We surrendered to serve the Lord in Ecuador in 2006 and to specifically serve among the Imbabura Kichwa people in 2008. We dedicated two years, from late 2008 to late 2010, to raising the needed financial and prayer support for the ministry ahead of us. In December, 2010, we moved to Costa Rica to attend Spanish language school. We spent 2011 in Costa Rica studying Spanish and assisting in a local church there; then, we moved to Ecuador in early 2012. We spent the next two years working with two veteran missionaries in a new church plant near Ecuador’s capitol city. During this time we were able to experience every aspect of ministry in the local church on the mission field. The highlight of our time there was seeing people come to Christ, following Him in baptism and growing in the Lord through intentional discipleship.
In 2014, we were able to begin focusing our attention on the people that God called our family to reach. We began studying the Kichwa language and we began to pray that God would open doors in the Kichwa villages for ministry. We had zero contacts in Kichwa villages when we started in 2014. However, since then, the Lord has allowed our family to move full-time into a Kichwa village, we were able to build a Ministry Center and Library in a strategic Kichwa village, we were able to start a Bible Institute with seventy students weekly studying God’s Word, we’ve been involved in many ministry projects and in intentional discipleship in several of the existing Kichwa churches. God also allowed our family to plant the first new Kichwa church in a unreached village in 2018. Our ministry is currently focused on and devoted to the new church plant, the Bible Institute, and developing spiritual maturity through discipleship.
Ministering Among The Kichwa
The Kichwa (or Quechua in some countries) live in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and a few in Chile and Colombia. In the Kichwa language family there are 8-10 different languages and 45-50 different dialects. The specific group of Kichwa people that God has called our family to work with are the Northern Highland Kichwa. They live in northern Ecuador in remote areas of the Andes Mountains. Their population is approximately 300,000 and they are approximately 2% Evangelical Christian. The dialect of Kichwa that they speak is one of several Kichwa dialects that do not have a Bible; though a Bible translation project is currently underway and several of our Kichwa leaders are a part of the project.
