Notes from Ecuador
After a lengthy day of travel (20 hours) I made it home last night at about 1 AM. Our flight was delayed out of Quito by 2 1/2 hours, soooo, virtually all of us missed our connections.
Gary Dolan, our Executive Pastor at RiverTree, asked me on a scale from 1 to 10 how the trip was. I said, "On a scale from 1 to 10, the trip was a 12!"
Let me begin by giving you some of the nuggets I learned on this journey . . .
*For every child sponsored through Compassion International, the local church that runs the Compassion Project gains "credible access" to 30 other people in the community--simply because the church is loving and caring for the child in Jesus' name.
*You cannot debate a Muslim into the Kingdom of God, but you can love a Muslim into the Kingdom of God. --Wess Stafford
*Compassion is partnering with 190 churches in the country of Ecuador alone--4,000 churches worldwide. They are adding one new church every single day.
*Grenadier fruit is this amazing tasting fruit that you can eat in Ecuador. It has one down-side . . . it's texture is like eating crunchy snot (at least that's what I would imagine crunchy snot to . . .).
*There are 12 million people living in Ecuador, only 5-8% are Evangelical Christians.
To check it out, go to http://www.compassion.com/.
Gary Dolan, our Executive Pastor at RiverTree, asked me on a scale from 1 to 10 how the trip was. I said, "On a scale from 1 to 10, the trip was a 12!"
Let me begin by giving you some of the nuggets I learned on this journey . . .
*For every child sponsored through Compassion International, the local church that runs the Compassion Project gains "credible access" to 30 other people in the community--simply because the church is loving and caring for the child in Jesus' name.
*You cannot debate a Muslim into the Kingdom of God, but you can love a Muslim into the Kingdom of God. --Wess Stafford
*Compassion is partnering with 190 churches in the country of Ecuador alone--4,000 churches worldwide. They are adding one new church every single day.
*Grenadier fruit is this amazing tasting fruit that you can eat in Ecuador. It has one down-side . . . it's texture is like eating crunchy snot (at least that's what I would imagine crunchy snot to . . .).
*There are 12 million people living in Ecuador, only 5-8% are Evangelical Christians.
To check it out, go to http://www.compassion.com/.
posted by Greg Nettle at 5:07 PM
5 Comments:
Welcome back!
Grenedier fruit it awesome, and the experience is just as you described it... at least that's what my grandkids tell me.
Welcome Home!
Can't wait to take some RiverTree folks to Ecuador in a few weeks to meet their Compassion International kids. We'll have to see about that snot fruit stuff...
-Rick
So let's do a little math... for each kid we sponsor, there's potential to have some effect on the lives 30 people in their community. I wonder how many people here at home are touched/affected in the same way for each - let's conservatively say 8 (2 parents, 2 kids, and one friend of each). We're now talking about 39 lives being touched with the name and love of Jesus Christ for each sponsorship. Multiply that bt the 900,000 current compassion sponsorships and you're getting onto some huge numbers - over 35 million. And this ministry is growing at a rate of 30% per year - the potential is remarkable - praise God!
I wonder how you found Guayaquil. In all my travels, the only place I ever came across that was at last as bad as Dar-Ed-Salaam was Guayquil. I know there are worse places but I haven't seen them. When I was there there had been no garbage pick-up for months. At sea level on the Equator, well, the stench was unimaginable. But the one memory that stands out for me is that a group of us went out to an outdoor restaurant. We had ordered chicken, each of us served half of a baked chicken with rice and beans. When we got up to leave, before we had gotten far from our table, a group of young boys, now more than 7 or 8 years old pounced on our leftovers, gladly gnawing on any meat we had carelessly left on the bone.
Hey Marty,
The part of Guayaquil that I experienced was very poor. However, there was hope! This is largely due to the impact of 30 years of work done by the local church in partnership with Compassion International!
greg
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