Ecuadorian Episcopalians welcome Executive Council
Episcopal News Service, Quito, Ecuador. February 12, 2008 [021208-04]
Mary Frances Schjonberg and staff
Members of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council, Church Center staff and their guests traveled to one of eight venues in and around Quito February 12 to learn about and briefly engage in the mission of the Diocese of Ecuador Central.
The five-hour activity took place during the morning of the second day of Council's four-day meeting in Quito. Council then heard from Ecuadorian church and government officials during a late afternoon plenary session. (Episcopal News Service will file a separate story on that session.)
Following are brief stories of some of the experiences, along with background on the diocese and the Episcopal Church's dioceses outside the United States.
Catedral de El Senor
Wearing light blue uniforms and great big smiles, the young students of the school of the diocese's Catedral de El Senor greeted the dozen visitors with traditional songs and handmade gifts.
The school, located adjacent to the cathedral, serves 26 children in first through seventh grade. With only five teachers, most classrooms are forced to double up with multiple grades in each space. The entire school body has two computers for instruction. The small cinder-block schoolrooms ring out with colorful decorations of Disney characters, animals, maps and landscapes.
While some visitors helped the youngsters plant flowers and spruce up the grounds in anticipation of the Executive Council’s visit on February 13, others reviewed lessons with “los pequinitos” -- the littlest ones. “The grandparents stayed with the little ones,” quipped Executive Council member John Vanderstar of the Diocese of Washington.
The Rev. Angel Siguenza, vicarof the cathedral, noted that his primary hope is to grow the school’s enrollment.
Sigueucio provided a tour of Catedral de el Senor, which is nestled into the Cotocollao Alto neighborhood on the side of one of Quito’s mountains. The interior is flanked by two huge triangular stained glass windows which depict the story of creation and include important local sites such as Chimborazo, the highest mountain in Ecuador, and the basilica which dominates the city’s skyline.
Cristo Liberador Mission
Four-year-old Genesis Aboleta was first to welcome Executive Council visitors to the new childcare center opened in October by Cristo Liberador Episcopal Mission in Quito's 150,000-resident Comite del Pueblo district.
The preschooler climbed into Puerto Rico Bishop David Alvarez's arms as he translated for fellow council members center director Rocio Recalde's overview of tutoring, daycare, meals and other services provided to some 46 children 7 a.m.-3 p.m. weekdays on an estimated annual budget of $19,000. Many are children of single mothers, and some are Colombian refugees, Recalde said.
"Our vision is to give the people, who are poor, the best that we can," she said as cement masons continued work to finish upper floors and a new adjoining clinic.
The clinic's coordinator, Dr. Juan Vaca Yanchapaxi, also a Cristo Liberador parishioner, described the facility's partnership with the commercial Servilab Laboratorio Clinico. "What we have been able to do has been with the support of the local people," said Vaca, also a leader in the social ministry of the Diocese of Ecuador Central.
Vaca and Alvarez spoke of the companion relationship that their two dioceses share with the Diocese of Ecuador Litoral. Alvarez said Puerto Rico's San Lucas Episcopal Hospital System -- one of Puerto Rico's largest employers with three hospital campuses -- continues to provide supplies and equipment for the clinic, which is also funded in part by the Diocese of Indianapolis.
"It is very important for the U.S. Church to recognize the wideness of our Church," Alvarez said, noting that in the developing world "we minister with far fewer resources and financial support, yet effectively."
Also at the clinic, architect Javier Zapata displayed renderings of a community plan to build a central park and recreation area around an Episcopal church in the neighboring La Mana community. The plan will make use of local stones and other materials, giving area residents the sense of having contributed to the project and a "natural sense of ownership," noted Council member Mark Harris of Delaware.
Cristo Liberator's vicar, the Rev. Raul Guaillas, and warden Veronica Martinez showed visitors the on-site savings office making micro-loans of $20-$200, at three percent interest. Youth group members, meanwhile, engaged the nearly 20 visitors in dialogue on topics ranging from their ministries to law-school studies. "Here there are a lot of possibilities for growth," Guaillas said. "Here the Church is offering a different alternative in the area."
Emaus Mission
The Emaus Mission, about a 25-minute bus ride south of downtown Quito, may meet in a storefront apartment but, it has big dreams. One is actually becoming a reality out behind the storefront which also houses a convenience store and a construction hardware business.
The Hidalgo family, part of the 28 members (15 who can pledge) who attend Emaus, donated the 100 square meter parcel of land and a just-begun building to the mission. Nine Council and staff members, including House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson, stood in what will be the sanctuary on the first of three floors and heard a mission member tell how he has single-handedly continued the construction of the cement-block building each day. Mission members help during community work days.
"This construction is important because it gives the church an identity," the Rev. Lourdes Inapanta, Emaus' vicar, told the visitors as they stood on the roofless second floor. Since having to close a large church in the near-by Saint Bartolomeo neighborhood and merging with another Episcopal congregation, she said, many area people don't want to come to what seems like a "ghost church" that they fear may disappear.
