Ecuador Partnership

Ecuador Partnership Needs Workers
Two new volunteers are needed to work with ministries of the Quito Mennonite Church.  The volunteers are needed for a minimum of 10 months and will need to do their work in Spanish.  Click on the job title to see a job description:  Peace Education Volunteer and Refugee Project Volunteer.  For application information, contact Diana Cook at Mennonite Mission Network Human Resources, DianaCmennonitemission.net. 

The Story of the Partnership

The Ecuador Partnership is supported by three different organizations: Central Plains Mennonite Conference, Mennonite Mission Network and the Colombian Mennonite Church.  Representatives of these three groups have been meeting every year to evaluate the partnership and maintain dialogue.

Original Mandate
The original mandate was to respond to the request of FEINE (Federation of Evangelical Indigenous Churches of Ecuador) for leadership training and Bible teaching for their pastors.  There are approximately 4 million indigenous people in Ecuador and about half of them belong to the evangelical churches.  There are about 2500 churches and only 500 pastors.  Many of them have very low levels of education.  Cesar Moya and Patricia Uruena from the Colombian Mennonite Church are supported by the partnership to do this work.  Cesar teaches pastoral leadership, and Biblical studies with Anabaptist emphases.  Patricia’s area of expertise is in pedagogy, so she teaches courses in this area.

Cesar and Patricia also are now teaching at SEMISUD, which is a seminary of the Pentecostal Church of God.  This seminary has students from many different denominations and some from other countries in South America also.  This seminary is also working with FEINE to train 150 indigenous pastors in a four year program.  They very much want Cesar to teach courses centered on Anabaptism and peace.  This is a new addition to the program, although Cesar and Patricia have taught in the past at the Latin American Christian University.  That has been discontinued since that University has had some problems to work through.

Quito Church
The Quito Mennonite Church is the unintended result of Cesar and Patricia’s teaching and friendships in Quito.  They were meeting with friends in a Bible study and the participants decided that they would like to be a church.  So, now Cesar and Patricia are pastoring that church “half time”.  This church has about 40 members with about 80 attending regularly.  A good portion of them (possibly one third) are Colombian refugees who live in Quito.  Right now the church has two main areas of outreach.  

One is the Peace Workshops on Saturday once a month in the Inca neighborhood.  This is a poor area of Quito where domestic violence and gang violence are prevalent. Most other evangelical churches in Ecuador are unwilling to address domestic violence.  The workshops are attended by around 80 to 160 children.  Patricia designs workshops and they teach the children how to respond to and not tolerate violence and also to interact with their friends, parents, and teachers respectfully.  About 8-10% of the children in this neighborhood have attended the workshops out of about 2000 children.  Comments from the President of the Inca Association and parents in the neighborhood are very positive about this program and they would like more of it.

Second is the refugee program.  The situation for Colombian refugees is much the same as for illegal immigrants here in the U.S.  They face discrimination and are not able to find jobs.  Most of the evangelical churches don’t want to involve themselves in helping refugees.  The Quito Mennonite Church helps refugees in various ways, such as finding housing and employment, teaching their children and counseling children who have been traumatized.   The refugee needs are overwhelming for the church, and it is also sometimes dangerous, as some refugees have participated in the violence and are involved in drugs.  Currently, they are receiving around $11,000 from MCC to fund a partnership between the Quito church and the Anglican Church in Ecuador to aid refugees.  Trish Mork, the wife of an Anglican priest, is administering this program.

Riobamba Church
Another unexpected result is the church in Riobamba.  A few years ago, several couples who had experienced marital problems went to a Catholic marriage enrichment workshop and their lives were changed as a result of this.  However, the Catholic church did not have the resources to follow up on the workshop, so a priest who was interested in Cesar’s Anabaptist theology connected them with Cesar and Patricia and they began meeting with them once a month for Bible studies.  In the summer of 2007, two of the couples visited the Central Plains Conference and the Newton, Kansas, area.  After they returned, they decided that they wanted to start a Mennonite church in Riobamba.  In September of 2008, Don and Jan Rheinheimer moved to Riobamba as church planters.  They are not supported financially by Central Plains, but by some churches in Illinois and Colorado.  We do support the church in Riobamba with $1500/year which goes for rent on the house where they have their church services.  It seems to be going well in Riobamba and they have already identified a couple, Daniel and Beatrice Escobar, as being potential pastors in the future.  They have an average attendance of about 30 and soon will be outgrowing their facilities.