Ecuador Mission Trip Report—July 2019
A group of Cherrydale teens travelled to Macas, Ecuador, to serve that local community. The team worked with children, helping to run a Vacation Bible School, and also worked on various maintenance projects for a school. These are their reflections from their experience:
“Ecuador was one of the coolest places I’ve ever been—so beautiful! God made all of this!”
“Every night we would reflect on “God winks” throughout the day—where did we see God today?”
“I was really worried about the language barrier. We realized we needed to look to God and pray if we were going to be able to do anything. Saw God work through us—it was amazing! I realized that prayer isn’t just a thing you do before bed, it’s important communication—I have to look to God and ask for help throughout the whole day.”
“Each day I saw these children actually learning the things I was teaching—it was so cool to see God working through me to teach them!”
“Children were teaching us as much as we were teaching them.”
“It didn’t occur to me that I needed to pray. Later I saw how prayer is really important.”
“Classes went better and better when we trusted God for everything.”
“Always knew I wanted to go on this trip one day, but it was so much deeper and more meaningful than I imagined—beyond the cool factor of travelling. It was more intimate and personal with God, and I noticed how much my faith grew on trip and how much joy I felt when I was relying on the Holy Spirit 100%. Felt I had such a deep connection with Christ I never wanted to lose. Had to rely on God the whole time, because I was out of my comfort zone.”
“This trip shows us how caught up we can be with materialistic things, like phones.”
“So cool—how God continues to work everywhere, not just in the US!”
“Going into the trip, I had my motives all wrong (I’m going to go on this trip for me, to get amazing experiences). I realized on this trip that God desires us to be close to Him and God pulled me out of my comfort zone. God is everywhere and it’s amazing how personal He can be too. This trip was a wake-up call to live each day like Jesus would, and not be selfish with my work but to give it all to God every day.”