Category: Ecuador

Appreciating

Hosting a Quito Quest team, you always have at least one partner. This time around, I’m working with Jose Luis. This has been really awesome, because we know each other really well, he was willing to do finances, and any number of other reasons related to the fact that he’s a really great guy. But he wasn’t here for a big chunk of today.

I totally understood he had some major things to do today, and I’ve hosted enough teams that I can function on my own. Neither of those things meant it was easy. And I could have spent the afternoon being mad, but after all these years of Quito Quest, my natural instinct was just to miss having a buddy and appreciate everything he does. Because no matter how much experience you have, there are just way too many things for one person to remember, much less accomplish at 100%

Doing all of the host duties today also made me retroactively appreciate things other partners have taught me. How Sarah was always thinking about what was next. How Darío just faced conflict head-on. How other people have taught me to be a more effective decision-maker, leader, translator, and friend.

I also appreciated a lot of the “first day” activities. Maybe because it’s very close to the beginning of my own time here. But I saw the juxtaposition between the art and the statues and the insane amount of gold inside Iglesia San Francisco and the poverty directly outside. And it reminds me exactly why we are so intentional about the way we do ministry here. And on my umpteenth hearing of the Partnership Orientation, I still appreciated being reminded of the process I’m going through even now on my way to making this a fruitful experience.

Thoughts on Transition

I am not a morning person at all. But for some reason, no matter how tired I am and how long I’ve been traveling, I have this amazing inability to sleep past 7:00 in Quito. You would think it’s just the extra noise or the sunlight, but I haven’t woken up grumpy about either of those things in a very long time. This is one of the places where I also never wake up and think “where the heck am I?” on the first morning, despite the fact that I am almost always staying in a new place. So here I am blogging it up at 6:45am.

I know that I am going to see a lot of people who are near and dear to me today. And eat a whole lot of delicious food. And as I wrote yesterday, I’m excited. But I’m also really thankful for the transition time. I told somebody at home the other day that I was just not yet in the mindset of hosting a team. So maybe after a day of enjoying friends and fun stuff, I’ll feel ready for meetings and shopping and airport runs and orientations tomorrow.

That’s actually been my ongoing prayer in the last few days. I want to be prepared to host the team. And that’s being “all here.” I’m going to miss my youth and be wondering how things are going. I’ve got some alarms set to make some phone calls to the U.S. I’m not going to completely block out my life at home. But I can’t worry about all of my plans at home for this time and try to micromanage it from another continent.

And I also have to give my full attention to the 26 people whose lives are my responsibility for the next two weeks. Yes, that’s a dramatic way of putting it, but it’s a good reminder to me. I’m excited to get to know and work with them and see all that God does in and through them while they’re on field. But I hope and pray here in my transitional day that I am ready to be an effective, supportive, prepared and faithful host for them.

Travelling Excitement

I still don’t think it’s fully hit me that in just over 7 hours I’ll be in Ecuador. I know it in my head, and clearly I’ve been planning for this for weeks, but it just continues to be a surreal kind of day.

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. I always know that I’ll be unable to sleep the night before a big travel day like this, so I’m just in the habit of staying up. It’s part of my ritual to go to Wal-Mart at 1:00am for any last things I’ll need, and then to just stay awake cramming my luggage full of food and clothes and my phone full of movies. I slept from about 3-4 am, and then maybe twenty minutes in the car, and not at all on the first flight. So I’ll admit to being just slightly loopy at this point in the day.

Among the loopy things I’ve done today, despite how I like to brag what an expert traveller I am, I realized at the Norfolk airport that they didn’t print a boarding pass for my second flight. And I just didn’t worry about it. But I didn’t think about the fact that I ALWAYS have to go through security a second time in Miami and that I’d need it. Fortunately, when I got here I just pulled up the mobile version on my iPhone and cruised on through. Unfortunately, my terminal didn’t have a TSA agent with a scanner, so I had to trek back up a concourse and convince another TSA agent that I really did know where I was going once he let me through the checkpoint.

While I’m on that train of thought though, Miami seriously needs to connect concourses D and J in some kind of better way than what they’ve got. Because EVERY time I’m here I go from Concourse D to Concourse J. Every time. And every time, I have to leave the secure area, walk 7.2 Bajillion miles (that’s 11.58 Bajillion kilometers) and then go through security again. This time I was glad that construction didn’t detour me outside, but not so happy about the Dr. Pepper I bought in the airport and then forgot was in my book bag (the TSA wasn’t really happy about that either… but I made it through after several minutes enduring yelling, lecturing, grumpy faces and finger wagging).

So now I’m finally sitting at my gate, trying to decide if I should stay awake for the two hours I have left to kill. I’m excited about seeing all of my friends in Quito, about working for Youth World again for a couple weeks, about hosting a team and serving God in Shandia. But like I said, it’s just surreal. 12 hours ago I was in Wal-Mart in Elizabeth City. And here I am in a city that seems like a foreign country, getting ready to board an international flight to a foreign country that feels like home.

Most of the time I have a point. Not today. But that’s where my mind is right now.

Update on my life

I’ve been neglecting my blog. And it’s partly because I’m not used to the fact that my audience has changed. Normally my biggest bursts of writing have been during either preparations to go to Ecuador or on-the-ground time with Youth World. Now it’s mostly the people in the Southern Hemisphere wondering what in the world I’ve been up to, so for you and anyone else that was wondering, here’s what’s going on.

When I got on a plane on August 9, I wasn’t exactly sure what the next few months would look like for me. I thought there was going to be a lot more travelling going on for me this fall, and that I would have some concrete and more immediate plans to return to Ecuador. I set a target time for myself to adjust to the fact that I was home in the U.S. before I started moving ahead with my own plans, and then just as I was about to do so, God just sort of jumped in. He does that, doesn’t He? Or at least it seems that way to us, when all of a sudden you realize that His hand is visible to you.

In what might seem to someone else as amazing and coincidental timing, I arrived back in Elizabeth City just as a staffing need occurred at my home church. As four of my favorite people took a step towards the next chapter of their lives and walks with God, I was asked to step into one of those people’s shoes as the Interim Director of Youth Ministries at First UMC Elizabeth City. I say that it might seem amazing and coincidental to someone else, but as I’ve actually gotten to do this job and see some of the ways that God has prepared me for it, I know that it certainly wasn’t my plan to be in this position or even place at this time, but it was His, and He knows what He’s doing.

In fact, even when I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s been amazing to realize how much I need to actively rely on God and learn to trust Him from what I once considered the safety of my home church and culture and town. Not that I didn’t before. But we all have ways we need to grow, and I can definitely say it’s been easier to recognize some of my failings, fallings, inadequacies and sins when I’m in the jungle or a mountainside village or telling my testimony (what?!) to fifty people than it has been in my traditional “comfort zone.” And here I am in what I thought would be a comfortable place, but in much more of a leadership role that I’m used to. All that to say I’ve been challenged, I’ve been growing, I’ve been having a blast, and I’ll continue to be/do all of those things and be aware of the way that God is working, even if I don’t understand it some days.

So in a nutshell, I’m back in Elizabeth City. I’m back to Benjamin House and La Casa. I’m back to Albemarle Music. I’m back to First United Methodist Church but in a new way, and I love it. And whenever my mind isn’t on First UMC, it’s on/in Ecuador. And I’ll have plenty of stories about all of the above whenever I can conjure up the words for them all.

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.