Teenagers Can Make a Difference

I love Ecuador. The reason I love Ecuador is because every time I go I feel like the pages of Scripture come to life. This last trip we took to Ecuador we had the extreme privilege of partnering with a church in a small village of Apatug.

The story of this church began some 28 years ago. Steve, the missionary in Ecuador had been on the field only a few years when one day he had a strange visitor at his gate. He asked the man to come inside his home, but the man refused. This man had spent his whole life believing he and the people of Apatug were second-class citizens and were unworthy to entire a civilized persons home. The man simply asked, “Are you the missionary?” Steve said he was. The man then asked him to come to Apatug. There were a few believers that needed his help.

Steve went and began to disciple the small group of believers. Apatug was a village very hostile to Evangelical Christianity. They were Roman Catholic. On one occasion there were all 11 believers in a house worshipping. The villagers had heard the evangelicals were coming and had converted this group of people.

So the people of Apatug gathered around this small house and beat against the door and walls. They wanted to drag the believers out in the street and beat them. Finally, they bust a hole through the wall and dragged them out, striped them naked, whipped them with bull-nettle, and took them as high up on the mountain as they could. The higher up you go the colder it gets. They tied them up, submerged them in water, and left them to die.

One of the believers freed himself and untied the others. It was getting close to dawn when they walked back down the mountain to the village. By the time they arrived in the village it was morning. The most humiliating thing for a person in this village was their nakedness. And these 11 believers had to walk through the streets naked while the people cussed at them and made fun of them. They arrived at the house they were in the night before only to find it reduced to rubbles.

Something interesting happened during this time. One of the believers who had been beaten was a teenage girl. Her father was one of the attackers that night. Looking back on the event he said, “When I saw my daughter return to the house we destroyed to worship God again I knew she had something I didn’t have.” He received Christ shortly afterwards and over 23 years later the church is thriving and there are more than 200 believers in Apatug!

God is faithful! Make no excuses! God will do what he says he’ll do!