Last weekend we went to Tena to hold our monthly meeting with the Bible Institute students (IBCI) and Steve, Caylin and I went to a dinner at an Ecuadorian Chinese food place to follow up with a bunch of men and their wive’s who were at the church planting conference. They were all really excited about it, and there are three of them whom we are excited about helping start a new church plant in a churchless town near that area.

Although I’m not the type of person to point out spiritual warfare at the drop of a hat, I can definitely say that we were being distracted at the meeting by things beyond the norm. It started with us sitting down waiting for everyone to arrive. The restaurant was quiet, and things looked good. Then, after everyone arrived and right when Steve started to talk, it was almost immediate that tons of abnormally loud cars started driving by outside, then groups of people making tons of noises outside (which echoed in through the window), then the church bells to the nearby cathedral started ringing, and then, when things started to die down, then the server came and brought one plate at a time, then 2 sets of silverware at a time… It was horribly distracting! So I immediately started to pray and ask God to take control of the evening.

Later on, after we ate, I felt impressed to speak about sexual purity and serious accountability, but for one reason or another I decided not to. But after everything was said by Steve and the other guys, Steve looked at me and out of the blue said “Is there anything else you would like to add?” I thought that was very strange because I hadn’t been saying much the whole evening and was really there to tag along. So I decided to say what God had impressed on my heart to say, but when I started to speak, I felt as if I couldn’t catch my breath, or as if I was talking the whole time with my lungs full of air and I had to really focus on forcing out what I was trying to say. I have never felt anything like it, and I’ve spoken at much larger groups than that before, so it was very out of the ordinary. So I continued to pray.

Over-all, the night was a huge first step and we are excited about helping these guys plant a church in the near future. We are being cautious to go slowly and make sure that these guys are very grounded because we want everything we do to last and be strong. Be praying for us as we try to encourage, motivate, train, and equip leaders here to plant more churches with a missional mindset to plant more churches. And thanks for bearing with me as I wrote my most lengthy blog post yet!

PS. … so I didn’t have any pictures of the dinner, but I figured you would enjoy the one posted above!