eric, Jesus, Joe, Luis, Melany, Vanessa, Aaron, Bart, Ben, Carrie, Cynthia, Derrick, Jason, Kos, Susie, Tina, Wade and everyone else that make my “day off” a learning experience and a joy.

I think I forget until each Tuesday that I can still grow in Elizabeth City, despite feeling like I have accomplished what I set out to do when I came back here. I forget to take Qui-Gon Jinn’s advice and focus on the “here and now,” though (being a good Methodist) I’d call it Prevenient Grace rather than the Living Force.

The other six days of the week, I think I need a “Patience Linebacker.”

“Boo-ya, baby! Concrete tastes the same in both hemispheres! Don’t be so anxious, I’ll blow you up anywhere!”

Life Lessons for the day:

“What can we do to show God we love Him more?” -Toni
“Pray once a day and twice on Sundays!” -Cynthia

“[In God’s time] everything falls in place.” -Julie (incidentally, my fund raising is finally where it is supposed to be, thanks to Grace alone)

[unspoken implication that guys should not have long fingernails] -Wade

Huevos de Pascua

We had an Easter Egg hunt today at La Casa. (For those of you who don’t know, La Casa is an after-school ministry for Spanish-speaking school kids, held at Christ Episcopal Church two days of the week). Miranda and I went out to the side yard/playground and hid (roughly) 130 eggs1 for the kids to find. I doubt we even knew where they all were by the time we went back inside and upstairs.2

Once all the kids were finished with homework, coloring, and snack, it was egg hunting time. They bunny-hopped from the parish house to the playground with makeshift Easter baskets (plastic Food Lion bags) swish-swishing around. I even noticed one particularly adorable second-grader actually skipping through the yard, bag in hand, waving in the air as the egg-collecting began.

You just really can’t hide 130+ brightly colored eggs very well in a maybe 20×50 meter fenced-in yard. But even with half the eggs scattered around the ground or along the brick wall or other painfully obvious places, the kids had a blast. I don’t even remember the last time I skipped around doing anything. I think the joy of watching them actually dwarfed the feeling of them actually (for once) listening to me give directions before we went outside. I love kids.

1We didn’t know until later that we were supposed to count the eggs. This resulted in guesstimating how many eggs we had to limit each kid to finding. (Although several went over the alloted six by bagfuls, which itself resulted in the re-hiding of some eggs).
2As I told Miranda, I thought you had to be a lot older before you could hide your own Easter Eggs. I was mistaken.

Favorite People

Today was the Elizabeth City District United Methodist Lay Rally. Basically its the anual conference of all the non-clergy district leaders and anyone else, lay or clergy that wants to attend. The district youth praise band played before the service (most of it anyway, which only included two actual youth). So I got to jam with Toni and that was cool. After the service we went upstairs to the youth room and I got to play a little more music with Marlowe and Elanit. Also always a pleasure.

When I finally left and dragged myself to First Baptist (exhausted after having preached there this morning, played guitar all afternoon, and being sick) I just sat in the congregation. I did stand up and play bass so David could sing “That Where I Am There You,” but otherwise I was just a regular guy at the service, which was a nice change. No preaching, no praying out loud, no singing or playing, just a chance to be a part of the worship service, which I needed. And I just generally had some good conversations with Becca and later David and Steve and the Winslows and the Saunders.

Overall, the thing that stuck out to me all day was just getting to see a lot of random and very special people that I don’t usually have the opportunity to spend a lot of time with. And that’s a blessing in and of itself.

Me? Are you serious?

Quito-
 

            Early. That’s my summation of the first three hours of my morning. I got up at 6:30 when Edla came in the room and I was pretty much a zombie all the way to Mission Reconciliation.

            We got to the church earlier than pretty much everyone and got to greet them all as they got there. It wasn’t as big a crowd as I expected for the Presiding Bishop to be there, but maybe that was the point. Lots of important clergy I’d never heard of and the girls danced (which was actually really great).

            It probably wasn’t as important to me as I was the only one in the group who was both a non-Spanish speaker and a non-Episcopalian, so I had doubly no idea what was going on (can you double no idea?).

            After that, Mission Emaus for lunch, presentation of the stuff (TV, amplification system, blender, DVD player) that they were able to buy with the team’s donation, and finally the VBS.

            Anita was great with all the kids. She had this whole room of children totally silent and still. Then we did music. In the States I would have considered it a disaster (Julie: “I don’t sing!” Danny: “I don’t speak Spanish!”) but the way it worked out, I’d say I was pretty proud and it was successful and fun, especially considering we translated all the songs like 20 minutes before.

            Then it was the “whole world in His hands” project. Not enough glue, not enough directions, TONS of fun. Little Jefferson was who I mostly hung around with the “help” and it was nice just to chill with him, not even really having functional conversation, but a super-functional relationship.

            When all was said and done we took probably a thousand pictures with everyone. We’ll get to hang out for a little bit tomorrow, but it felt like good-bye already. I’m going to seriously miss Anita and Maria José and Jefferson and Don Rodrigo.

            Finally back to the hostel for 40 minutes to rest before dinner. We tried one place but Dario, Angela and their group were already there. We talked to Dario for a bit and then went about two doors down to Pincho’s. We’re such Americans. Half of us ordered Cheeseburgers and Coke and Coleman got 4 orders of ($0.99) BBQ wings.

            Cameron and Roberto came halfway through and we had lots of fellowship.

