If you are in the process of deciding whether to be a Goer, or if you are a Goer but have not yet arrived in country, question after question is probably running through your head. I know question after question ran through mine…What am I doing? Can I handle this? Am I hearing God correctly? Is this really what I’m supposed to be doing? How in the world is all of this going to work out?
Being on the other side of my two year commitment, the questions never stop. But I’d like to reframe these questions a bit. So often, our “what ifs” are about the results. What if I can’t learn the…
Read more >>
Over the last several months, we as a staff have been struggling with this question as it pertained to a particular participant in our program. She has been with us for over 5 years, and while we’ve seen remarkable growth in some areas, she is still struggling with others, particularly with following through on commitments. And so we’ve worked with her time and again, offering techniques and tools, freely giving grace and forgiveness when she confesses of a fault. Yet, the question is always there: are we…
Read more >>
Yesterday the United States celebrated Valentine’s Day and Ecuador celebrated día de amor y amistad (day of love and friendship), and it got me thinking about all the different forms of love there are in this world. There’s romantic love, familial love, platonic love…and then there’s all the things we call love but really aren’t, like lust.
All the true types of love are beautiful and necessary for fullness of life, but none of them can compare to the perfect love that God has for us. This kind of love, called agape love, is (by one definition) the selfless, sacrificial, and…
Read more >>
When I was deciding whether or not to accept this placement in Ecuador, there was one major fear holding me back. I couldn’t speak Spanish! And to me, in my earthly understanding, this felt like a hard stop. So much of nursing, not to mention so much of working with vulnerable populations, is about communication. I am so careful of the words I use and their connotations. I could not imagine working in a different language where I was unfamiliar with the implications of the words I was using. And yet, as God made it clear that he was still opening this door to me…
Read more >>
"I believe. Help me in my unbelief."
Most of the time, I like to live in my make-believe world where I’m in control of my life and the situations I find myself in. But every once in a while, like this week, God pulls the wool from over my eyes and I am reminded of just how little I actually have control over. During those glimpses into reality, I can feel the anxiety building within me: the tightening in my chest, the whirring of my thoughts.
And yet in those moments, God, who is so gracious, never fails to remind me that He is with me, that He is and has been in…
Read more >>
