In Quito, late at night, on a bus headed for Lasso. I remembered last year, how I sat on that same bus and felt tired and annoyed that no one else wanted to sleep. This year however, I was wide awake and ready to serve. I sat with Kinsey and we had such good conversation. She told me about her spiritual gifts, and I shared the same. We talked about engagement and marriage and mission and love. What an amazing conversation to prepare my heart for all that lied ahead.
Lasso was uneventful in the sense that we didn't stay long. It was more or less a pit stop on the way to Santa Ana. We were on the bus again by midday. While we were there we played volleyball, got to know one another and catch up with some of the team. Marc made us aware of what would be our focus in scripture that week, the character of God. He challenged us to each have a verse, memorize it, and this verse should explain a characteristic of God that we were wrestling with. He encouraged us to share a piece of God's character we had been struggling with.
Mine was: He is a Father to the fatherless.
Driving to Santa Ana, I fell asleep. When we arrived there were a few children and adults scattered around the center of the town and we began unloading and finding housing for us all. A little girl ran up to us, Niyali. She played with us and, just like all the other kids in the village, we were immediate friends. She was already really special in my heart.
The village of Santa Ana is in the middle of the jungle, there's running water and working bathrooms, and its right on the river front of a river connecting to the Amazon. It's not a very large town and it's made up of a very close community, which should be referred to more as a tribe. One of the leaders explained the history of the village to me this way: The government had a similar arrangement with the indigenous tribes there as they did with Native Americans here. They forced them to settle, whereas before they were mainly nomadic, to reduce the fighting between tribes, however these groups actually picked the land they were to settle on and were given rights and regulations on how to use the land. The tribe basically decided on what could/couldn't be built on their land, who could live there, etc. They have a president and the community is mostly made up of families who are all very close to one another.
We were here to build a church.
The community is not made up of a large Christian group, but it seemed a lot of people had a knowledge for Christ and a belief and thankfulness toward Him. Just like most of Ecuador, they most likely were taught basic principles about Him, but in some community belief is misconstrued with other tribal religions and Roman Catholic traditions, warping the foundation of the church. It was important that these people see, also, that the church is not just a building. That's part of the reason we were there to help.
Latin American culture can depend on physical structures as an object of worship. It's easy to see, if you go to a large city and giant church buildings are not hard to come by. These buildings will most often have an entry fee, they have a place to buy alms for repentance, confession areas, statues of saints and Mary and Christ to leave gifts and alms of forgiveness and thanks. The people begin to see grace as an obscure thing. They begin to see the church as a building, not a community. They have deep doctrinal flaws and their leaders are often unfaithful and commit adultery or fall into alcoholism for example but do not step down from leadership. It causes the gospel to be warped.
So here we were, 30 some people about to build the foundation of a church, not just physically, but in their hearts too. What a better way for these people to see that the building we set out to help with was not the church, they were. We were. Bart, the leader of the project, had been seeing to it these people were already meeting corporately before a building was constructed to further relay the message. Steve, our missionary we support, had been praying with Bart over who would pastor this church plant and the Lord called to mind a member of the church in La Fuente, Dadeo. Dadeo had successfully integrated himself as a respectable member of the community before we had even arrived,
In truth they didn't necessarily need us, but God used this group to show the new church in Santa Ana so much.
I want to take time to also give a back story on Bart and this partnership we've begun to form. I will speak more on the church as I go on, as it wasn't show to me the first day either.
I got the chance to talk with Bart in the village, but he also shared with the whole group a bit of their story before we left Lasso as well. Bart and Tracy found the village a few years ago. They were part of a clean water project where a group came to Santa Ana to install water systems around the area. They successfully created a better environment to prevent the spreading of disease. But somewhere in their time between going to and from Ecuador and the United States they began to develop a calling for this city. They were praying over what that meant when they discovered an Acts 29 church in Ecuador. La Fuente. They met with Steve and Sandi Youngren to discuss what they felt called to in this small village.
The vision was for a church to be planted here. Bart and Tracy had realized in their travels that there were in fact some Christians who felt isolated and untaught in their community and in need of a body. Steve and Sandi do tremendous work at building a body in Ecuador. They have successfully planted and tended to a church in the large city of Quito, they have built a training center in Lasso, reached out to needing tribes like Tena and now they were feeling the call to help Bart with his vision.
That's where Dadeo came into the picture. Neither Steve, nor Bart felt the call to pastor this church, so they were in desperate need of someone who could. Dadeo had been ready and waiting for quite some time. He had come to the church a few years back, was a disciple of Steve and had been waiting to pastor a church. He visited the village, prayed over the decision and it was all set in motion.
Marc, my pastor, had shared with our group a few times how amazing it was that all 30 some people could stand in a room together in Ecuador. He said, "This proves how sovereign our God is, because we can't imagine all that had to happen for all of us to be here right now." Looking at my own story and call to Ecuador, know some of the groups story, and then hearing the strange circumstances that connected this missing pieces together, I have to agree.
