My wife, Carlinda Ray, and I were honored to be a part of the Alabama Men and Women of Action mission team to Ecuador last Aug. 5-13.
AMWA, under the leadership of Donnie and Carol McWaters of Oneonta, directed four pastors and three of their wives, along with two additional volunteers, to assist in the installation of water filtration units for facilities in local communities near the capital of Ecuador, Quito.
The pastors and their wives were Jon and Becky Chappelle of Selma, Thomas and Nicole Dunn Jr. of Owens Cross Roads, Mark Gidley of Gadsden, along with the Rays of Sunnyside Church of God, Tuscumbia. Tom and Sue Wilborg served as volunteers in the water filter installation.
The team also assisted another water filtration ministry known as M-25 to install, minister and observe the supervisory roles of its constituents in their homes.
In many areas of Ecuador, clean water does not exist, causing harm to all of its inhabitants, especially children.
The goal of the mission was to assist in placing the water filters in areas to do the maximum good. Due to transportation regulations, only small numbers of these units can be delivered and installed at any time for residents of this nation.
AMWA assisted M-25 and its staff with ministering to children at their facility at Aqua Viva. Aqua Viva is an after-school program that helps children with homework, mentoring and ministry, and provides support to women in the area for spiritual care.
For myself, I had never flown on an airplane before the trip and experienced aviation for the first time when the group departed from Birmingham/Shuttlesworth Airport on Aug. 5. We landed in Miami and boarded another plane there and flew to the Quito, Ecuador, airport in the early morning hours of Aug. 6. This was the first time for Carlinda and me to have ever been outside of North America.
After a 45-minute drive, we reached our base of operations, SEMISUD, a seminary for Latin American Pentecostal students. We stayed in the dormitories there. After a four-hour nap, we began the first day of our work in South America.
SEMISUD President Dr. Nelson Parra and his wife, Olga, greeted us and became our guides and interpreters for most of our stay there.
We were shown the campus and toured the chapel, academic buildings and classrooms, and had a unique opportunity to view a rare collection of Inca artifacts on loan from the Ecuadorian government. The artifacts are housed in an open campus museum at the seminary.
I was allowed to preach to the SEMISUD students that day, along with the other pastors and their wives ministering with the students.
During our time at SEMISUD, we also had the opportunity to participate in two Sunday church services at a very active church on campus. Two of our pastors had the opportunity to preach at those services, while we all served as lay ministers and provided spiritual care to the local congregation.
During our two-day stay at Aqua Viva, Carlinda had the opportunity to minister in a women’s service, along with the other pastors’ wives.
As a part of our collaboration with M-25, we were able to attend an indigenous church service in Quito. Congregants worshipped in Spanish and Ketchican. We were given an opportunity to preach the message, while other AMWA mission team members assisted in the altar service.
Over the eight days, AMWA was able to minister to over 300 people, and the reports of what God had done were mighty!
Toward the end of the week, we had the opportunity to visit local Andean Mountain peaks, with some reaching more than 19,000 feet. The elevation average for the week we stayed was about 9,200 feet.
This made breathing a challenge since the air was thinner at those altitudes than what a normal Alabamian is used to, and we had to adjust accordingly.
We also experienced three earthquakes (no one was harmed, and no damage was incurred) and a microburst weather event that took the roof off of a cottage where Carlinda was staying at the time. She suffered no harm.
On the last day of the trip, prior to returning home, we had the opportunity to visit the equator.
We were sad to leave the precious people of Ecuador. Ecuadorians are very warm, kind and loving people. We pray God will continue to bless them and all those who made the trip—one we will never forget. We hope this will not be our last mission trip, and we are trusting in God to provide if He so wills.
Carlinda and I want to thank all of those who prayed, contributed financially and gave in kind to make this trip possible. May God bless you all.
(Editor’s note: Dr. Nick Ray, a former sports editor for the Journal-Record, has been in ministry for 38 years. He and his wife, Carlinda, now live in Tuscumbia where he is the lead pastor of the Sunnyside Church of God. According to the Colbert County Reporter, which also ran this article, Ecuador is Spanish for equator, with Mount Chimborazo’s summit in the Andes actually being more than 6,800 feet farther from the center of the Earth than Mt. Everest’s 29,029 feet, as the planet bulges along the equator due to centrifugal force created by its constant rotation.)
See complete story in the Journal Record.
Subscribe now!