Quininde, Ecuador
Simple Beginnings Turn into Extraordinary Conversions
What she is doing is the right way to make an impact in Quininde,” Dr. Carlos Ayo said, referring to the ministry of Dr. Yeny Agila de Penos.
Dr. Ayo is a valued friend and local Christian physician in Quininde and has helped the Misión San Lucas periodically. As a physician, Dr. Yeny’s approach is rather unique. She chooses to go directly to the communities and teach women how to address health, family, community, and spiritual issues holistically in their own communities. She wholeheartedly believes the first step toward good health – physical, emotional, and spiritual – is through relationships. She believes the most important relationship is with God and then with other people who share burdens and provide support. She speaks of the Bible as “the manual for healthy living” and Jesus Christ as the truth, the life, and the way.
Dr. Yeny and staff member Rosaura have formed several women’s groups in strategically selected poor communities. As a physician, Dr. Yeny brings healthcare to these communities, administering pap smears and other health initiatives. She also provides community health training to selected leaders within the surrounding communities.
Dr. Yeny also goes to these places as a woman with her own life experiences. Her transparency and contagious passion enables her to exercise her gift of lovingly drawing out the deepest secret wounds of the marginalized women in Quininde. She shares answers from God’s word with them and stresses the importance of bearing one another’s burdens and joining together to bring about change in their homes. Leaders for women’s groups emerge naturally in these meetings and are mentored by the Misión San Lucas. Rosaura, to whom Dr. Yeny has given the leadership role over the women’s groups, is a graceful model who compassionately identifies with many of the women. Well-suited for the position, Rosaura has experienced abandonment herself – she is divorced, raises a son on her own, and is in remission from breast cancer.
In order to assist in empowering women, each group is provided with a community bank fund of about $1,800 to invest in microloans. The leaders of the community are completely in charge of the fund and are held accountable by Misión San Lucas. A number of the ladies buy pigs, chickens, or cows to feed their families and breed for selling. Other women invest in agricultural crops to improve their farming. A few women have used a loan to build a roof or add a floor to their shanty homes, or to obtain medical care. Out of the 165 loans extended in one of the villages, most of the money invested has been returned over the past three years. Families are grateful and more than willing to meet the requirements for receiving the loans. Women who receive loans are required to attend group meetings and Bible studies. The love shown in these groups has been dynamic in bringing communities together. Women have bonded and grown in their faith and have begun intentional prayer for their husbands and families. Their prayers have been effective. For example, men who initially disapproved of the women’s groups have been softened by what they witnessed in their wives and by the generosity shown to their families. Alberto is one example of a man who has experienced attitude change.
Alberto
Alberto told Maritzo, his wife, “You don’t have time for that group. You have three children to take care of and there’s no time to lose. What is going on there anyway?”
His attitude has changed, though. After three years of his wife’s participation in the group, he now smiles broadly as he recalls his first impressions, “She had to take a Bible to the group and we didn’t have one in our house. Like most everyone else in the community, we were nominal Christians. Suddenly, she was so interested in reading the Bible. I didn’t understand this,” he said. “I was an alcoholic and not very happy in my life. I didn’t like my wife going to the group, but as I began to see the changes in her, I saw that the group had some purpose. Sometime later, a group of doctors came to the village and showed a film. I was impressed by the movie.”
Dr. Yeny and Rosaura were delighted to see men become more open to their wives attending the group. Dr. Yeny contacted her missionary friend in Quito, Rev. Fred Jonkman, to organize a men’s retreat in Quininde in order to invite the husbands of all the women already in community groups. The retreat took place last February and approximately 40 men attended.
“It changed my life,” Alberto said. “I learned what the role of a man was supposed to be according to the Word of God. Rev. Jonkman shared many examples of men – some like me who were alcoholics. It was very practical and encouraging to me.”
Alberto progressively drank less and joined the church in Quininde. His faith has grown substantially and he is now taking the lead to bring men together to study God’s word.
“We started meeting every Friday during the day because there was no electricity in our meeting place. Now we have lights and we are meeting on Friday nights. It’s not easy to get the men together, but we have about ten [men] consistently coming. We are studying the Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren,” Alberto said. “It is helping us understand our purpose in this life, in our families, and in the world.”
The community meeting place is aptly named Esperanza, which means hope. The impact of the women’s group and the recent men’s retreat caused a spiritual explosion in the community. In addition, a youth camp event was held that included vibrant worship and teaching that brought the teens and children of the community together. A number of the children gave their lives to Christ and for the first time became enthusiastic about going to church.
Sadly, a local church leader quickly learned about the new spiritual wave among the youth and was incensed. He immediately went to visit the church families to deliver a scornful ultimatum.
“If you don’t return to my church, I won’t bury you and I won’t marry your children,” he thundered.
His anger spread fear through the community like wildfire. The same teens that had a spiritual experience at the youth camp became confused at the church leader’s behavior, and a number of youth fell away from their new-found faith. Alberto and Maritzo’s children were among these children. Alberto thought someone needed to talk to the church leader and he was ready to perform the task. In a visit with the church leader, he expressed his disappointment and disgust in the leader’s attitude.
“The church leader should have been happy that the kids want to go to church,” Alberto said.
Alberto is planning a men’s retreat to be held in November 2009 that will be hosted by Misión San Lucas. His desire is for more men to find healing and hope like he did. The retreat will be focused on helping the men learn to take on their spiritual roles as husbands and fathers. Alberto has faith that the community will experience even greater development in their health - spiritually, physically, and economically – as they live their lives for God.
