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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.

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.