1st OF ALL, THANK YOU
Thank you so much for giving to the Lord’s work in Ecuador. Your prayers and financial support were felt the entire time. We could not have done it without the tremendous support displayed from you.
TEAM
Our team of 4 from Crossroads joined 32 others from the Jersey area. We were part of 136 Americans, 130 Translators, and approximately 50 Ecuadorian Churches participated in this work. This means there were over 1800 people involved. God did amazing things through ordinary people (our team, the Ecuadorian Christians, you, etc.) as we were led by his spirit.
LOCATION
The entire campaign was in sunny Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. This city is high up (higher than Denver, CO), located in a valley amidst the Andes Mountains and would be quite cold if not right on the Equator. This combination of altitude and latitude keeps the weather very consistent, 70 and sunny
Here are David and Sam, our translators David (in the blue) and Angela (in the black), and some of the church’s leadership team in a park just after the church service which Sam had preached.
Here are several pictures of the Vacation Bible School the Church held in the living room which they used for their church meeting space. It was amazing how many children they packed in there and how well the children behaved. They put on an incredible VBS with just a fraction of the resources US churches enjoy.
SPIRITUAL HIGH LIGHTS
On the mission trip all of us experienced heightened spiritual awareness that could only come from the Holy Spirit. For instance, when sharing Christ with someone I could tell within 1 minute who would be open to receive Christ with 95% accuracy. Most of the Ecuadorian faces were an open book. On some faces you could see a soft hearted humbleness, and a yearning to be free from their sins and to cling to Christ. On others, there was a spiritual hardness that would make them immediately reject any Gospel presentation or they would listen but reject it with philosophical and religious arguments. While seeing people come to Christ is always a special treat, it is very sad to see people reject Him.
The Lord Jesus said many times: “Let the little children come to me”. In fact, you must have the faith of a little child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and the children of Quito entered en masse! Probably the most exciting moment for me personally was presenting the Gospel to 60+ children at La Roca’s Vacation Bible School. We could feel the Holy Spirit moving in the room as the entire room of children lifted their hands, professing that they had prayed to receive Christ.
The next day, David Wilson, David & Angela (our translators), and Sam gave a “discipleship” lesson to the children by acting out the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. David was the prodigal, while Sam had the distinction of being his wicked, partying friend and the pig whose slop the Prodigal envied. The children loved this story (due in part to the pig’s incredibly realistic oinking). More importantly, they seemed to understand how God is their good father who desperately wants us to turn from our sin and turn to Him.
Discipleship was an ultra important element of our trip. Much of Ecuador has been “successfully” evangelized without any lasting impact because no one has made an effort to immediately disciple the new believers. For this reason, E3, our mission agency greatly stressed follow up appointments. We were not able to make many because often people were at work when we were available in the day. However, Pastor Rodrigo and other church leaders went with us on most evangelism outings and held a Bible Study for many new believers the evening we left.
Above is a small child with an EvangeBall. We would play a soccer game with this ball and then use the different colors on it to share the Gospel with the kids. Also above is another photo of their Vacation Bible School. These two pictures below are of the signs for “La Roca” Church and their Vacation Bible School
SCHEDULE
What did we do while we were down there? While the 1st day was devoted to training and meeting our local churches to prayer walk around the areas that we would work at. Most days were typically like this one:
Typical Daily Schedule: |
|
7:00 | worship & teaching |
7:30 | announcements |
7:45 | prayer |
8:30 | bus leaves for church site |
9:30 | door to door evangelism |
12:00 | lunch & siesta |
2:00 | help with vacation Bible school |
3:00 | door to door evangelism |
6:00 | review the day– worship |
7:00 | bus picks up and back to hotel around 8PM |
8:00 -10:30 | worship/debriefing/fun |
On the last day we had a tourist day, where we visited the local market places and the Equator cultural museum
HUMOROUS
Cooey (pronounced koo– wee) is one of the Ecuadorian’s favorite dishes. They like the taste of this juicy, tender meat that we commonly refer to as guinea pig. Here is a picture of David offering Sam a bite of cooey after church on Sunday.
On our last day they had us do tourist activities. We went to a cultural education museum directly on the Equator. One of Ecuador’s four geographic regions is the Amazonian rain forest. Beth is using a 6 ft long blow-dart gun to hit a cactus branch about ten yards away as our fellow E3 missionaries watch on. The chieftain's headdress is to make it official.
Because the hotel manager was a Christian and gave us rooms half off– making them the same as any other hotel in the city– we stayed at the ridiculously nice Swissotel. The joke through the week was that we were really “suffering” for Jesus in these very elegant surroundings.
RESULTS
Dave & Debbie Johnson, our team leaders in Ecuador, wrote the following in their final, official report for the E3 Missions:
Praise the Lord for:
Professions of faith: 4360– verbally prayed to receive Christ into their hearts
Seekers: 1039- people who heard the Gospel, did not respond, but wanted to know more.
Follow up visits: 936 - discipleship happening that very week
New start up churches: 39!
Dave & Debbie Johnson request that we continue to pray for the Ecuadorian church and believers. The country is open to sharing the Gospel right now. Politically we are not sure how much longer they will be open. Chavez from Venezuela is currently visiting Ecuador and staying in the same hotel we are in. He is encouraging the Ecuadorian president to make the evangelical resources (like radio and television stations) state run and made into his personal propaganda machines.
The Church’s name “La Roca” (the Rock) and this last picture reminded me of the dream about Christ’s Kingdom that the prophet Daniel interpreted. In the dream there was a statue of many different metals that represented four different human kingdoms of this earth. Each had a certain amount of splendor and power that ended when the next kingdom rose to take its place. However, God cut a rock that smashed into all those kingdoms like a bowling ball would smash fine china and the rock grew and grew until it became mountain sized. This Kingdom of the Rock is Christ’s and Christ will reign forever and ever. I was reminded of this as we drove around Quito and would occasionally see, through the foot hills, the dominant mountain of the area, Mt. Cotopaxi, rivaling Mt. Everest in height. It was unavoidable in the skyline. In the same way, Christ’s Kingdom was visible from places all over Quito, unavoidable, and growing bigger all the time.