Hi friends,
As i’m writing to you today, I am home. The holidays are behind us and it is a new year! I wanted to write an update sooner but ministry in Ecuador had us busy and me tired. Then I came back to the states and have been spending quality time with my family, transitioning as I moved to central California from SoCal just after my return home, and searching for a new job. Sometimes it has felt difficult to find the capacity to write about all the things that happened during my final month of ministry. Thank you for your patience with me. I missed home so much and am grateful to be back but I also deeply miss the family I made while I was gone. Living in constant community with people who live & breathe Jesus was such a gift and it’s difficult to explain to people what it was like. One of team leaders always told us that the grass was always greener on the other side, and he was right. When I was gone I missed life here in the states and now that I am home I miss life on the field. Before I talk about all that I want to share about our time in Ecuador and what life and ministry looked like when we were there.
Ecuador is such a beautiful country and our ministry that we were partnering with had us landed on top of a mountain at 11,000 feet elevation at a foundation called Dunamis, this is for girls who had been rescued from sex trafficking & abusive home situations. Dunamis means dynamite. An explosion of the Lords goodness needs to happen in the lives of the girls living there in order for them to know how life should be and move on with Him. This was my first time working in a ministry like this and I honestly didn’t know what to expect or what to think. I often feel unequipped to help in places or situations in which I have no experience, but God can use anyone for His plan even if were unfamiliar. That’s what He did.
Daily life at Dunamis looked pretty similar and we had a pretty consistent schedule which was so helpful. Most days I was up at 6am to have personal time with the Lord in the quiet before too many people woke up. Breakfast was at 8am and ministry started at 9. One of my favorite things about this ministry is that we lived in a missionary house on the foundation, so it really was community living and it was so fun. We got to cook meals together, read together, worship together, and really had a spirit filled house. The foundation was on 11 acres of land and they have a handful of staff members that work to keep the foundation looking nice. There is a assortment of animals on the foundation as well as a couple of greenhouses and a garden. Ministry was a mix of things, they usually needed help in multiple areas of the foundation so we would split into groups to go to our work for that day. Half the girls at the foundation have kids so we would help watch the kids in the mornings so the moms could do classes or chores, we would also help with construction and gardening for different chunks of the day. A big part of what Dunamis does for the girls that live there is teaching them life skills, academics, and healthy habits. They help with cooking, cleaning, milking the cow, and general chores. Some of the classes that they do are art, sewing, jui jitsu, reading, and group therapy. The goal is to help the girls learn how to live and take care of themselves before they go back out into the world. We as a group got to sit in on and help out in each of these classes.
There were a lot of beautiful moments with the girls and my team. Some of my favorite part were working in the greenhouse weeding, cooking with some of the older girls during the week, doing worship nights with the girls, and creating space for the girls to feel safe. Most of the girls were pretty shy when we showed up, but as the weeks went on, as we were intentional with the girls they started to open up. We really wanted to show these girls Gods heart for them. Part of how we did this was though different events put on by our Beauty for Ashes team. Beauty for ashes is a ministry based out of Isaiah 61:3 and it is a ministry that shows women that God can take our pain, sufferings, heartache and make them beautiful. Gods heart is for these girls to be seen, known, and loved by Him. We did a feet washing for these girls showing them a tangible way that Jesus showed His love for us. We also created a space for these girls to share how they viewed God and share with them from the Bible the truths that God says about each girl! Each and every girl had a story and we wanted to make sure each girl felt seen and heard.
A girl I connected with most was a girl who is 13 years old, we’ll call her “Emily”. I can’t share her real name due to safety and privacy reasons. She was so sweet, spunky, and a little sassy as well but she is after all, the youngest girl there and had come from a difficult family life. I’m not sure why I was immediately drawn to her, I wanted to know her name and all her favorite things. The first day we met she seemed excited and then the next few days were a back and forth of her being shy and her being excited to see us. I wanted her to know she could trust me so I just tried asking her a couple questions each day. I felt like I needed to pray for Emily and that there was something specific that the Lord wanted her to hear from Him, I spent time praying for her and that the Lord would give me a word or verses to share with her. I knew nothing about her or her story but God knows her better than anyone else so who better to ask than the Lord Himself about what I should say to Emily. Sadly I have bad memory so I don’t remember the verses I shared with her but I remember giving her a note and she then told me that she rarely had received something like this. Over the following weeks Emily warmed up and got excited each day when we would see each other and would always give me a tight hug before we said goodbye. Emily doesn’t have much faith and had a hard time believing God truly loved her but God is bigger than our unbelief and I trust Him to grab hold of her heart an help her believe and hopefully the faith of the other girls living around her will encourage her as well. She has a beautiful smile and a contagious laugh that brightened my day each time that I saw her.
One of the hardest parts of ministry is leaving and not knowing if you will ever see the people you are serving again or what the outcomes of their life will be. The only thing we can do is pray and trust our heavenly Father who created each person knowing that He has a plan for their life. While its hard to leave, our time was temporary and we can’t save anyone only God can. My life was impacted by the joy of the Lord that each of the girls had, while their life circumstances were terrible before they came to Dunamis and they don’t get to see their families often they still have such a beautiful faith and that encouraged me so much. A big reason why I went on this trip was to grow my trust in God again and what a trip it was because God often gave me opportunities to show Him that I trusted Him and that He is faithful to His word.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blogs and be apart of my journey, it hasn’t ended just because I am now back home. It continues on because there are people all around us in our neighborhoods that need to be prayed for and hear the gospel because it is for everyone. I have come home with a new confidence that the Lord has given me, you never know what is going on in someones life and something as simple as a quick prayer could change their life for the better. God is so good and the Holy Spirit is alive & active, He dwells in each of us and can speak to us, we just need to listen for His voice! What a journey it has been and I can’t wait to share more stories about my time in South America.
Blessings & prayers to you all,
Mikayla 🙂
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