A few selfish reasons

I wanted to be on this mission with ones I loved and I was to have my heart's desire.  I wanted to see the mission projects begun by SIFAT and my friend Sarah, the ones I had only heard about for years.  I had seen the SIFAT Galilee Campus in Alabama and spent a summer with a Practicum, with students from five continents.  But I wanted to travel to see the Ecuador mission projects. I was expecting Sarah to be warmly welcomed and I wasn't disappointed in that either.  

Here, she is met with a hug by Ledy at our first project visit, Little Seeds of God, one of the facilities built by SIFAT teams over the years.  This building is deceptive from the street as it appears to be a one-story building, but many buildings have several floors as does this one.  Built on the side of a mountain, the stories are added gradually in most buildings.  Many have rebar protuding above them and this is a sign that the project is expected to grow upward.

Two of my three children were with the team.  Elizabeth, a physician from North Carolina, would be practicing her skills when we began the medical mission several days later.  And in the meantime, Elizabeth found a way to be helpful right away,serving lunches to little ones.

 Many of these children would be left home alone, locked in or tied to something in order to protect them during the day while their mothers worked.  Now, through the cooperation of SIFAT, in the construction of the facilities, and Compassion International which hires mothers to work in the day-care and after-school programs and provides a daily meal for the children, and the local community churches, these children are protected and cared for and their mothers have jobs and the children have a meal each day.

My son Jon, an old hand at visiting Latin America, wrote about his experience on this mission on his own blog--Latin-America-on-a-Steel-Horse.blogspot.com

He speaks Spanish and would help with the interpretation during our visits and as the triage interpreter during the medical mission.
                                                   Shoes were set aside for naptime at Little Seeds of God.

We were assorted, eclectic, heterogeneous,  but perhaps not indiscriminate, kitchen-sink, magpie, or motley.  Perhaps patchwork, but not piebald or promiscuous.  You might call us miscellaneous, varied, but raggle-taggle..no, not rag tag, but maybe mixed bag's better.

Our team was composed of old and young, from teen high school student to an over-80 lady.  We were male and female, tall and short, slim and wide, black and brown and white.  We left from North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana and from the countries of Colombia and Ecuador.  Some flew in by plane, rode in by car or bus, and one bicycled to the hotel.  We added gradually and became a team quickly.  Some were the rawest amateurs, but some most-seasoned veterans.

Our bags were literally mixed as we distributed all our gifts in all our luggage. For the children, we brought crayons and colored paper, scissors and glue and vitamins; and for all ages, we brought bandages, lotions and a variety of over-the-counter health care items.



We were loaded when we came and when we left we had refilled our bags with beautiful scarves, blankets and colorful fabrics, and bread-dough ornaments, and paintings of llamas and snow-covered mountains.

Our motives for making the trip may have been mixed, but I think we all shared a common respect for the mission of SIFAT and a desire to observe first-hand the day-care centers and churches many teams over the years had helped to build.

We came as servants in faith and appropriate technology.  Ours was a visit to provide health care to several hundred at one of the sites SIFAT had begun in Ecuador.  But some were coming to revisit long-time friends; a few thinking this might be a final visit to Ecuador.  I was coming for my first visit after being awed for over 60 years by my girlhood friend Sarah, who has given and is giving her life to helping others find the Good Life in service and faith.

To learn more about SIFAT, use this link for a latest journal:

http://sifat.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Summer-Fall-2014-Journal.pdf

Maybe mixed bag would be better...

Members of our traveling group had varied personal reasons for making this visit to Ecuador, I'm sure.  Before our trip, I felt my reasons for going might be more selfish than others' reasons.  I'll revisit that thought later.

I had wanted to go on a mission for a long time.  My friend Sarah long ago had invited me to go with her when we were both college age and she was planning to go as a teacher to Cuba.  I had not gone then, but had seen how Sarah and her husband Ken had given their lives in other parts of the world sharing God's love and seeking practical solutions for more abundant living.

A couple months earlier, I had been preparing to go on another SIFAT medical mission to Ecuador.  But because I was a late addition to the team without the same preparation of the others going and because of my age and the high altitude of the destination, the teams leaders turned down my request to go on that trip.

Another close friend had consoled me in a telephone conversation.  She said something to the affect that "If God wants you to go on a mission trip, He will make it come together without problems or delays and you'll be on your way just like that."  And that is exactly what happened for me.  I'm sure pulling this trip together was more complicated for SIFAT, but to me it was the mission God intended for me.

On our first or second day, Tom, Sarah's son who is now director of SIFAT, explained that this was not a typical team.  A typical team meets for months or sometimes even a year, getting to know each other and becoming a team, learning about the culture of the country and people, preparing what each will be responsible for during the mission.

Some of us had never met.  Some of us were longtime friends.  Family ties were
present as both Sarah and I were there with children and when the Shreveport part of our group arrived, we added another mother and son duo.  I was there with my son and elder daughter.  And Mama Luisa, who was mourning the loss of two sons in the past two years,  took a liking to my son and he to her.

Sarah wrote about her first mission in 1958 in her 2014 Christmas letter you can read at this link:

http://sifat.org/hope-in-christmas/