            Then back to the hostel. Debrief was pretty cool. Everyone talked about what they learned about God and about themselves. We pretty much discussed how much God can do through us even though we can do so little on our own. And of course the old man with the guitar was a big topic. (This 83-year-old man at Emaus played classical guitar and he and his daughter sang Ecuadorian songs for us. Most of us had no idea what they meant, but he opened up to us about how our gifts of time and effort inspired him and reminded him of the love of God).

            Overall, not much work today. But I have a different perspective on life and faith by actively looking through others’ eyes and at how they can teach me.

 

Oh- and tomorrow I’m going to be a Godfather for Luis from Mission Emaus when he is confirmed. Big deal, kinda scary, and puts me back in the contemplative mood. Wow.

"Do you have any liquids?"

Quito-

We’ve just said our good-night prayer here at the hostel in Quito. It’s been an amazing day already even after sitting on planes for most of it and not really doing anything productive.

We started the day early at Hunter’s house and already had a story by the time we got to the Norfolk air port. Poor David and Holly Wright had to listen to Hunter’s travel alarm going off in her luggage in their back seat all the way there.

We got through our check-in pretty smoothly. I didn’t really want to let go of my guitar, but otherwise it was fine. We had pretty much two hours to kill before the plan was supposed to leave at 10:45- which turned into noon. So the whole group had plenty of time to eat breakfast/coffee at Starbucks, check out the airport shops, and relax.

So then we all start heading through security. We had to take off our shoes and I set off the metal detector with my belt. Katie was behind me and as I was finally getting my stuff, the security officer comes up to her and asks “Is this your bag?” to which she timidly replied “Yes…?” And the guy just grins and says “Come with me,” in a tone that seemed to say “This will take a while,” as he began to sing to himself. I just laughed and went to tell Sophia her mom was in trouble.

Edla, Carrie, Hunter and some others started trickling through the line, each giving us an update on the situation (and the contraband in Katie’s bag). Bug spray was a liquid and not allowed. 1 bottle of Pepto-Bismol, larger (by a significant amount) than the 3 oz. limit also would not pass. Neither would the second bottle. Then out came the brownies and in inquiry as to whether or not they were “funny.” This resulted in an offer for a trade: bag of brownies to the security officers for 1 bottle of Pepto allowed through. Response: adamantly “no,” (probably a good thing in hind-sight as a liquid-bomb-building terrorist would have chosen the Pepto and aroused suspicion). Brownies returned. It was then reported that Katie wanted to chug the Pepto down to the three ounce limit. Ultimately not entirely true, but hilarious enough that we pretend it was.

Finally she made it. Lots more hanging around and then at last we boarded the tiniest passenger plane I have ever traveled in. You could feel every bit of speed, turbulence, take-off, and landing. I watched out the window and slept for most of it, except for a roller-coaster-like descent which left my mouth open and my eyes firmly shut, Edla’s hands clasped on her cross, and Julie’s arms clasped around Edla.

Arrival in Atlanta was pretty chill. Kinda like being home for me. Interesting after reading Genesis for Old Testament class and God commanding people to return to the land of their birth. Spiritual connection on the trip already.

Lots more hanging around and a gazillion-mile hike. Yes, seriously. A gazillion. We had lunch at a food court in Concourse E and felt like we were in the middle of an Army camp. We took the opportunity to teach Sophia about military uniforms, resulting in a half-hour debate about whether the flag really would be backwards if you carried it on a pole and ran forward (yes, if it was held to your left).

Much less security the second time around and first real passport check. We were mostly together on the play. I got a window seat again with Edla, then Julie next to me and Sophia, Betty and Bradham behind. When we took off (after being 11th in line on the runway) I actually saw the air go over the wings like the show you in 6th grade science class.

In-flight movie: Premonition. Good message, weird ending. I do find it obnoxious how movies can talk about religion and faith and even the priest won’t actually say “God.”

I happened to look out the window while we were over the ocean. All you could see was this floor of clouds stretching to the horizons in all directions and several hundred feet beneath us. I just wanted to get out and walk on them. I know it was a really simple thing. In fact stuff like clouds doesn’t usually get to me. But I think the fact that they were so perfect and everywhere, I was on top of them made me realize that it wasn’t something you see or experience every day. I hope and pray our whole trip will be like that: a new experience that I can’t have every day, and something that will make me think.

So after that most of the flight was pretty chill. My contemplative mood lasted through several stupid television shows, a surprisingly good chicken dinner, and finally flying smack into the middle of Quito.

The airport is seriously crammed into this miles-long metropolis with buildings all around it. It’s in about the only really flat place in the city: the dead center. You just feel like your are scraping the top of every building as you descend. And the whole city was lit up and we could see it miles and miles away.

As we started landing, the first sign I saw on a building say Xerox. Also not something I expected. Maybe it just shows globalization or Americanization, but aside from being cynical it felt like I was at least a little connected to home because of a big bright red English sign.

Disembarking took no time at all and before I knew it I had a stamp on my passport, a guitar and a bag in my hands, as was walking toward a jumping, waving South American man with three super-excited women.

As I guessed, it was Dario, the multi-lingual Youth World host who everyone met and loved last year. I could tell why immediately. He was so energetic and knew who I was the second Julie said my name (“Oh, you’re the musician!”) Pretty soon I met Cameron and Roberto and had Ecuadorian people kissing my cheek and somehow we eventually ended up on a bus and at the hostel. Quick briefing and some snacks and it was time for journaling and bed. Don’t feel extremely productive, but definitely excited, spirit-filled, and completely exhausted.