Ibarra was a long and tiring weekend, but lots of memories were made! We had about 30 young people come out who were there to be trained for college ministry! The idea is to get them starting their own cell groups (we call them small groups in the States) and reaching out to their own campuses!
We met lots of great people and got invited to lunch and dinner every day by the pastor of the church we were working with. I found out that in Ecuador(and I'm pretty sure all of Latin America as well), whoever does the inviting is expected to pay unless a previous arrangement was made. In America, our assumption is we are paying for our own meals separately when someone invites us out, unless by the grace of God, your friend decides to pay the bill for you! It was very humbling to accept that notion. Here the pastor of the church was paying for all of us, shouldn't it be the other way around??!
We also met Alejandra who is the pastor's daughter. She grew up in church but never wanted to have anything to do with ministry since her father was in it. Back in October, lo and behold, God spoke to her and told her He wanted her in ministry, in specific to be a pastor! So here she is 7 months later, training and helping to run things at her father's church. She's 29 and it was so cool for me to see her at this stage making life changes and chasing after God sized dreams! In my book, she is a lion chaser! She could have ignored what God spoke to her and simply brushed it off or put it on delay, but instead she dove right in and tackled the challenge head on. I'm re-reading "In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day," and Mark Batterson puts it best. He says, "how we react when we encounter these lions will determine our destiny. We can cower in fear and run away from our greatest challenges. Or we can chase our God-ordained destiny by seizing the God-ordained opportunity." Alejandra definitely seized that opportunity and God is doing great things in her life because of it!
The scenery was once again gorgeous as we were in and around Ibarra, here are some more pics....
Here are the kids hanging out in a tree
Here is some of the local food we have been enjoying (Lunch and dinner are huge here, not so much breakfast)
And here we are all smashed in the back of the truck on a 4 hour trip through the mountains! (There's no seatbelt law here lol)
So now to get to the part that the title hints at. Sleeping in a hotel in the middle of the city is not the most ideal.... I wish I was not such a light sleeper, but I'm not even sure Marquis would have been able to sleep through this... And if any of you know Marquis, you know that would almost be an impossible thing to imagine! The music was turned up loud and the neighbors were battling between the sound waves to see who would win out and overtake the other. The dogs barked and everything echoed through the tile floors, walls and ceilings of the hotel. Insulation?? What is that?? I wish I could say God miraculously allowed me to sleep through all of that, but He didn't. So instead I prayed and then whined to God and then prayed some more for the people we met and the things we were doing, and then unfortunately whined some more..... And finally around 3 or 4 am things quieted down a bit and I was able to get a few precious hours of sleep. Needless to say, I was exhausted by the end of the weekend, and tonight I'm 100% sure I will sleep well in the comfort of my own bed, in my home away from home! Tomorrow we will rest and maybe journey up to the Volcano! Yay!! :) For now I want to leave you with this additional thought...
"When we don't have the guts to step out in faith and chase lions, then God is robbed of the glory that rightfully belongs to Him." -Mark Batterson
So what lion are you chasing today?
No comments:
Post a Comment