Over the last couple weeks I had a number of remarkable experiences, there is one in particular that continues to live close to my heart.

 

It was not my birthday, but rather a high school girl who was a part of my team in Ecuador. She turned 16, and was having her first birthday away from her home, and more importantly, from her family. Many members of the team pulled together to show her love in a number of different ways. After the workday had ended and we completed our final group devotion, our trip hosts brought out two huge birthday cakes.

 

We learned two things about birthday traditions that day. Apparently, part of the Ecuadorian Birthday tradition includes putting mini sparklers on the tops of the cakes, and another part of the Ecuadorian tradition includes attempting to smash the lucky person's face into the birthday cake. Once everyone was happily eating cake, I left the room for just a few quick minutes. And when I came back in to the room, I noticed something different... numerous people's faces were covered in icing. An official cake fight had broken out. While I managed to make it back to my seat unscathed, the cleanliness didn't last long. First the birthday girl got me, and  then Mother Lourdes (the priest in charge!) of all people, confidently walked across the room with a handful of cake, and "anointed" me as well. She couldn't hold back her smile while patting my face in the shape of a cross "en el nombre del Padre, y Hijo, y Esp�rtu Santo." Amen?

 

When I looked around the room at all of us, laughing and smiling and enjoying one another's company, it struck me that there was something about that cake that managed to break through every barrier that should keep our group categorized. We covered ages from infant to elderly, we came from different genders, we came from different churches, we had different social economic statuses, we had different skin tones, and we spoke different languages. But in that moment, none of those things mattered; we were all one family, one body, one smile, one voice.

 

In one of my favorite books, An Altar in the World, by Barbara Brown Taylor, she calls her readers back to acknowledging the sacred in the midst of the simple, and the holy moments at the tips of our fingertips that we may otherwise miss.

 

While I know that for an outsider looking in, I was merely another face getting smattered with cake icing, in the moment it was as if I was being welcomed in to a holy community, like the icing became a special sacramental element nobody knew existed.

 

My team quickly came to experience God's mission at work in Ecuador through relationships, partnerships, and community. I am thankful to have had the experience of being able to join in on what God has been up to in Ecuador, among God's fellow people who God deeply loves. It was a beautiful image and snapshot of the kingdom of heaven on Earth, and I look forward to bringing more people in to this partnership of love and grace we have with the Vivanco family, the people of Ecuador, education = hope, and Cristo Liberador.