Life and Death Campaign.

I almost forgot about posting a blog today! We did two campaigns this weekend so we kept pretty busy over here. On Friday I had the opportunity to be a piece of living art in our Life and Death Campaign.

Since it was good Friday we thought it was the perfect timing to do a little bit of a darker campaign. We caught people's attention with our art display and then asked them to grab a flower petal and write what they believed would happened to them after they died. It seems a bit of a heavy topic to talk with strangers about but the fact is that one day we will all die, no matter what your beliefs are everyone can agree on that one thing. We just challenged people to really examine why they believe what they believe about the afterlife.

No matter what you think happens (or doesn’t happen) when you die, when you pause to reflect on this truth there are always a few things that come to mind:

Death can motivate us to live.

Life here on earth is short, or as the bible so aptly puts it in James 4:14, “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanishes away.” When we reflect on the fact that one day we will die we can find purpose in the way that we live each day.

Death makes us question what we believe.

When we ponder the mystery of death we grapple with the stark reality that we could be wrong about what we think happens when we die.  It’s easy to say pat answers like, “I don’t believe in anything.” Oddly enough, even that statement in itself is a belief. All of us have beliefs and those beliefs will one day lead us somewhere...the question is where?

So those are the topics we spoke to people about during the entirety of the campaign. I myself did not get to have conversations with anyone because as you can see I was an actual piece of the campaign. I stood still just like in the pictures above for 2 hours while the rest of my team held conversations with people who stopped to take notice of what it is we were doing. From where I stood though I could still hear lots of conversations going on, there was a crowd gathered the entire 2 hours we stood there. It was really neat to just sort of be a fly on the wall and watch the whole campaign unfold. This was a brand new campaign and our first time doing it and overall I would say it was a success. You never know how people are going to react to things when they have never been done.

On Sunday we did our 'Pixel Campaign' which I am editing photos from tonight so I will post about that one later this week!

Adventures in Mindo!

I missed updating my blog last Monday, I was recovering from an intense hike in Mindo the day before and had zero energy to sit down and write a blog post about it. This post will be mainly pictures because I finally pulled my camera out again. If you follow me on facebook or instagram you have probably already seen what I've been up to the past couple weeks here but for those of you that haven't let me enlighten you :)

I have mostly been posting pictures of all the fun stuff we've been doing and I thought "people probably think they just donated money for me to go on a 5 month vacation in South America!"
Although I have been having a ton of fun that is not true. I have been taking classes and we have started doing campaigns and outreaches. I just don't tend to make it a habit to bust out my camera in the middle of class, just know that it's happening. Just this last weekend we did our first 'GOYO' which means 'go on your own'. We are told to just go love on the community as a team in any way we decide. So we decided to buy flowers and pass them out to women around the park and just let them know they are valuable and loved by God.

When we gave our last flower out we met the friendliest lady who ended up taking a walk with us and having lunch with us after. A couple of the girls even saw her again this week while she was on a walk, its crazy to live in such a big city and already run into people you know around town.

On Sunday my roommate Laura and I met up with some of her flight attendant friends who happened to have a layover in Ecuador that day and we took a day trip to Mindo.

 Since Mindo is a couple hours away we hired a taxi driver for the entire day. Let me just tell you how great this guy was but first a picture of him:

That is Ivan and he was the sweetest taxi driver I have ever had. Not only did he drive us wherever we wanted all day long, he went with us on all our excursions! We ended up going on a pretty intense hike (which we were not fully prepared for) that felt like we are in the jungle. It was humid and muddy and my hair grew to the size of Texas. So whenever we would come to a spot in our path that was extremely muddy, Ivan would break off one of the huge leaves and place it along the path for us to step in so we wouldn't get stuck in the mud.

We rode a cable car over to some waterfalls which is where we hiked for a couple hours, not knowing how brutal the hike back to the cable car would be.

 

After we rode the cable car and went on the hike we went and found the zip lining and 3 of us decided to zip line and it was such a blast!

We did a campaign and visited an orphanage this weekend which I will post about soon, I already uploaded an album from the orphanage on facebook if you wanted to take a look! 

-Jamie

My first week in Ecuador and how I locked myself in the bathroom.

Well I officially live in Ecuador now! On Monday it will be a full week that I have been living in Ecuador. It kind of still feels like a dream that I am here. I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't always so sure I was actually going to make it here, some days it seemed like it would be impossible to raise all the money to get me here but I should have known that God would come through if I trusted him. If you are reading this and have supported me in any way then let me tell you how thankful I am for you. Even though I have only been here since Monday I can already tell you what an amazing experience these next 5 months will be. I will continue to try and keep you updated with everything we are learning and doing. Also if you want to hear about my bathroom mishap then you will have to get to the bottom of this post ;)

These are my roommates and teammates for the next 5 months of submerge! All these girls are so awesome and I'm excited to get to know them all more over the next 5 months.

The first couple of days here were a bit brutal for me only because one of my flights got delayed causing me to not arrive in Ecuador until Monday morning at 7am. I ended up traveling for a full 24 hours and then went straight into orientation Monday morning when I got back from the airport. I thought about writing a blog post ( actually I did write it) about my travels because it was quite the experience but after writing it realized it just sounded like a whole lot of complaining and no one wants to read that. Just know that it was a nightmare and one day I might find it funny....that day hasn't arrived quite yet.

