I attended Denver Gap Year during the Fall 2022 session and Winter 2023 sessions. One of the highlights for me was gaining more of a worldview through our two international trips. These were my first two international mission trips, and they had a big impact on my life. We went to Guatemala in the Fall and then went to Ecuador in the Spring. The Spring trip to Quito, Ecuador especially helped me mature and grow as a person.
We were partnered with an anti-human trafficking organization, and it was eye-opening for me to be able to help and bond with all of the girls there who were our age. Our whole group got to go to a Quinceanera for one of the girls on the base and we had so much fun celebrating and playing ping pong with them. These simple interactions helped break through language and cultural differences and let us enjoy the company of fellow Christians. On another day there, my roommate and I got to participate in the girls' self-defense jujitsu class. This was also so much fun and these types of interactions helped us enjoy spending time with other people that God loves so much and we were able to relate to them through these snared experiences. We were also there to do some manual labor on their base, but I really appreciated the relationship building that these fun activities fostered between us and the girls, and also for my roommates and not only were we poured into relationally, but the organization we worked with was such a blessing for us in our physical and spiritual needs. Unfortunately. our whole team brought a stomach virus with us and the team we worked with in Ecuador served us so graciously through it by providing us with medicine and anything else we needed for the first few days. We were so grateful for the onysica neid they gave us and inrougn that we were really shown the love of Jesus through the unexpected need for them to serve us. At the end of our time in Ecuador, the girls also held a worship session for my roommate and I and prayed over our trip back home.
This was also so powerful to be able to see the cyclical pattern of God's work in how he provided for us to be able to held them for two weeks and how they poured back into us throughout that whole time.
I highly recommend taking a gap year in order to broaden your perspectives. My time with Denver Gap Year particularly gave me these incredible experiences and many more that have allowed me to learn so much more about the world and have prepared me better for my future.
These memories are so powerful to me and my testimony and after graduating from my eight months at Denver Gap Year, I know so much more about God's world that I wouldn't have understood without these experiences.