JANICE JI

In September 2023, I got placed into missions committee at UCI KCM’s servant team retreat. I was really confused at first because I did not have any prior missions experience. At the end of the day though, I was excited to see how God would use me in this committee and how much my heart would grow for missions. 

As more and more people started to talk about going on missions in winter quarter, I felt like God was trying to tell me to go on missions this summer. However, I did not want to mistake it for my own personal greed and selfish desires, so I let myself pray about it and also asked my missions committee to pray for me. The more I prayed about it, the stronger the conviction felt. After much thinking, when STSM applications were released, I decided to fully give my “yes” to God and knew that this year, God was telling me to #GO. 

There are two big lessons from my Ecuador mission trip that I learned that I would like to share.

Lesson #1: Serving is a blessing. Prep week and intensive week was very tiring and we had to learn and memorize all the VBS dances and skits we would be doing in Ecuador. However, I found myself being happy and joyful at the end of the day because I knew that all of these dances and skits were going to be used to minister to the kids in Ecuador. At the end of the intensive retreat, my heart was overfilled with joy and excitement. Sadly, that joy was lost just 2 days into being in Ecuador. For the first week and a half I was in Ecuador, I was counting down the hours until we were done with VBS and the days until we went home. I struggled with serving joyfully and humbly and found it hard to enjoy doing VBS. As I prayed and reflected on my heart, I realized that I had romanticized missions - All of my friends had constantly told me that although they went on missions to bless the people there, they received so many more blessings. So, I went into missions thinking that all of my hard work would be paid back through a blessing. I wanted God to show me fruit right before my eyes or to drastically change my spiritual life, and when I wasn’t seeing these things the first two weeks of Ecuador, I blamed God and couldn’t rejoice even in my sufferings. But, when I reminded myself that I came to Ecuador to serve God solely because of my love for him, that was when I realized that being able to go to Ecuador and being used by God was the blessing itself and that God didn’t owe me anything. That weekend, I prayed and prayed that my heart posture going into the third week would be different. 

Lesson #2: God’s plans and ways are perfect and better than ours. Our last VBS was supposed to start on the third to last day at a church. However, on the first day of our VBS, it got cancelled that morning because the pastor had been rushed to the hospital. So, instead, we ended up going back to a city we had done VBS at and went door-to-door, praying for the people in the area. In the span of a few hours, we were able to pray for the elderly who only spoke Quechua and for a Christian family who wanted us to pray over their sick daughters and their husband who was not saved. The next day, we went to the church thinking we could do at least one day of VBS. However, no kids showed up due to the people tearing down the pastor’s VBS posters he had put up around the neighborhood. And so that day, we decided to do open air performances at the city squares. We did our four performance dances and even got to meet a Colombian psalmist. These two days definitely did not go according to our plans yet God had His own plans and allowed us to continue sharing the love of God in different ways. 

During my time in Ecuador, I promised and prayed that I would come back home and live a more missional and prayerful life. I realized that my true mission field was here back in the OC. I didn’t have to go far to feel God’s presence or to spread God’s love. Thank you Lord for choosing and qualifying me to serve you in Ecuador. Thank you for showing me how much love you have for your people in Ecuador. And although I went to bless and pour out my love onto the people of Ecuador, I was so much more blessed and received so much more love.