Category: Youth World

This Place Breaks My Heart

Since Saturday night Roberto and I have been hosting a team from South Carolina. It’s a fascinating group because it’s centered around a couple who is getting married on Tuesday. Part of the team only thought they were coming on a mission team and didn’t even know there would be a wedding while they were here. Part of the group only thought they were coming for the wedding.

Having worked so long with an organization that focuses so much on doing short term missions well, there are some things about this that I struggle with. But this group has had particularly fresh eyes for the things around them. I think little-to-no preparation on the part of the team members was in this case better than bad preparation, because they simply didn’t have time to have any preconceived notions. This struck me the first time when a 50-something team member said during our orientation at Carmen Bajo “This place just breaks my heart.”

I initially wanted to push back on that, to tell him “no, this is a place that’s full of joy,” to argue with him what a difference it makes in the community. Knowing that I have served at Carmen Bajo for almost 10 years and whatever was going to come out of my mouth was going to be an emotional response, I held my tongue. And I’m glad I did, because while all those thing I thought are true, that doesn’t mean we can’t all (myself included) be heartbroken at the underlying need for a place like Iglesia Carmen Bajo and it’s school and social project to even exist.

We heard Pastor Fabian’s story of being called to the neighborhood. I’ve heard it many times before in orientations or at dinners at his house. We heard testimonies from church members and stories about the students from the staff. Most of those stories were things I’ve heard before. Tough, terrible stories of loss and hardship, but familiar problems in that area just with new names and faces to go with them. Those stories are shared so we can give glory to God for what he has done in the midst of it all. For healing and wholeness found in His Church, for hope that has come through educational opportunities, for a generation that is giving back to their community because of grace and mercy encountered through people sharing love, and for there being enough resources to solve social and economic problems because basic needs like food are being met through the compassion of teams and a church and a people who care.

But the relief that comes through that place doesn’t mean all the problems are gone. There is still endemic abuse and neglect in the neighborhood. We met a woman who is fighting to give four of her sons with disabilities a better life, but whose son’s disabilities were caused by fetal alcohol syndrome. There was a kindergartener who is happy and healthy and learning, whose education is funded through the scholarship program and whose lunch is funded by Compassion International, but who has to walk an hour and a half each way, each day between his home and Carmen Bajo. A kindergartener.

There are times when I’m listening to a story or translating on a home visit when I just sort of turn off my heart and only use my head. I change the words from Spanish to English and regurgitate them for the team so they get the information. But I do it with a certain sterility, not letting the emotion effect me in the moment. I become the task-oriented North American with data to get across rather than the missionary, the minister, the brother in Christ who should be broken-hearted by what I see.

And what I see is injustice. Brokenness. Sin. Those things are why we need the church. We we need missionaries. Why I’m here at all. I’m very rarely shocked at a story I hear in his place anymore. But familiar as this brokenness is, and optimistic as I hope I continue to be about all that is going on to fix it, my prayer is that i will continue to be as broken-hearted about it all now as I was the first time I came here.

The Calm before the Team

I arrived in Quito late last night after a couple of very windy, bumpy plane rides. And though today has theoretically been about preparations for the team and for Youth World staff meeting tomorrow, it has also been about jumping into life with the Vivancos. So we’ve played with the kids a lot today. Lying in a hammock, watching the boys crawl through their tunnels in the back yard this afternoon, Caroline summed up the contented atmosphere here by asking “Does the team have to come?”

Rhythms of Refreshment

I’ve begun writing some thoughts/devotions/articles for my youth group emails, and the one that went out today just seemed more like something that I would typically post on my blog. So here it is.

 

About this time nine years ago I began telling people that I was going to Ecuador for two weeks out of my summer. Most people seemed to think that was pretty cool. This time eight years ago I began telling people I was going back to Ecuador to work for the entire summer, and the reaction tended to be more impressed. Seven years ago I began telling people that I was moving to Ecuador for an entire year, and people at that point began to be concerned for my mental health. These days I find myself in conversations where I’ll say “I just got back from a couple weeks in Ecuador,” and someone will say “Oh, I didn’t even realize you were gone.” Ecuador, Youth World, and hosting Quito Quest teams have all simply become a part of the rhythm of my life.

