In the fall of 2008 my wife Melissa and I were making plans for our 2009 family vacation. Our son is a senior at Faith Christian School so we wanted to make it a memorable trip since this would likely be his last year at home. We quickly decided upon Hawaii, specifically Maui. Melissa and I went there for our tenth anniversary and I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful place.
However, as I thought and prayed about it I felt that just going to yet another tourist location, no matter how beautiful, would not have the lasting impression that I was seeking. I’ve stated this before, but the words of Donald Miller haunt me - many of us live in Christian glass houses. We live with Christians, we work with Christians, we worship with Christians, many of our neighbors are Christian, and we even eat at Chik-fil-a. We become too comfortable in our way of life and our routine, we rarely interact with those outside our Christian holy huddles. I wanted to shake things up.
Well as luck, or God’s providence, would have it, I work for Fellowship Technologies and we’re blessed to count Centro Cristiano de Guayaquil in Ecuador among the churches using Fellowship One. Several members of our staff had traveled down there to train the church and they came back telling amazing stories of need there. As I prayed and pondered about where God was leading us I just kept coming back to Ecuador.
So with a leap of faith I booked four round trip tickets to Ecuador for March 16th – 24th. Our 17 yr old son and 13 yr old daughter were not thrilled to hear Ecuador had replaced Maui as our destination. So now we had transportation to/from Ecuador but no plan for what to do during the 8 day trip. We had no where to stay and no specific itinerary. This is exactly opposite of my God-given nature. Our prior trips, including the one to Disney World, were entirely pre-planned, with an hour-by-hour plan for each day.
We decided not to burden our client church and instead emailed a list of various mission organizations we found on the Internet. We connected with several and prayerfully decided upon the Quizas Hoy (Perhaps Today) Church Camp. The plan began to take shape, we were to work with Allen and Rocio Willams at their camp for the first four days and then tour the country for the remaining four. That was as detailed as our itinerary would become before we departed for Ecuador. We knew God had a plan for us there, we just weren’t sure what it was at the time…
Recent Comments