Thank you for your support! You prayed, you gave, we went and God moved!

We had a great trip to Ecuador. Through this campaign more than 500 people heard the gospel, there were hundreds of professions of faith, over a hundred discipleship lessons completed and 4 new churches started! God is great!

You can check out the Trip Summary post for a synopsis of the week.

Or, if you like the nitty gritty details I’ve loaded up my journal entries from the week so you can get a feel for how the campaign went day to day.

You can also see all my photos from the week here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=asteinbock4&target=ALBUM&id=5392824659072354033&authkey=Gv1sRgCMjLiqCmp_PbkwE&feat=email

Or find out more about e3 and short-term mission trips here:
http://www.e3partners.org/

Trip Summary

As we started the trip I was both nervous and excited. I was nervous because I am inadequate and don’t know what I’m doing and excited because I believed God was going to do a work through us. Turns out I was right on both counts.

The first few days I was a bit anxious as we arrived in Ecuador and met our team. We flew into Guayaquil and spent the night. Then we had a half-day bus ride to Bahia de Caraquez up on the Pacific Ocean. It’s a lot different than the U.S. But at the same time, people are people wherever you go. We all struggle with the same fears and insecurities. We all have the same desires and dreams and we’re all desperately lost without Jesus.

We had a great team of people from the U.S., half from California and half from Wisconsin. Many of them have been on short-term mission trips before and they all have a heart to be used by God and make a difference in the world. Our large team of about 18 split up into four teams when we reached Bahia. Each team worked with a different local pastor and church to help reach a new area by launching a new church plant.

They put me on a great team with three godly women, Mary, Gail and Noreen, from California and they sent us to a city called Calceta, about an hour and a half inland from Bahia. I figure there are around 25,000 people there with one old church downtown. Clearly there was a lot of work to do.

I was a bit nervous to get out there and share with people. You never know if you’re going to say the right thing. But part of sharing the gospel and your testimony is just getting out there and doing it. And by the end of the week I was a lot more comfortable.

At first we didn’t have a clear plan for what we should do in Calceta since our pastor had to work during the day and couldn’t be with us to direct us. So our first big ministry day was tough and a bit discouraging for me. I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing trying to lead out there and I had people responding to the gospel but it was hard to tell if they really got it.

But by Tuesday things had turned a corner. I settled down and left the results up to God. And it was clear that God was doing a real work in people’s hearts. We had a great response and people were interested in growing in their faith. By Wednesday night we had a service to gather the people who had responded and introduce them to the pastor, Jose Cevallos. It was awesome.

Over the course of a few days we saw people genuinely respond to the gospel and turn to God. We saw them learning to get into the Bible and grow in their faith and we saw them come together as the first step towards becoming a church- a community of believers.

By the time we had to leave God had laid the foundation for a new work in Calceta. It was sad to go, knowing I will probably never see those people again, but we got to be a part of the work God is doing. He wants all nations to know him and we got to be a small part of it.

It will probably be a while before I start to understand how God has changed me through this trip but there are a few things I know I’ve come away with:
An increased faith in the power of the gospel to change people’s lives,
A clearer picture of our universal need for a relationship with Jesus,
and a deeper conviction of the need to come alongside brand new believers and disciple them.

Thank you for all your prayers, they were desperately needed. It was an amazing week and I hope God sends me again. Let me encourage you to pray and ask God how he might want to use you as well!

So what exactly is the “mission” on this mission trip?

Jesus spelled it out for us in the Great Commission when he told us to “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:18-20). Jesus wants every person to know him and become a mature, whole-hearted follower. But how do we do that?

God gave us a great model in the book of Acts. Starting in Acts 13, Luke records the missionary activities of Paul and Barnabas and there is a recurring pattern.

· They prayed and God sent them out.
· When they arrived in a city they would share the gospel,
· Then they would gather the new believers together to teach, strengthen and encourage them.
· And before they moved on they would appoint leaders to watch over the young church.

We believe the best way to carry out the Great Commission is to plant healthy, growing churches that will multiply and carry on the work long after we’re gone. Making mature followers takes time and it happens in the context of the fellowship of believers who are on mission with God in the world.

A short-term mission trip can be the catalyst to help start a healthy, growing church that will make disciples and multiply to carry on the mission of fulfilling the Great Commission.

God wants all of us to be a part of reaching our neighborhoods, our regions and the world (Acts 1:8). How might God want to use you to help change the world?

October 9th 2009
We had a nice tourist day today in Guayaquil. It is their Independence Day so the city is packed with people. I miss my family and it will be nice to get home. But it is sad because the trip has been so great. I will miss the people of Ecuador. I think I’ve grown a lot and God has been doing a work in me. I think it will be a while before I have an idea what the full impact has been. But I am very glad I got the chance to go. I’ve had the opportunity to be obedient to the Great Commission and take the gospel to the world. It’s a good feeling. I hope I get to go again.


