Ecuador

Overall, the ecclesia in Ecuador is doing well, and our focal point for the coming year is trying to sort out the challenges transportation and meeting location.

My wife, Sis. Rebekah has been in school this summer and couldn’t come along this time. So, for the Ecuador leg of my trip, Bro. Rubén Barboza from Argentina joined me.

Because my summer plans were somewhat up in the air until about five weeks before the trip, we couldn’t organize a full-blown Bible School. But even with the time available, the local brothers and sisters were able to pull together a Friday evening through Sunday afternoon “retreat” at the location where we last held the Bible School in the town of Guayllabamba, about an hour north of town.

Throughout the weekend, we had about thirty-five adult brothers and sisters and family and friends, about ten kids, and about five teens. For the Bible School portion of the trip, we were also supported by Sis. Silvia Fernandez, Sis. Patty Vasquez, her daughter, Sis. Michelle, and Bro. Alejandro Mate from El Salvador. Sis. Michelle and Bro. Alejandro organized classes and activities for the kids and teens and stayed afterward for a couple of days to also do an outing with the teens and young people. 

For the adults, I chose the theme of asking the question: “Why am I still a Christadelphian?” This took the angle that I was baptized at seventeen, we were in Ecuador when I was in my thirties, and now I’m in my fifties. We looked at how one’s faith shifts, changes, and grows over the years. Rather than doing classes, I sent everyone an assignment ahead of time with four questions each for five topics. The topics were: The Bible, the God of the Bible, the problem of sin and evil, Jesus, and the Kingdom of God. 

For each topic, everyone was asked to:

1. Write a summary in their own words of what their beliefs were regarding the topic.
2. List seven to ten Bible verses on what the Bible said about it.
3. Choose the two to three verses they personally found most powerfully spoke to their own beliefs or were most foundational to their faith.
4. List any extra-biblical reasons for why they believed what they did about the topic (e.g., common sense, historical, archeological, cultural, personal, etc.).

During the actual school, for each topic, I started off with a quick introduction before breaking everyone into groups of four to six people for about thirty minutes. The task was to share with their group what they had written/collected, and then as group share back with everyone else a summary of questions one, three, and four over the next thirty minutes.

The format worked very well, with almost everyone doing a surprising amount of work ahead of time by almost everyone—pages and pages of written text and verses! Everyone also felt the format was much more effective for learning than a standard lecture (I wish they’d told me that at some point during my last nineteen visits when I used a more standard lecture approach). God willing, we’ll aim to implement that style more regularly in coming visits.

During the rest of the week, Bro. Rubén and I visited the brothers and sisters. Sis. Silvia did the same, sometimes overlapping with us. I also conducted three baptismal interviews with support from Sis. Silvia, Sis. Fabiola, and Sis, Lucía (all candidates were women). The first interview was with Sarita Duchi, daughter of Bro. Manuel Duchi and Rita (who is also studying for baptism).

Sarita is a little older than Kalen (probably around thirty now), was a regular Sunday School scholar during our time there, and has recently started attending regularly again. Her interview was early in the week, and we were able to arrange the baptism on the last day I was there. Also interviewed, was Belén Duchi (niece of Bro. Manuel) and Bro. Wilson’s wife, Sandra. Belén will, God-willing, be baptized in the coming weeks when they can organize a time, and Sandra was earlier in her learning and will be continuing some studies in the coming months.

Overall, the ecclesia is doing well, and our focal point for the coming year is trying to sort out the transportation challenges for the members and friends, and particularly in support of the Sunday School. As an example, Sis. Sarita has to come from the extreme south of Quito with three small children, while the biggest group in the ecclesia lives in the very far north of the city.

Also, the hotel where they currently meet, occasionally schedules other activities in their main conference room on a Sunday, relegating the ecclesia to meeting in a poorly suited dining room area directly outside the conference room. This situation means there is traffic of other people through the meetings and Sunday School activities while they are in progress. With the economic setbacks suffered by the city during COVID, it may be possible to find a place in the downtown area again. The new North-South subway (which is fantastic!) also opens up some new areas for possible consideration.

 Kevin Hunter,
CBMA Link for Ecuador