Ecuador Ecuador 
Linaje Escogido is about 20 years old, and is a tiny church up in the mountains about an hour out from the other sister churches in Calderon. They have about 40 members and have experienced much tribulation of late. We built the sanctuary in 2006/07, finishing the building they started many years before. It is our "base camp" of operations for evangelizing the yet unreached areas above it in the mountains. Their pastor resigned in early 2008, and we have been helping them deal with many serious issues due to poor leadership. Their main needs are prayer and leadership training.
This church experienced serious persecution in its early days. Pastor Pedro Vasquez ("mother church" pastor) planted this mission in the face of much persecution. Many believers were hospitalized and at times had to run for their very lives from angry mobs wielding machetes and clubs... their church, and bibles were burned and people beaten.
"New Life Bible Chapel" from Harrisburg, PA has adopted this sweet church as their sister church, and is praying for them, helped a great deal with the costs of the sanctuary, and is providing Sunday School material.
This little church was built on donated land of one of the members. Here is a shot of the inside.
It is high in the mountains, in a rural, agricultural setting overlooking a huge valley.
As usual, our visit brought a special service, complete with singing by two different groups of children, and a truly indigenous meal afterwards. (God protected me again!)
This is what the church used to look like before the construction, and here is a special report on the building project that took place from October 2006 to January 2007. Here I am presenting Sunday School material, thanks to "New Life Bible Chapel".
The church finished their 3 month training course on Evangelism in April 2005, and held their "Community Outreach weekend". This included special music, a number of testimonies, sharing the gospel, and showing the Jesus movie to their neighborhood. Read more about this Outreach program here on it's own webpage.
Here we are setting things up, and what it looked like in the afternoon as the groups were singing.