Last night our first team arrived in the country. But before they get down to business, so many things have to happen. They would never have gotten here without packing bags and buying plane tickets, and ultimately having a personal connection that led them to Youth World. And we had a ton of things to get done on our side as well.
As a team, our staff spent over a week together building relationships and learning (or relearning) how to host teams. We visited ministry sites. We took the Trole. We facilitated debriefs and translated and got and gave orientations and paid for food all over Quito and the oriente.
The thing that really separates Youth World and its Quito Quest program from other short-term missions organizations with which I’ve come into contact is the focus on doing short-term missions well, and with integrity. And even though there were some sections of training that I wanted to snooze through (“We’re going to read through the manual together? Really?”) I know that we can’t simply jump into having a team on the ground without being ready for them in every possible way.
So back to today, with our team (Christ Church Episcopal School from Greenville, SC) on the ground. It was their first full day, and we did a lot of “touristy” things. Sometimes this is hard for groups, who want to get off the plane and immediately go to a ministry site and start mixing concrete or painting or doing VBS. But the reason we sit around the hostal or the office and hear orientation after orientation and then spend several hours walking around historic Quito is not just to kill time. We want the groups to be familiar with the Ecuadorian people to and with who they are serving, and the culture in which they are doing so.
It hit me pretty hard today that I can’t just assume that because I’ve done is job (so many times) before that I’m going to nail it every time. I forget things. I screw up words and phrases in Spanish. I can come up with much better solutions to the myriad minor crises as I endlessly replay them in my head from the safety of my couch at 10 PM. But because I’ve done this job before, and because I’ve learned from others who have hosted tons of teams before me, and because I’ve spent over five weeks of my life doing some form or another of official Quito Quest training, I can handle this job much better than I could if I just got off the plane without having any clue what to expect.
And in that same way, I hope our day of “sightseeing” has helped give our 22 South Carolinians what they need before we go to our first day of ministry at Carmen Bajo in the morning. The time they need to adjust; the perspective that will help them understand; the attitude that will help them learn, grow, serve, and worship.
