The Adventure Continues

     Two years later and here I am, back at LAX with my passport in hand. This time I'm not blogging for grades or going to a country across the globe. I'm a college graduate headed to one of my homelands, Ecuador. As  the attendant escorted my grandma and I to our gate he asked if we were going home. My grandma and I looked at each other and laughed "yeah I guess you could say that."

     A lot of people have asked me why I decided to go spend my gap year before graduate school teaching violin abroad. It's a great question. First of all, having a gap year was never my intention. I like school and I like having a plan. A gap year sounded a little too ambiguous for my tastes. But once I realized it was going to be a reality I started to plan a way  to travel Europe for a year. I had always wanted to spend extended time abroad but because of school I never got the chance. Part of me also wrestled with the idea of spending the year serving and giving back but I put it on the back burner. When I thought about it I was like "shoot, I can serve the rest of my life but when will I have the chance to live in Europe??" So I decided to go ahead and apply for ACA and volunteer as a violin teacher on the side to help appease my conscience. After a lot of back and forth, paperwork and emails  it looked like it was going to work out! But then the doors started to close. One after the other it just wasn't going to work out. By the time it became clear my original plans weren't going to work it was getting late in the summer. My best friend was getting married at the beginning of October and after that I would be ready to go. Except I had no plans of where to go or for how long. When people would ask me I was like "um I know I'm going somewhere this year and that's about it." I revaluated why I wanted to go. One, I wanted to experience living outside of Southern California and widen my worldview. Two, I wanted to grow in my maturity and faith with god in a radical way that That's when I realized I wanted to shift my focus. I started to reconsider my previous thoughts about spending this year in service.
   I thought about different ways I could serve God. There would be plenty to do in my own community but i knew that in order to really grow in my faith and step outside my comfort zone it would require me to leave home. I started contacting different people we knew at Adventist hubs in different countries and applied to Adventist Volunteers. My biggest prayer was that God would open a door where there was a need that matched what I could offer. I didn't want to go just to check a year of service off my bucket list, I wanted to go where I could actually make an impact and make a change that was sustainable. 

   So long story short, because of visas,  school schedules and timing, teaching opportunities in both Ecuador and Malawi opened up for me this year. I will be in Ecuador for 3 months doing music clinics and jump starting a string program for the new music academy in the Galapagos and I will be in Malawi for 4 months teaching violin at the missionary school. Throughout the process of planning this trip I've been so mind blown. 

   For example, when I found a really good deal for a round trip ticket to Quito I told my grandma. She had been planning on spending Christmas there but couldn't turn down the deal. We decided to fly down together so she could spend the three months with our family while I'm in the Galapagos and neither of us would have to travel alone. A week after we bought the ticket her eldest brother passed away in Quito. Who knew she would need to go down so early? 

   The circumstances and the timing have been so clear that even though the tiny details aren't crystallized (the way my planner personality would like) I have peace knowing that this is where God wants me to be.

   So here I am 4 hours away from Quito. My bags are filled with the generous donations of music, instruments and supplies for the academy. My heart is filled with excitement, fear and anticipation. There are a lot of unknowns and hurdles to cross at every step, even just to get the supplies to the islands, but I'm ready. I'm ready to let go of the control that I like to have over my life and ready to let God do his thing. After four years of studying and focusing on my growth and my knowledge, I'm ready to give it back. I'm ready to put my knowledge and skills to use by sharing them wholly and completely with others.