Dagni – From Skeptic to Servant
She’s crazy. Her baby son is dead and she’s laughing,” Dagni recalled saying about her sister’s unacceptable and unusual behavior. Though originally skeptical, Dagni was one of several mothers who began participating in the mother’s groups organized by Dr. Yeny in Quininde.
“My sister, Jacqueline, had a son that died. She was devastated. But only two weeks later she was invited by Dr. Yeny to a women’s group and she accepted Christ as her Savior. She came home from that meeting completely changed. We were very concerned because she was too happy. There was no excuse for this. Her son had died and she was joyful,” Dagni said. In an attempt to protect her sister, Dagni decided to visit the group and find out what her sister had become involved in.
But Dagni had her own problems. During the same week she planned to go with her sister to the group meeting, a bill collector showed up at her door demanding payment for an overdue debt. Her husband had divorced her and left her overwhelmed with debt and lacking the means to pay her bills. A married man in the community began showing interest in her, and she told him about her problem. He was more than willing to help her - but with strings attached.
“He told me he would pay my debt, but I have to go out with him that evening at 8 p.m.” Reluctantly, she allowed the man to pay the debt and dreaded the idea of going out with him. “I owed him,” Dagni said. “I had to go out with him.”
She did not have a habit of praying, but in desperation she thought about Jacqueline’s spiritual experience and decided to challenge God. “If you are real, then show me you exist,” Dagni pleaded. “Please make a way that this man will forget me and I won’t have to go out with him.”
She went to the group meeting that day and observed the women openly sharing their needs with one another and praying together. Her skepticism faded as she observed the women sharing their deepest concerns. Dagni saw that the women genuinely loved each other. They opened God’s Word to learn His power to heal, provide, and save, and then they prayed for each other. Dagni was beginning to understand the reason her sister found peace and strength so soon after her son’s death. She was tempted to open up and share her problem with the group, but she needed to know if God had heard her prayer that day. Instead, she kept silent. After the group meeting, she had to go home and get ready for her forced date. To her amazement, 8 p.m. arrived and the man failed to meet Dagni. In fact, Dagni never heard from the man again.
Dagni became a regular member of the women’s group and confirmed her faith in Christ. Her faith in God to answer her prayers grew bolder with each answered prayer she witnessed for both herself and in the group. When she remembers her past, she laughs at her childish faith right after accepting the Lord. She soon began praying for the Lord to give her a husband.
“If God will answer all my prayers, then I’ll ask for a tall, handsome and rich man to be my husband,” she exclaimed. After waiting a long time, she began to realize God had put His choice of husband right next to her in church. “I didn’t realize the love of my life was right next to me,” Dagni said. They were married and now have a beautiful two year old son who they named Genesis as a symbol Dagni’s new beginning.
Dagni is in wonder about how the Lord has changed her and filled her with the desire to help other women. She has witnessed God using her to minister to other women who are facing the pain of divorce and separation, and women who have been taken advantage of by men preying on their loneliness. Dagni’s special calling, she believes, is to minister to the black women in a very poor neighborhood in Quininde. Now, in three neighborhoods, she is working as the point person for the Misión San Lucas team in a new project to help women and children at risk. Dagni met Monica and Powola, two black women in her church, and together they are preparing to reach the black neighborhood in Quininde where there is an attitude of lethargy coupled with a strong presence of crime and drugs. In the communities, children run freely in the streets, neglected by their mothers who are playing cards. A number of children do not attend school and many who do are forced to switch schools because of behavioral problems.
Dr. Yeny wants to see these troubled neighborhoods change. The improvements seen in several communities because of the impact of mother’s groups has opened the floodgate of possibilities to reach even more impoverished areas. In barrios where women’s groups have been meeting for nearly seven years, churches have formed and lives have become healthier through community health training and funding from microloans. Crime rates have dropped because parents have become more attentive to children’s needs.
School principal, Professor Cologne, stated, “Children who have participated in the after school program with the Misión San Lucas team are behaving better and are showing more respect to the teachers. They are doing better because they are being shown love.”
In the future, Word and Deed Canada will be donating additional funds and assistance to Misión San Lucas to feed lunch to 100 children from three different communities. Misión San Lucas staff members will work with leadership teams in these three neighborhoods to take a census of all the families and to find the poorest children. Their vision is to find a suitable building to house 100 children, provide their lunches, teach them the Bible, and help them with school work over a three year period. Misión San Lucas will recruit Christian volunteers from the neighborhoods to cook the food. One neighborhood has been selected to begin the program. The other two neighborhoods will start after there has been a measure of success in the first neighborhood.
Fulfilling God’s plan for her life, Dagni will be the director in the third neighborhood. The third program will rely on lessons learned from the experience of the first two programs. The third neighborhood is the most daunting and oppressive of all the neighborhoods. A building has been secured for the program, but it is far from being ready for use. Misión San Lucas would like to buy the land immediately next to the building in order to expand. The location is strategic because the building is directly across from the disco – a popular place for music, dancing, drugs, and alcohol. The women believe the spiritual influence of sharing the Gospel and the love of Christ as it is shown to children will have an impact on the street.
Alberto and Dagni are only two of many lives that have been touched in Jesus’ name through the ministry of Misión San Lucas. Each had simple beginnings. They saw people they loved become joyful in the midst of their poverty and difficulties. When they took a closer look, they found the same joy and freedom for themselves, igniting a passion to be used by God to help rescue others in need of God’s love and touch.
Brenda David