It's almost like God was writing an intricate story. It makes me wonder what the bigger picture looks like. After all, this is such a minuet part of the grander scheme of things.
More to come,
Chelsy.
Lasso was uneventful in the sense that we didn't stay long. It was more or less a pit stop on the way to Santa Ana. We were on the bus again by midday. While we were there we played volleyball, got to know one another and catch up with some of the team. Marc made us aware of what would be our focus in scripture that week, the character of God. He challenged us to each have a verse, memorize it, and this verse should explain a characteristic of God that we were wrestling with. He encouraged us to share a piece of God's character we had been struggling with.
Mine was: He is a Father to the fatherless.
Driving to Santa Ana, I fell asleep. When we arrived there were a few children and adults scattered around the center of the town and we began unloading and finding housing for us all. A little girl ran up to us, Niyali. She played with us and, just like all the other kids in the village, we were immediate friends. She was already really special in my heart.
The village of Santa Ana is in the middle of the jungle, there's running water and working bathrooms, and its right on the river front of a river connecting to the Amazon. It's not a very large town and it's made up of a very close community, which should be referred to more as a tribe. One of the leaders explained the history of the village to me this way: The government had a similar arrangement with the indigenous tribes there as they did with Native Americans here. They forced them to settle, whereas before they were mainly nomadic, to reduce the fighting between tribes, however these groups actually picked the land they were to settle on and were given rights and regulations on how to use the land. The tribe basically decided on what could/couldn't be built on their land, who could live there, etc. They have a president and the community is mostly made up of families who are all very close to one another.
We were here to build a church.
The community is not made up of a large Christian group, but it seemed a lot of people had a knowledge for Christ and a belief and thankfulness toward Him. Just like most of Ecuador, they most likely were taught basic principles about Him, but in some community belief is misconstrued with other tribal religions and Roman Catholic traditions, warping the foundation of the church. It was important that these people see, also, that the church is not just a building. That's part of the reason we were there to help.
Latin American culture can depend on physical structures as an object of worship. It's easy to see, if you go to a large city and giant church buildings are not hard to come by. These buildings will most often have an entry fee, they have a place to buy alms for repentance, confession areas, statues of saints and Mary and Christ to leave gifts and alms of forgiveness and thanks. The people begin to see grace as an obscure thing. They begin to see the church as a building, not a community. They have deep doctrinal flaws and their leaders are often unfaithful and commit adultery or fall into alcoholism for example but do not step down from leadership. It causes the gospel to be warped.
So here we were, 30 some people about to build the foundation of a church, not just physically, but in their hearts too. What a better way for these people to see that the building we set out to help with was not the church, they were. We were. Bart, the leader of the project, had been seeing to it these people were already meeting corporately before a building was constructed to further relay the message. Steve, our missionary we support, had been praying with Bart over who would pastor this church plant and the Lord called to mind a member of the church in La Fuente, Dadeo. Dadeo had successfully integrated himself as a respectable member of the community before we had even arrived,
In truth they didn't necessarily need us, but God used this group to show the new church in Santa Ana so much.
I want to take time to also give a back story on Bart and this partnership we've begun to form. I will speak more on the church as I go on, as it wasn't show to me the first day either.
I got the chance to talk with Bart in the village, but he also shared with the whole group a bit of their story before we left Lasso as well. Bart and Tracy found the village a few years ago. They were part of a clean water project where a group came to Santa Ana to install water systems around the area. They successfully created a better environment to prevent the spreading of disease. But somewhere in their time between going to and from Ecuador and the United States they began to develop a calling for this city. They were praying over what that meant when they discovered an Acts 29 church in Ecuador. La Fuente. They met with Steve and Sandi Youngren to discuss what they felt called to in this small village.
The vision was for a church to be planted here. Bart and Tracy had realized in their travels that there were in fact some Christians who felt isolated and untaught in their community and in need of a body. Steve and Sandi do tremendous work at building a body in Ecuador. They have successfully planted and tended to a church in the large city of Quito, they have built a training center in Lasso, reached out to needing tribes like Tena and now they were feeling the call to help Bart with his vision.
That's where Dadeo came into the picture. Neither Steve, nor Bart felt the call to pastor this church, so they were in desperate need of someone who could. Dadeo had been ready and waiting for quite some time. He had come to the church a few years back, was a disciple of Steve and had been waiting to pastor a church. He visited the village, prayed over the decision and it was all set in motion.
Marc, my pastor, had shared with our group a few times how amazing it was that all 30 some people could stand in a room together in Ecuador. He said, "This proves how sovereign our God is, because we can't imagine all that had to happen for all of us to be here right now." Looking at my own story and call to Ecuador, know some of the groups story, and then hearing the strange circumstances that connected this missing pieces together, I have to agree.
It's almost like God was writing an intricate story. It makes me wonder what the bigger picture looks like. After all, this is such a minuet part of the grander scheme of things.
More to come,
Chelsy.
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