Home
In Ecuador: An Unimaginable Transformation
By Mary Anne Weld
OYACACHI, ECUADOR (March 5, 2004) - Evangelical Covenant Church short-term
missionary to Ecuador Wayne Weld had an exciting experience last spring
that may be one of the best examples of how holistic ministry can affect
a mission outreach to a community.
Weld and Nelson Castro, who was then directing the Covenant seminary in
Quito, took 10 students from a cultural anthropology class on a field
trip to Oyacachi for a cultural, economic and religious analysis of the
community. The trip provided students an opportunity to see a
transformation that some could never have imagined.
Some 550 years ago, following a great battle in the conquest of the
territory by the Incas, some Quichua Indians fled into the mountains.
Apparently they were joined by another group of Yumbos, Quichua-speaking
jungle Indians, who made their way up a river valley from the Oriente,
the Amazonian jungle.
These two tribes or clans lived together in miserable conditions until
30 years ago. Homes were made of poles or boards stuck vertically in the
ground covered by grass roofs. The cold wind at about 9,000 feet
whistled through the cracks in the walls. Disease due to a lack of
latrines caused a 70 percent infant mortality that limited the community
for centuries to a population of about 170 persons. They were hunters
and gatherers rather than farmers and the diet consisted mainly of
potatoes and noodles that they bought by making and selling wooden bowls
and spoons.
On a trip to the town of Cayambe in 1972, a few men from the village
heard Jaime Lomas, pastor of the Covenant church in Cayambe, preach in
the market. They invited him to preach in Oyacachi and he agreed to do
so. The trip turned out to be 12 hours on horseback and on foot over the
mountains and through the swamps. But a few responded to his message and
invited him back.
Over time the evangelical community grew after Jaime and other Covenant
pastors and missionaries visited. The visitors encouraged digging
latrines, developing other crafts and planting a few crops to improve
the local diet. A Christian message of dignity as children of God and
social and material improvements also brought self-esteem and new
aspirations.
Because of mudslides, it was necessary to move the town three miles
upstream to a site that included hot springs. It became an opportunity
for the Covenant Church of Ecuador through FACE, its development arm, to
help by laying out the village with straight streets and to pipe in
water. Today this 100 percent Quichua community (there is no private
property) owns about 25 square miles of what is probably Ecuador's
number two ecological reserve. Although there has been expertise and
funding from church and government sources, the people have been mainly
controlling their own development.
Ten years ago, townspeople built the Covenant church (80 percent of the
villagers are Covenanters) by constructing a solid structure with a roof
supported by metal beams to resist the high winds. To pull this off, 10
men carried a 650-pound soldering rig on poles some 25 miles over the
mountains and back.
To strengthen the education of its children, the village sent two of
their young men outside of the area to get training because
government-sponsored teachers sent to the village had never remained
more than three months due to the cold and feeling of isolation. Today,
children have primary education as well as a distance education program
for the first three years of secondary schooling.
A road was built that permitted other developments seven years ago.
Today the village has its own hydroelectric plant, owns 1,500 cattle,
harvests 2,000 trout per month for local consumption, produces cheese
for sale and grows its own vegetables to better its diet. It also
provides guards and guides for the ecological preserve, has exploited
its hot springs for a growing tourist trade and built houses with indoor
plumbing. Now, with negligible infant mortality, the village has 517
people, tripling the population the village had for years. Weld said the
town's main problem is resisting outside influences that corrupt its youth.
To learn more about Oyacachi, email Wayne and Mary Anne Weld at
wayneweld@andinanet.net.
(Editor's note: The information provided here came through an email
written by short-term missionary Mary Anne Weld, a longtime public
school teacher and the wife of Ecuador Covenant Seminary Prof. Wayne
Weld.)
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
