The Mission

"Our vision is that one day every student at La Universidad de Guayaquil will know someone who truly loves Jesus Christ" - Vida Estudiantil UG (loosely quoted)

That statement is the reason why we are here in Guayaquil, Ecuador: to share the Gospel with the students on campus with the hopes to start a spiritual movement and aid the growing efforts of Vida Estudiantil UG (their version of Cru).  It has been really easy to get sidetracked with the excitement of exploring a new culture and city.  All of my blog posts so far have been focused on those two things.  I don't want anyone to get the wrong picture for why we are here, but with it being my first trip overseas, it is hard not to get excited about the culture! Don't worry, I will still make sure to share fun stories as they happen and new cultural experiences but, starting Monday, we will begin our mission, the reason why we are here (we aren't on campus during the weekends).

During briefing we had a training session on evangelism in which we explored how to use the Four Spiritual Laws booklet (similar to the Knowing God Personally booklet).  The booklet is half in English and half in Spanish but each student practiced reading through the Spanish text for enunciation and an understanding of what the conversation would cover.  It was cool because I didn't need to read over the English half of the booklet to understand the text, as I was able to translate the Spanish pretty easily besides a few new vocab words.  I had previously used the KGP booklet when sharing the Gospel in Manhattan and luckily the two shared similar concepts.  I trusted my Spanish enough for everyday conversation but was still unsure about how a spiritual conversation would go.  Each of the students wrote down a number for how many people they wanted to share the Gospel with this summer.  I immediately jumped the gun, crunching numbers for how many hours we would spend on campus for the duration of our trip.  3-4 hours per day, 4 days per week, 4 weeks of campus time....so about 50 hours of time to share the Gospel.  I went with a safe number of 30 assuming that I would spend some time discipling students I previously talked to or in case I engaged in conversation longer than an hour.  We then pooled together everyone's goals to get a team goal of 550 students.  Based on that number, we hope to bring the good news of Christ to 550 students during our 5 week stay.  Challenge accepted.

It's important not to just do a hit and run but to really engage with each student.  To spend time explore their thoughts and questions.  To get them connected to Vida Estudiantil.  To spend time studying the Bible with them.  Lastly, to hopefully build relationships with some of them.  I am definitely excited to see how this summer goes.  We start sharing on campuses on Monday and will continue to share Mon-Thurs for the rest of the weeks that we are here.

There are two campuses in Guayaquil that our team will be split up between.  There is La Universidad de Guayaquil which is within walking distance from our hotel and ESPOL which is located in the highlands and requires a 40 minute bus ride.  We had the opportunity to tour and familiarize ourselves with both campuses on Thursday.  First stop on the tour was UG.  The walk to the campus was gorgeous, as we strolled through multiple parks to get there.  Once arriving though, a less appeal campus was revealed.  It wasn't that the campus was ugly, it was just obvious that it was located in the city.  During my time at UG, I was able to engage with multiple students, some who knew English and some who did not.  But it was a fun challenge to use my Spanish as we chatted about the weather, city and other odd topics.  I apparently missed out on the much talked about fresh orange juice that is sold on campus, as all my other teammates were walking around with it in hand.  There was definitely a good vibe on the campus though with good conversation!

The second campus we checked out was ESPOL, which required a 40 minute bus ride that flew by like nothing.  The way there included Spanish conversation with Courtney and a new amigo and the way home included a nice heart to heart with Ann :).  Unfortunately on the campus we didn't have any conversations that day but we did get to still tour the campus.  The campus was sooooo nice and green and tropical and advanced and I would totally go to college there if I could.  It was up in the highlands which meant it was surrounded by mountains.  The nice thing that I've heard about the campus is that there are more English speakers at ESPOL than UG.  The way I look at it though, I want to improve my Spanish so I don't necessarily want an easy way out.  I will be glad to share at which ever campus I am chosen to go to and serve to my fullest :)

Please keep my team in your prayers!

"...and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Acts 1:8