Some of us really like red flannel...

So after the first couple days of orientation we did what they call 'Go Weekend' on Thursday and Friday. Basically we did a bunch of random activities which were all surprises to learn about our core values in the submerge program. Which are: Love, Authenticity, Creativity, Pro activity, Excellence, Fun and Vision. We first got to tour a little bit of Quito and had our own personal tour guide showing us around.

The first photo and this above photo is the 'Virgen De El Panecillo' which is a huge statue in the middle of the city of the virgin Mary, you can basically see the statue from anywhere. It's one of those places you have to see if you ever visit Quito.

At the top of the Virgen De El Panecillo

Then we went to the Basilica Del Volonacional which was built to look like Notre Dame. They are continuously building on to it because they believe that once it is completely finished that the World will end so they will never complete it. They have Gargoyles on the outside but instead of normal gargoyles they are animals that reside in the Galapagos islands.

After we finished touring the city a little bit we learned about our first core value which is LOVE. We were in a busy area and we split into teams and were each given $5 to go bless someone somehow. It happened to be a really hot day that day and over where we were there were these young boys who went around shining shoes for money. None of them go to school, they just go out there everyday and shine shoes to make money for their families. So we bought them all Popsicles and just sat and talked with them for about an hour, it was really fun, they wanted to learn English phrases like 'hello love' and 'you are beautiful' they were so funny.

I won't go into detail about what we did for each core value but each task we did was so awesome. Some of it was a little difficult because we had to break down some walls and talk about stuff in front of everyone that I wouldn't ever normally do but it was surprisingly enjoyable even if it was uncomfortable.  One of our tasks was also mentally and physically difficult, we had to spell excellence with dominoes and they all had to fall from beginning to end without leaving one domino up.

It ended up taking us 5 hours and we were up until almost 4am doing it. The satisfaction after finally finishing it was great. I think we all got to see how we act under pressure and being exhausted from a super long day and even though I think we all got very frustrated at some points I think we all handled it pretty well. I would be lying though If I said I wasn't going to cry if we hadn't have gotten it on that last try though lol.

Yesterday we learned about the core value 'FUN' and we did a scavenger hunt for different Ecuadorian fruits and vegetables at a farmer's market.

Then we went to the park and had a paddle boat competition. But before we started we had a bathroom break. Well I went into the bathroom and there were like 3 different locks on the door and I just picked the one that has the little bar that slides across and locked it. This also wasn't like a regular bathroom stall with the metal doors, it was a single toilet with a regular door. So then when I went to leave I couldn't get the door unlocked. Luckily some of the girls were still standing outside the door so I was able to yell for them and I had them pull from the outside and try to do it but It just wasn't budging. Then I looked up and saw a window that was just the right size for me to climb out of but it had the same type of lock on it and it wouldn't budge either! I was trying to stay calm but inside I was having a little bit of a panic attack. I do not like small spaces and a bathroom is the last place I want to get locked into. Finally we decided there was no way it was going to unlock so one of the guys had to kick the door down :/ We broke the whole door jam but I bet that place learned their lesson about putting locks like that on their bathroom doors.

We ended the day visiting Mitad Del Mundo which means the 'Middle of the World'

Ecuador sits right on the equator so I was able to stand on both sides of the equator at the same time.

At the end of the night we got to stand on a rooftop and see the city lights and talk about our last core value which was 'Vision'

I am so excited for what the next 5 months holds for me, please keep me in your prayers as I continue on this journey, I'm sure I will have some great stories to share with you as time goes on!

Chao! (goodbye in Spanish) I'm already pretty fluent in case you were wondering.
Not really though.

A name I never learned and a face I'll never forget.

I figured it was about time I started telling some stories about my trip to Ecuador. I thought I would start out sharing about when we went to an aids orphanage and spent the afternoon playing with the children there. When we first arrived I was handed a little girl who had been sleeping so I was able to just hold her and love on her while she slept.

You could tell from her physical appearance that she was much more sick then the other children. Once she finally woke up she wouldn't speak and showed absolutely no emotion. It wasn't until about 15 minutes before we left that she finally opened up to me and started laughing and playing with me, she still wouldn't speak and I never did learn her name.

 When it was finally time to go and my entire team had already left and got on the bus I had someone tell her that I had to leave now and tried saying goodbye, she instantly latched herself to me and wouldn't let go. My heart broke into a million pieces as I tried to sit her down and she started screaming and holding onto me tighter. I felt physically incapable of letting her go; I just couldn't do it by myself. Another girl had to help me put her down, the whole time she is still screaming and crying. I would have just taken her with me if I could have but I had to walk away with her crying and reaching for me, my heart hurt so bad as I walked back to the bus no longer being able to hold back my emotions. As I said before I never did learn her name and I may never know what happens to her but I'm so happy I was able to hold her and allow her to feel safe and love on her even if it was just for a little bit. She will now forever be my motivation and reminder about my dream to give a home to orphans one day.