Emaus' ministry is anything but ghostly. In addition to building the church as money is available; the mission also offers a youth program that accommodates children's school and work schedules, and offers small stipends to student for supplies; has a program to gather and re-sell recyclables; is beginning a program called Blessed Hands to teach women embroidery skills and sell their handiwork; and offers a weekly community clinic for children and seniors in the neighborhood and elsewhere in the city.
Inapanta, who was a deacon for six years and has been a priest for about two years, is investigating how Emaus might become the local facilitator of an Ecuadorian government program that pays households up to $4,000 to improve their homes or build new ones. She'd also like to see the clinic expanded to serve all adults as well as its current clients, and be able to purchase a neighboring house for a day-care center.
"We all want to work for the growth of the church," said one parishioner. "Our only lack is the money."
Puembo
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and a small group of staff and Council members went to work building chicken coops and making signs for the diocese’s new demonstration farm at Puembo, located about five miles from the site of the new Aeropuerto Internacional de Quito, which opens in 2009 some 15 miles east of the capital city.
Only two months old, the farm is nestled in the Valley of Tumbaco, with volcanic mountain peaks -- Antisana, Cayambe, Corazon, Cotopaxi, Ilaló, Iliniza, Imbabura, Pichincha, Rumiñahui, and Sincholagua -- in a semicircle around it.
Heading the project is agronomist and engineer Luis Walter Manosalvas, whose dream for the site includes a roadside farmers’ market with cheese and yogurt-making facilities and a “petting zoo,” plus a five-star hotel, worker housing, and an industrial park.
Right now the fields are being planted in tamarillo, or tomate de árbol -- tree tomato -- a small tree bearing edible egg-shaped fruit with a thin skin and soft flesh that’s often made into juice in Ecuador. Manosalvas envisions an American export market for jam made from the fruit, which is already being marketed to consumers in Italy.
They will also grow chihualcan, or carica papaya, a fruit listed as one of the “lost crops of the Incas,” as well as avocados and cucumbers.
The farm will also feature livestock, including pastured chickens, pigs, dairy cattle, and the Andean guinea pig known as cuy, domesticated since 2000 BC and sometimes called cobayo or conejillo de indias. In the Andean highlands a dish of cuy, often compared to rabbit, marks special occasions, and it is an important part of Novoandina (New Andean) cuisine.
“We are very motivated, and our ideas are many -- we just need to put them to work,” said Manosalvas. “Of course, in order to appreciate this project, you have to taste it!”
Diocesan Centre
The nine members of Council who visited the Diocesan Centre were led through the remarkable story of an Episcopal Church that has been pushed to the edge of institutional existence and found individual and corporate renewal as the only viable option in the face of despair.
Much of the diocesan resources have been devoted to the recovery process in the aftermath of the financial misconduct of the previous bishop and ongoing legal disputes. Working with the clergy and talented lay people who came forward to offer their expertise, Bishop Wilfrido Ramos-Orench said the mission and ministry of the diocese have quickly and remarkably re-emerged as church members respond to a style of pastoral leadership that is intensely collaborative and team-oriented towards finding solutions rather than dwelling on the harm that each individual has experienced.
One of the most difficult challenges of the rebuilding was the loss of the diocese's theological library and its historical records that included the institutional knowledge of the members, clergy, and property. The diocese as an institution has virtually re-formed on the basis of a new narrative. Leadership development has become a top priority to train a new generation of ordained and lay pastors and teachers. There is a revitalized diocesan theological training program currently has about 35 students -- both men and women -- who are following a three-year course of local ministry with an emphasis on lifting up the diocese and its Anglican identity. Re-establishing the 22 active congregations has been a costly but largely successful effort by the administrative and legal team.
San Felipe Episcopal Church, Ibarra
The Rev. Vicente Mejia, his wife María Terésa, and more than a dozen parishioners welcomed a delegation of eight Executive Council members, five Church Center staff, and two spouses with warm Ecuadorian "abrazos" -- hugs -- to San Felipe Episcopal Church in Ibarra.
Chris Morck, an appointed missionary of the Episcopal Church and assistant to Ramos-Orench, accompanied the group on the 2 1/2 hour ride from Quito to Ibarra, and served as translator.
Mejia told the group that there has been an Episcopal presence in Ibarra since 1989, and that the church building was built in 2000. They hope to add a school to the property.
"Our people are testimony in the community to those living in misery," he said. "We did not come to impose ourselves but to enculturate ourselves among the people. It is," he said, "slow work."
Now, he said, the church of some 200 members has a very strong presence in the community. San Felipe and its missions in surrounding villages are welcoming to those excluded from society: children and the elderly, indigenous peoples and those of African descent.
Programs include work with people with disabilities and the unemployed, a proposed community of 100 houses and a chapel for families with elderly members, and significant work with the many refugees who come into Ecuador over the nearby Colombian border.
The San Filipe members joined the Executive Council group for a short bus ride to Caranqui, a community in which Mejia has begun establishing a presence with Eucharist and Bible study in people's homes. Waiting on an outdoor basketball court were over 30 Caranqui residents of all ages who had planned a special program of welcome, including singing of the national anthem, an explanation of local products and a demonstration of traditional dances.
