Mission Team: October 2005

Oakland Baptist Comes to Ecuador

Project: Great Commission - Bond eDiary - Bond Home Page

A team from Oakland Baptist Church, my home church in Corinth, was a major blessing this past week; as our emails described we were busy from morning to late at night and God really used the team in powerful ways. They arrived 12 hours late on October 1st due to bad weather, having to spend the night in Guayaquil. But they hit the ground running and didn't really stop until they got home on Saturday the 8th of October.

Our National team of Ecuadorians consisted of Joselito Orellana (national missionary), Diego Leon, Efrain Becerra (translators), and Dennis (our bus driver). The team stayed at the HCJB Guesthouse.

We worked with 5 different Indigeous churches, repeating essentially the same schedule with each church. "Candelaria", "Parada Siete", "San Jose Alto", and "Alfa y Omega" are all in the Calderon area just northeast of Quito. "Cusubamba" is about an hour and a half outside Quito, and WAY up in the mountains. In the mornings, we worked in different small teams and visited the people in the neighborhood to invite them to the special events of the day, and to share the gospel. The teams consisted of an interpreter, a few team members, and a few members of the local church. This served us well, as we were able to model how to share the gospel in a way that is foreign to the people here, work together, and have local "guides" who knew the neighbors and neighborhood. Most churches had a number of  visits lined up already, and we simply added the door-to-door and stopping people in the street aspect. Lots of people got to hear the gospel; many prayed to receive Christ as Lord & Savior; a large number of visitors graced the churches for the special events. Here are a couple of people that came to the church thanks to the team's visitation that turned out to be very special: one lady prayed to receive Christ and the other was deeply moved by Lisa's kindness. Our teams suffered two dog bights (note the blood on the lady's dress), drunks harrassing us, unexpected downpours, loss of electricity, and some angry responses. But God was faithful through it all.

After the visitation time, we had lunch nearly every day with the church, eating their food. I carefully coached the churches months in advance about our "delicate" stomaches, especially in regards to water, so we got to eat delicious native Ecuadorian meals in safety. The only person to get sick was a person who ate something out on his own.

After lunch, we held a "Kid Outreach" time complete with puppets, skits, songs, the wordless bracelet, games, games, and more games! The team also brought polaroid cameras and a zillion color printouts explaining the gospel and the wordless bracelets (yellow, black, red, white, and green beads) - so they took a photo of each kid, and pasted it on the "wordless book" cover, and sent it home with them! They also brought enough material for each child to make their own personal "wordless gospel" bracelet as well. Joselito Orellana, one of my Ecuadorian ministry partners, explained the wordless book to the children. We had about 500 kids over the week... many prayed to receive Christ and everyone heard the gospel! They were also sent home with invitations, and many of their parents came to the special service at night.

After the afternoon outreach, we ate supper with the church, again "Ecuadorian style". One night we even tried "Cuye" (Guinea Pig). Billy and Kenny especially ate it up! At "Cusubamba", we ate out under the heavens at about 11,000 feet... and we could see forever in every direction from high atop the mountain. Also at Cusubamba, we shared a huge pot of soup with all of the kids from the outreach program and some of their families.

In the evenings, we held a joint special service at the church. Everyone took turns sharing their testimonies, Brother Kenny and Brother Randy took turns preaching, we held different skits, sang hymns, and enjoyed the different church's own special music and dance. It made for long days: 8am to 9:30 or 10pm. But we were very blessed and it was more fruitful than we ever imagined.

We also got to enjoy a few other special things, like a trip to "El Ejido" park to buy souvenirs, the "Middle of the World" museum, a visit to the Borman family home for a look at jungle ministry with the Cofan people,and a trip to the coastal rainforest where we held a service at the home of a new Christian couple who aren't able to go to church due to the remoteness of their location.

All in all, it was an amazing time beyond our expectations... but we had all been praying for this trip for at least 6 months. So I guess we shouldn't be too surprised that God answered our prayers!

Favorite Photos: Here are a few shots of interesting things, and the people we fell in love with.

Here is where almost all Ecuadorians wash their clothes and dishes.

Bathrooms out in the country were something to get used to.

We visited the Borman family on Wednesday, and got to hear fascinating stories from a missionary family who arrived here in 1954, lived with primitive people in the deep in the jungle, learned their language, created a written language for them, translated the bible into that language, and taught the people to read. WOW! Here is Bub, a most humble man, who along with his wife and children, lived this adventure. Their son is a missionary to the "Cofan" people today, and has raised his family here as well. Here he is explaining the fine art of adding poison to blow gun darts.

Here are a bunch of candid "people" shots. 1 and 1a | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Deb and Linda were taught how to wrap a baby up and carry it on your back.

Here is the prize winning shot of the trip of a Volcano taken by Lisa Smith. There are four visible volcanos from the Quito area.