Here's a photo from the celebration service yesterday in Fanca, a suburb of Bahia.

October 8th 2009
Because today was a half day so we would have time to get back to Guayaquil and because our group had so far to go we didn’t go out to our mission point. Instead pastor Jose brought us into the prison to share the gospel with the prisoners. It was really cool. Don shared his testimony and Derek went up and presented the gospel to them using the evangecube. He did a great job. Then he invited me to come up and lead those who wanted to respond in a prayer to receive Christ. It was great. Many of them accepted the gospel message. It was a great experience and now I have the added bonus of being able to say I’ve spent time in an Ecuadorian prison!

October 7th 2009
Well our trip leader Don Buege came out with our team today to see how things are going out in Calceta. We thought we were going to have some discipleship lessons with some people this morning but it didn’t work for them. You just never know where the Holy Spirit is going to send you. Since our appointments didn’t work out we went back to some of the houses that didn’t want to talk to us yesterday. Well God wanted us there today. Don and his translator Fanni met a young woman who was really seeking for God. They talked with her for a while and she accepted Christ. God sent us to another house where we talked with a man, Francisco, and his mother-in-law. They accepted Christ too and we went back for a discipleship lesson this afternoon. It was great. We also got to go back and visit Johana again and go through the next discipleship lesson with her. She is probably my favorite. There is a definite work of God going on there. She’s not sure about how her husband feels about all this but we shared with her out of 1 Corinthians 7. It’s sad I won’t be there to follow up with her but our nationals will be.
We had our first service in Calceta tonight! It was nice. A decent number of community members came including Johana, Francisco, and Sandro. Pastor Jose came out after work and led the service. He gave a really nice message where he explained the story of the evangecube in great detail. It is sad to go. This is a special place and it’s been fun to see how God has used us. I was scared and didn’t know what to expect. Of course I was nervous about going door to door and sharing my testimony and presenting the gospel. But I feel a lot better about it now. God is using it in many people’s lives.
Derek got baptized this morning in the Pacific, on the beach, by his pastor that he is working with here. That was cool to see. Derek is a great guy from Fond du Lac. God has a plan for him and I bet he has grown quite a bit this week.
Well last night we had dinner with the mayor of Bahia up on the hill by a giant cross that overlooks the city. It was nice.

October 6th 2009
Tuesday was a good day. I think after yesterday I started today with the results completely surrendered to God. Things went a lot better out there. At first we had a couple houses we tried to go to and they didn’t want to talk to us. Then we stopped by at a young mother’s house and she invited us right in. This would never happen in the U.S.! This young woman with two young daughters invited three strange men into her home when no one was around. But it was a God appointment.
Her name is Johana. She has a two year old and a six month old. I shared a bit of my testimony and why I was there and then I handed off the evangecube to Gustavo to share the gospel message. He did a great job and she wanted to receive Christ. She told us she had been feeling far from God and wanted to get closer to him.
She is a very honest and open person. This was cool because it was definitely a work of God going on in her heart. As we talked with her, both Andrew my translator and Gustavo my national agreed that she was getting it. We went back this afternoon and did the first discipleship lesson with her and she is really understanding the gospel. Part of me had been wondering why we were spending an hour and a half in the back of a pick-up truck to get here when we pass thousands of perfectly lost people along the way that need Jesus too. But I’m starting to see, God has a plan out here in Calceta.
We shared with a woman named Ana right before lunch. It was one of those cases where we decided to visit just one more house. She got it too and wanted to receive Christ! You just never know what’s going to happen next out here.
Gail had an exciting afternoon. She shared at a house and the whole family got saved. They were excited and told her she had to go over here and tell her neighbors about this. And that kept happening. We had a lot of professions of faith today and some discipleship starting too.
Actually our mission point out in Calceta is pretty cool. It’s a pain to get out there (literally a pain in the butt bouncing in the back of a pick-up truck for an hour and a half) but it’s really beautiful once we’re there. It’s very tropical with some highland hills nearby. And lunch has been very good. They are very good cooks at the restaurant where they feed us. The joke is we don’t want the other teams to find out how good we have it.
Tuesday was a really good day. We got to see God doing some cool things. The work is bearing fruit already. Noreen went back and did a discipleship lesson with Tito our driver. He’s going through a tough time with his wife because he cheated on her. He asked them to pray for them. He wants her to become a Christian too. It’s fun to see God working on him.
Our nationals Gustavo and Shirley are awesome. We sent them home with an evangecube and some discipleship lessons to look over for tomorrow. Their daughters loved the cube and wanted to take it to school to share with their classes. They are really a cool family. It’s a bit sad because tomorrow is our last day on site in Calceta. I will probably never see any of these people again.