Recently, Kim and I had the opportunity to share at a Covenant church in Sangolqui (just outside of Quito) called Misionero del Valle (missionary of the valley) that is appropriately named in that the church was started as a church plant coming out of the city of Quito reaching into the valleys surrounding Quito where it resides. The pastor, Eduardo Guaman, is a good friend and someone we both look up to. He has a heart for evangelism and he used to be the head of Church Planting and Evangelism for the Evangelical Covenant Church of Ecuador.
Pastor Eduardo invited us to come and speak at his church to provide some history of missions and especially the missionary work of the Evangelical Covenant Church of the U.S. and Canada and provide an update of current projects and ministries that the ECC is a part of. We felt very special to have been invited to take part in this opportunity, especially as both Kim and I were invited to share together, something we don’t do very often.
This was a good opportunity for Kim as she has studied in the past the history of ECC missions in Ecuador. She was able to bring out her paper that she had written on this very topic. She did an excellent job presenting the history ECC missions in Ecuador as U.S. missionaries were the first Covenant missionaries to serve in Ecuador and helped in forming the denomination of almost 80 churches that we have today known as Iglesia del Pacto Evangelico del Ecuador or the Evangelical Covenant Church of Ecuador. I then shared an update of current Covenant missionaries (just Kim and I) and our project. With that, I presented an overview of the ministries in Cayambe and Ibarra and also gave an invitation for the church members to come and serve the project in partnership.
In sharing the history of the ECC in Ecuador, we are so thankful for the missionaries that came before us and the legacy that they have provided. We hope and pray that our service here has been one of which does honor to God, first of all, but additionally also to the servants that have come before us. One such example is Marlan Enns, one of the earliest missionaries that came from the U.S. and planted some of the primary churches that comprise IPEE right now. We had the privilege of receiving Marlan in 2016 as he came down for a visit. Here are some pictures of his visit, one with Pastor Eduardo (pastor of the church we just visited) and with our family.
The Santiago Partnership