This year, it was Phil Payne who made an observation about this phenomenon. Phil is one of the Directors at Youth World, and many years ago was my boss in the Short Term Teams department. He was asking me about my time off from church and working with Quito Quest this year and I joked about it. I told him that I think “Pastor Joe lets me come down here for a couple of weeks each year so I can get my fix and he doesn’t have to worry about my moving away from North Carolina.” Phil’s response was “That’s a smart senior pastor.” And Phil (who would much rather that I did just move down to Ecuador) elaborated that this continued experience effects the way that I minister, the way that I teach the Gospel, and the way that I perceive God and his work in my life and his world. “You get refreshed here and you take that back to your regular context.”

Hosting Quito Quest teams is certainly not a vacation. It’s been described by one former staff member as “The most work on the least sleep you’ve ever gotten in your life.” But connecting to God and his people outside your routine is refreshing in a spiritual sense, even when it might not be in a physical sense. God speaks to us wherever we are. He teaches us wherever we are. But our environment can change our perception. I hope that you look around during your spring break. During your vacation or stay-cation or regular routine and actually become aware of what it is that God has to teach you in this season. Look for God’s rhythms so that you allow him to refresh your soul.

Snot and Tears

When we arrived at El Refugio today and got our orientation to the property and the programs, John told us about Shoeless. It’s something that El Refugio does/teaches about being aware of Gods presence as Moses did in Exodus 3. When God told him to remove his shoes, it wasn’t that the ground on which he stood had suddenly become holy. It was that Moses was becoming aware of it.

Today was a long day of orientations and solo time. A couple of people even said they didn’t think we would do a debrief tonight. And the debrief we did was not the one we planned. But full of hotdogs and cuy, we launched into what began as a simple recap of our day.

What continues to amaze me about Sabbath time at El Refugio is how seriously the teams take it. With this and most teams, we are about halfway through our time on the ground when we go to the property. So the group should be tired. But they’re not disengaged. And as scary as three hours walking around the mountain and listening to God might seem to some, people really do it. So that’s a huge amount of time to process not just what they’ve seen today or this week, but to really begin listening for what they are supposed to do with all of this post-field.

This meant our “simple recap” of the day of and of solo time quickly became 18 of us sitting around the campfire crying our eyes out as we processed where we were and where God was bringing us. Several years ago there was a joke during Quito Quest training that a “successful” debrief meant crying. This is certainly not necessarily the case, but the whole group being able to go to that deep a place emotionally is one of the possible side effects of doing solo time and debrief with the correct attitude. It wasn’t successful because we cried. But we were crying because it was successful.

The issues and the discoveries and the celebrations that came about through that time aren’t things that should be written in a (relatively) public forum like this. Suffice it to say that there were issues worked through. There were discoveries. There were celebrations. There was support. And there was God’s presence. Which is, of course, there all the time. It’s just that we became aware.

Put on Your Own Mask First

Mike Breen taught us during our 3DM immersion that “the learning is in the room.” It’s not always the person up front and leading something who has all the answers and the things we need to hear, no matter how much education and experience they might have. I’ve been doing Quito Quest across nine years, and I certainly don’t have all the answers. So it’s been super fun to keep learning from the wisdom this (young) team has brought with them.

Quito Quest pushes you. It’s physically demanding. It’s spiritually demanding. It’s mentally demanding. And it can be downright emotionally punishing. And being with a team of awesome, excited people serving alongside loving, welcoming, hard-working locals can cause this sense of wanting to “keep up.” So we run into exhaustion very easily. We run into guilt when we just can’t stretch anymore in this particular way, but we compare ourselves to someone who seems like they can.

My first block hosting a team in 2008, I never asked for a break. I felt like it was complaining to even say out loud honestly when I was tired or hungry or pissed at a team leader. By the fourth block, I found time to sit and read our daily scriptures, to rest, to blog, to stay out of the sun and away from people for a few minutes during the day. This wasn’t because I’d actually wised up at this point. It was because after 70 days my body finally fought back and let me know that my rhythms were unsustainable.

It’s not my instinct to take a break. Or to let someone else work harder than me (in my perception). But another thing Mike Breen taught us was to work out of our rest, rather than resting from our work. It’s an important distinction. If you just go go go until you have to rest, that’s not really rest. It’s catching up. But if rest in Christ is intentionally part of your rhythm, there’s a well from which to draw, and a power which is not our own, out of which to minister.

