Darrell Musick shifts his tan Chevy pickup into four-wheel drive to begin off-roading mountain trails through the Ecuadorian Andes. After pushing his truck to the limit, the Southern Baptist representative and three local believers hike their way to a small home on the edge of La Rinconada village — a small Quichua community rumored to want a Bible study.
Two women on the porch of a woodworking shop allow the Baptist representative and his friends to play a taped recording of the story of creation. The women hear the Bible story and exclaim that this is the second time that day they have heard the Scripture in their own language. At 5 a.m., they heard the same man on the radio — the first broadcast ever made on the Quichua station.
“We have been praying diligently for a church in our community,” one woman said tearfully. “We have even gone to the effort to start building, hoping someone would come and lead us.”
Within a year, a small church began meeting in La Rinconada. Another one has started in a neighboring town.
Through radio programs, Bible storying, agricultural projects and health fairs, more than 40 house churches and Bible studies now meet in Quichua villages dotting the mountain ridges of Imbabura province in northern Ecuador.
“The Quichua seem to be hungry for the gospel,” said Musick’s wife, Rogene. “They see hope in us.” Just seeking out a living is so hard for them, she said. “They need the hope of the gospel.”
The Quichua have reasons to feel hopeless. The rural, farming people often are poor with little education — a result of hundreds of years of rule from the Incas to the Spanish. Only 2 percent of the 300,000 Quichua in the province have the assurance of Jesus Christ.
Each effort — from a radio ministry to Bible storytelling to agricultural clinics — provides an opportunity for the Musicks to share the gospel with the Quichua.
The Musicks draw on their ranching roots to help improve the Quichua’s livestock and crops. Before going to the missions field in 2004, Darrell, 54, and Rogene, 52, operated a ranch in New Mexico, where they grew up. Darrell’s home church is Jackson Avenue Baptist Church, Lovington, N.M., and Rogene’s is First Baptist Church, San Jon, N.M.
Now the duo perform check-ups on cows and pigs, treat parasites or diseases and give advice on crop production to Quichua farmers.
Although the Musicks arrived as agricultural specialists, their primary job is to plant churches in the Ecuadorian soil.
Their co-laborers already were in place — the leaders from two established Baptist churches who had worked with other Baptist representatives. Yet even as the Musicks set out to encourage, train and help organize the believers, there was one pitfall of missions work they wanted to avoid from the beginning — dependence.
Rogene said many Ecuadorians would question a Quichua’s ability to lead. Many of them can’t read, are missing teeth and lack education. Yet they are living out lives of obedience with a tenacity that motivates them to start house churches, even when the representatives are away.
The best part for Darrell is when a Quichua believer comes up to him timidly and says, “I hope it’s OK, but while you were gone we had the chance in such and such community, and we started a group there.”
Taking a support role to indigenous Quichua ministry is a function the Musicks teach volunteers who play a valuable part in church planting.
Rogene’s home church sent a short-term missions team to northern Ecuador in the summer of 2006. Working in villages preselected by Quichua believers, the team spent mornings prayer walking to undergird the nationals as they ministered and afternoons helping with a health fair.
While team members set up an area for children and information stations about nutrition, parasites and dental hygiene, the Quichua believers handed out evangelism materials, answered questions and probed for an opportunity to begin a Bible study in the village. In 2006, volunteer teams worked in 12 Quichua communities.
“The Quichua would immediately follow up and try to get a time to start a Bible study,” Rogene said. “Out of those 12 communities, we started 10 Bible study groups. Many of them now are house churches.”
When a Quichua community begins changing for Christ, the results are noticeable, Rogene said. The village is cleaner, the roads are better and crime diminishes.
Although some needs are specialized, God can use any believer’s hands and heart to make an impact in Ecuador, Darrell said.
“We’re not spring chickens, and we’ve never been to seminary,” he said. “But God has allowed us to work in ways we never, ever imagined. It’s never, never too late to be obedient.” (IMB)
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