Throughout the whole week I was in Ecuador, God was constantly overwhelming me with compassion and opening my eyes to see what He does every single day which at times was very hard. Another thing is, and I think this is the most significant thing He did, was for the first time in my life, I truly could feel God loving those people through me. It was just an amazing thing to see how much I felt God using me in that way. I hope to bring this compassion home so I can show Christ's love through me all of the time. God will always be faithful when we ask Him to use us, and when we do, our minds will continually be blown away as we see His plan for us unfold. `Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.' Eph. 3:20-21.

Morgan Raymond

There are so many lessons and memories that I could share with you from our time in Ecuador.  One area that stands out is the tremendous amount of time and energy that the church in Puerto Bolivar poured into each of their ministries- from walking door to door to invite children to the children's time, to the hours spent in making us lunch each day, to the birthday party for their pastor, to the farewell party for our team...the people invested their time into each other and into us.  There was never an attitude of being too busy or not wanting to share resources.  There was even a lady that opened her house and bathroom to our entire team for the week because there was no bathroom at the church.  People are clearly the priority of the church in Puerto Bolivar.  My first devotional reading upon returning home included a passage from Titus 2 that talks about our need to be zealous in good works.  We saw that demonstrated regularly each day in Ecuador and look forward to doing the same in Wausau!