A team member brought her own learning to the room tonight. For those members of the team who were tired and expressed a frustration born from trying to keep up and to have something to offer to those at the ministry sites, she offered that wisdom to us. She said that it is much like the safety instructions on the airplane. When pressure drops and the masks come out of the ceiling, you have to put your own mask on before you help anyone else with theirs.

What’s funny is how many people in the room immediately said “I hate that!” I guess I’m not alone in wanting to take care of others. In wanting to tough it out and keep up regardless of my own weakness. In picturing some little kid sitting next to me in that emergency and wanting to get a mask on them immediately. But the whole point of that safety brief on the plane is that if you don’t bother to take care of yourself, you may become unable to to take of anyone else either.

Rest isn’t selfish. It was modeled by Jesus in how much time he spent in the wilderness or the mountains or in the garden alone with the Father. It’s how we have enough energy to do what we are called to do. It’s how we go from serving out of our own guilt to ministering out of God’s grace.

Be Yourself When You’re Uncomfortable

Since the day before the team arrived, I’ve been a little under the weather. I wrote about altitude affecting me by making me tired. But it can also occasionally cause some digestive issues. In 9 years, I’ve never had that problem, but apparently I do this week (EDIT: turns out I actually got an intestinal infection. Awesome!) At any rate, it sucks. And it’s sucking energy out of me, not being able to keep food in my system.

The other fun thing about this situation is that I’ve been up every few hours during the night, so I’m way low on sleep since I’ve been here. I can function when I’m sick. I can function without food. But since my first summer here I’ve known that I just don’t function well when I don’t sleep.

In the States I can pretty easily just decide “I can work from home today.” But when your job is translating and going on home visits and transporting people and paying for food, you can’t really Skype in for that. So my first couple of days with this team have been somewhat uncomfortable. I gave somewhat lethargic orientations at the Basilica and at Plaza San Francisco, and I’ve been doing all I can to take it easy in Argelia Alta (including taking a couple hours off this morning to go to the doctor for the first time ever in Ecuador). I don’t like not feeling like me when I’m with the team. And I thoroughly dislike feeling like I’m less than capable of doing the job that I’m here to do.

But one of our team members said something tonight at debrief that struck me. She was speaking in terms of cultural adjustments, but her advice to herself and to the rest of us was “Be yourself even when you’re uncomfortable.”
Yes, being sick really bites. And as I’ve been getting better I’ve described it as feeling “more like me.” But I get to choose to be me however I feel. And I’m glad that I took that opportunity at a few points. Full of or lacking in energy, I did stick with the team as much as possible, and I do feel like Quito Quest is one of those things that makes me me. And still not at 100%, I can choose to be me. I can choose to find my identity and my outlook in Christ instead of in this sickness and how it has physically made me feel. I’m not saying I’m great at making that choice. But in a new way, I’m aware of my ability to keep making that choice now.

Acclimatizing

When a short-term team comes through the Quito Quest program, the first full day that they are on the ground is a day to acclimatize. Somewhat literally, as altitude is generally a large concern, and somewhat figuratively, as they experience the language and the culture and the food and the pace of life in Ecuador and in Quito specifically. It’s an “easy” day in the sense that they are not working at ministry sites yet, but it is full. Or as my bilingual brain would put it, “full full.”

Today was a day like that for me. At the end of plane ride #10 to Ecuador, it seems perfectly normal for me to walk out of customs, meet Roberto, and walk out into the night air and city sounds of Quito. But “regular day” though it felt, the travel does take its toll on me, and after an hour car ride back home to the Vicancos’ last night, I was beat. So I was very thankful to have the opportunity to sleep in this morning.

I woke up slowly to the sound of the boys moving around and beginning to get ready and eat. And I was greeted by Graham’s surprised, joyous cry of “Daaaannnyyyy!” From the breakfast table when I finally (at 8:00) walked out of my room this morning. I just got to just participate in life at casa Vicanco. Breakfast and playtime and walking Graham to preschool and jamming on a ukulele with Liam. We went to the bread store and I copied some keys and I got to participate in my first Tuesday morning Quito Quest meeting in almost six(!) years. When I woke up there was one and only one thing on my schedule for the day. And it didn’t happen. Because the day began to fill up with normal life despite my lack of plans. And again, I was exhausted by 3:00 in the afternoon. Travel takes its toll, but so does altitude. It makes normal life take twice as much energy.