After a performance of two dances, the dancers, dressed in traditional indigenous dress, invited their guests to join them for several minutes of lively dancing.
"The extreme hospitality always strikes me," said Council member Vicky Garvey. They took off work to welcome us to their church and community."
Council member Hisako Beasley added, "I wanted to touch the people of Ecuador. When we arrived, a woman grabbed me and adopted me and said, 'My new family.' It touched me so much, and I am so glad I came."
Episcopal Church connections outside the United States
The Diocese of Ecuador Central is one of eight dioceses of the Episcopal Church located outside of the United States and its territories. The others are Ecuador Litoral, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Venezuela and Taiwan. The dioceses of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are in U.S. territories (although the Virgin Islands diocese includes two islands under British jurisdiction). There is also the Convocation of American Churches in Europe, which consists of communities in six countries, and the Episcopal Church in Micronesia (Guam and Saipan).
At one time, the Episcopal Church included more than 30 overseas dioceses and other jurisdictions. Over time some became autonomous provinces in the Anglican Communion and some remain in "covenant partnerships" with the Episcopal Church, which include promises of financial subsidies for certain amounts of time, as well as mutual ministry and interdependence. Those partners attended Council's October meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, and spent time discussing that mutual ministry.
Ecuador's Anglican/Episcopal past and present
The roots of the Anglican Church in Ecuador date to the beginning of the 20th century when Anglican chaplains accompanied oil company workers to South America and established a chaplaincy from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Jurisdiction was transferred to the Episcopal Church in 1956 and was supervised first by the Bishop of Panama and then by the Bishop of Colombia.
The Diocese of Ecuador became independent in 1970 and was subdivided in 1986 into the Diocese of Ecuador Central, encompassing the mountains, the Amazon and some Pacific coast cities as well as Quito, and the Diocese of Ecuador Litoral, which includes the coastal cities of Guayas, Manabi, and los Rios.
Ecuador Central consists of 32 missions, 16 priests including four women, a retired priest and four missioners. Wilfrido Ramos-Orench, a member of Executive Council, has been provisional bishop of the diocese since June 1, 2006. Formerly the bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Connecticut and native of Puerto Rico, he succeeded Neptali Larrea Moreno who was deposed in 2004. Larrea, the diocese's second bishop, was found to have abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church amid complaints of financial irregularities.
"Initially, the big thrust was to bring healing in a very dysfunctional situation," Ramos-Orench told ENS, adding that he thinks there has been "significant progress" in "rebuilding trust and restoring a sense of hope among clergy and laity."
Now efforts are underway to build the infrastructure of the diocese, he said. "Many of the church buildings were almost abandoned so we're trying to re-building and a big piece was restoring clergy to the Church Pension Fund. Everyone now is on board."
The move, accomplished through what Ramos-Orench called the generosity of the Church Pension Group, "has helped lift the morale" of the clergy.
The bishop said there is no typical member of the diocese. "We have so much diversity in the diocese," he said. The more-established congregations are in the Quito area and their members have more of a sense of being connected to the Episcopal Church and its traditions, he added, while the Indian population "was totally neglected so we're trying to re-build a sense of belonging."
Native Americans make up 45 percent of the diocese, while there is a small but growing Asian population as well as the mestizo population of people of mixed indigenous and European descent. The coastal area of Esmeraldas has a significant African-descent population, according to Ramos-Orench.
Ecuador Central's future
"I see a great potential," Ramos-Orench said. "People find the Episcopal Church very attractive."
Most of them come from a Roman Catholic background, he said, and are attracted by the role given to laity in the governance of the Episcopal Church at all levels.
Others are attracted through the diocese's ministry to the marginalized, the bishop added. "We trying to the diocese as inclusive as possible so that everyone feels at least that there's room at the table for them," he said.
The diocese has many new initiatives, he said, including ministries to people who have fled violence in Colombia; to those in hospitals, hospices and prisons; to youth; to indigenous people and to women.
The diocese also has about 35 people involved in various kinds of theological education at the lay, diaconate and priesthood levels, including a few people who have become postulants for ordination. Former Roman Catholic priests have been contacting the diocese as well. "Everyday I get a call from one of them saying 'Bishop, can I be part of this church.' And, again, they find a place where they can fully be like themselves, besides having a family."
Many people from the U.S. have been coming to Ecuador to study the language and the diocese is thinking about starting a language school and a place where people can be immersed in the Ecuadorian culture.
The diocese is also building a "multiplicity of relationship," Ramos-Orench said, citing partnerships with the dioceses of Puerto Rico and Atlanta in the U.S., the Anglican Diocese of Curitiba in Brazil, and Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis, Indiana. Those partnerships are helping to "break with the pattern of isolation" he encountered when he came to the diocese, he said.
Ramos-Orench said that when he came to the diocese he began calling for "a new dawn in the Episcopal Church in Ecuador and I think it's happening."
"With very little, we are trying to do so much," the bishop said. "It's like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. Somehow it's happening."