Catching Up

We'll try to catch you up a bit on our trip. On Saturday morning we traveled through the mountains once again, this time up to the San Jose de Cecel community where we met with the Mision Luce de Vina congregation and their pastor, Alberto Coro. This congregation has a new building nearly completed, but could use some help with completing a second floor office. An office may not seem like a necessity, but in addition to pastoring his own church, Pastor Coro works with an organization called FYKDE, which is an acronym for Spanish and Quichua words which translated means Foundation of Learning for Life for Ecuador. In this capacity, Pastor Coro travels to churches in 7 communities to give them encouragement and provide spiritual leadership. In fact his own congregation, which has about 200 people in attendance each Sunday with 100 children in the Sunday School and 40-50 young people in the youth group, has to wait until 6 p.m. to have their Sunday service because Pastor Coro preaches each week at three other churches earlier in the day.

The remainder of Saturday was spent traveling to other projects of the FYKDE organization. They are very active in promoting and improving agricultural methods in their communities. These projects include promoting wheat and barley production, improving milk production by improving pastures, growing tomatoes in greenhouses, and
growing organic vegetables. You'll see a picture of the tomato plants which actually look more like tomato trees. The Ecuadorian people we met with have a great passion for improving life for those in their communities, but have faced the harsh reality of having more than one North American organization pull their funding from these projects.

Sunday morning began with attending a church service at the Diosga Cuyimi church in the Salisaca community. About 10 minutes before the service began, Pastor Stan was asked to give the message. He very clearly presented the plan of salvation with missionary Rob Wood doing the interpreting. The congregation especially responded to his statement that once we are saved, we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, no matter our country or nationality.

Following the service, we got back on the bus and traveled along the Pastaza Gorge into the rain forest. We enjoyed beautiful scenery, including gorgeous tropical flowers and plants, as well as several waterfalls. The one we have pictured is bridal veil falls. Our trip leaders Rob & Betty Wood are shown in front of the falls.