After a quick nap I met Roberto on Av. Brasil and jumped into the Suburban with him, Joaquin, the three other members of his band (Gedeon) and a trunk full of instruments and sound equipment. Way too many people and cases in one vehicle, but once again, totally normal around here. We drove out to El Refugio and began setting up for their gig, which was to play for a group of leaders who have been training out there and were celebrating their time together before they head home. There was a dinner and the plan was for Gedeon to play both some romantic music and some praise songs. But about 20 minutes before the dinner was to begin, all the power in the Grace Center went out. I thought the band had blown a fuse with all their equipment, but it turned out that the power was out all over the property. My friend Christy summed it up immediately and succinctly: “That’s unfortunate.”

Having spent more than half my life in North Carolina with its nor’easters and hurricanes and people who crash into power substations during fog, I’m no stranger to electrical outages. But Ecuador can take them to a whole different level. We had no idea when or if the power would return tonight or tomorrow or next week. Especially outside the city of Quito. So the band dug up an acoustic guitar and a djembe that someone had on the property so they could begin rehearsing an emergency acoustic set.

Byron rescued the situation, setting up the El Refugio generator so the band could have power and we could have one work light under which to eat. And throughout dinner and music and presentations, the lights returned and went out 3 more times. Totally unpredictable, and totally normal.

I won’t even go into detail about the preaching, or the worship, or the dancing that happened throughout that dinner gig. It was all entirely behind schedule (that I worried we’d be on time to the airport) and fantastic and hilarious and God-filled. I’m not sure if it’s okay to describe something God-filled as “normal.” Suffice it to say it was all within the theme of the day.

Our final adventure of the night was to pick up Caroline from the airport. We were worried we’d be late as we hauled tail all the way from El Refugio but with three planes arriving at once, we waited for about fifteen minutes before Caroline’s wide-eyed smiling face poked out from between the doors from Immigration. Totally normal to see her in Ecuador and weird that the last time we hung out was in North Carolina. And all three of us were thrilled both to hang out in the car for an hour and then to fall into each of our beds.

Travel takes its toll. Altitude takes its toll. And long days take their toll. So I’m grateful for my day “set aside” for adjusting to my Ecuadorian life. And thrilled at how normal my abnormal Ecuadorian life has become.

I Live In A Time Warp

Gina said one of the team members told her the other day that it felt like they’d just gotten here, and yet it felt like they’d been here forever. In my experience, Quito Quest is always like that. Especially when it’s less than two weeks on the ground, which is the teams. And especially when you’re used to longer stints, which is me.

The weekend before I got on a plane to come back down here, I couldn’t get it to seem real. Despite the number of times I’ve come and gone, and that I’ve done it on short notice before, I couldn’t get it to sink in until I walked up to the immigration agent and smiled and said “No,” when he asked me, “Primera vez en Ecuador?” Now I’m sitting in bed listening to planes take off and I can at least get that far. I realize I’m leaving. But it doesn’t seem real that in 33 hours I’ll be at work in Elizabeth City. It’s like I live in a series of time warps.

The time with the team just whizzed by, especially once we came back to Quito from the jungle. And then there were moments that just seemed to stand still. The bad ones, sure, like that split second where you know you’re about to throw up and you’re dreading and begging for it at once. Or the really great ones, where you’re spinning around as fast as you can with a five-year-old stretched out, hanging on to your hands, perpendicular to the ground and just giggling from his belly, Spider-man flip-flops flung right off his feet.

Tomorrow I’m going to want to go back in time to do it all over again and spend a few more precious days with 26 Canadians I didn’t know two weeks ago. And despite not wanting it to be over, right now I want to just skip the next couple of days, especially the one involving travel, so I can just see now what my fruit will begin to look like in my life in the U.S.

I’m leaving my home. And I’m headed home. It doesn’t seem real, and it doesn’t seem like near enough time to do all that’s been done, or enough to already be over. In the wise words of one of my favorite animated fish, “It’s a complicated emotion.”

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.