Ecuador Day 5: Church at Ofelia

Yesterday, we went to church at Ofelia. Ofelia is pastored by Milton Vidal and his wife Lilly. Ofelia is a church of about 200, and they meet in a very small building. In fact the building is small enough that they now have two services on Sunday. During the sermon portion of the service, the children and youth all meet in Sunday School classes. Since there are two services, the Sunday School teachers teach twice on Sunday. Not only is the sanctuary small, but the only other room in there besides the bathroom is quite tiny. It's located behind the platform and the youngest children have Sunday School in there. The older children and youth meet either on the sidewalk or at one of the nearby houses. That's right, there's one class that has to meet on the sidewalk and street because there's not enough room anywhere else. It's incredible.

A young boy who's family is new to the church

Jon and Karen had told me that they were going to be baptizing some people at the end of the service, and that it would be quite a party. Because of the baptism, the church had decided to combine services for the day so everyone could come. I was wondering how crowded to be, but it was actually a lower attendance than I would have expected owing to the fact that it was a holiday weekend. It was still a big crowd though.

Pastor Milton greeted us as we walked into the church and Jon introduced me and explained why I was here. One of his first responses when he found out I speak virtually no Spanish is that I need to learn Spanish. This is becoming a constant refrain. I wish I'd been able to put in much more time to learning the language beyond what I already knew. I guess I know what I'll be doing when I get back. Not a day is going by that I wish I didn't know the language better. At least I can pick out important words like baño and queso!

One of the first things I noticed when I walked into the building was the large inflatable kiddy pool. Pastor Milton came up with the idea a while back. A bonus to it is that it allows them to do full immersion baptisms inside the building. Several of the kids seemed very interested in it. Who can blame them, I've always wanted to do a cannon ball into a baptistery.

Something else I noticed very quickly was the number of men there. There are typically not that many men in our other churches. Many of the pastors say that they can win the women to Christ, but the men will take a long time. Pastor Milton doesn't subscribe to this idea. He's not scared to go out after them, and it has been quite effective.

Pastor Milton standing during the service

I should also probably mention a little bit about Milton. His goal when he was younger was to be the leader of the most feared gang in Ecuador. He and his gang sold drugs and would go kill people for virtually anything. They particularly went after homosexuals and cab drivers for their money. He was caught, convicted of 14 murders, and sent to maximum security prison. He says that he has no idea how many people he killed or helped kill, but it was a large number. While in prison, he heard about a group of pretty women who would come to sing and share about Jesus. He went because of the pretty women. Through this he not only became saved, but he met his wife Lilly who was one of the women. He started leading others to Christ and was soon ministering to many in prison. A panel of 12 judges met to consider letting him out of prison early. Their vote had to be unanimous, and it was. He got out of prison and started to witness to other ex-cons. This is how the church started. Some of the men in the church today are ex-cons who came to know Christ either in prison or afterwards because of Pastor Milton. This man is fearless when it comes to witnessing. I'll talk more about it later.

The service started out with a beautiful prayer from Milton. At least that's how it seemed to me. I only caught words and phrases of it. It was certainly heartfelt though. Then the praise team kicked it off with a fairly rousing song. It's actually a praise and worship song I've sang in the States, but I don't remember the title off of the top of my head. They sang a couple of other songs were one's I've heard as well, but I didn't remember most of the lyrics. They also sang several songs I'd never heard before. For those, Karen would translate them for me so I had a good idea what was being sung. Even for the songs I didn't know, it was a very energetic and worshipful experience. The leader of the praise team was Lilly, Milton's wife.

Lilly, dressed in a green shirt, leading worship

There was a drummer from Haiti and two guys playing guitars—one acoustic and one electric. There were several other singers as well. Most of the songs were about the power of God. They talked about how He has been victorious over Satan and how we need not fear with God on our side. They also talked about how God knows our needs and sees our fears, and how He will continue to care for us. These are a poor summary of the main themes, but it gives a good idea.

During the singing part of the service, and elderly couple came in and sat beside me. The woman was very short and had trouble walking, and the man had hearing aids and seemed to get around a bit better. Karen leaned over to me and explained that they are 87 years old, and newlyweds who have been married for about a year. They live in the area, and had never gotten married. The reason for this is that to be married in a church is very expensive because tradition means that you have to have a large dinner for the families and the church. When the church found out about them, they went and witnessed to them and got them saved and coming to church. Then they raised the money so that they could have a wedding. Different people cooked food, made the wedding cake, and even bought the blushing bride a dress. Karen said it was a beautiful sight and that they were so cute during the wedding. I tried to get a picture of them together, but they switched places before I could snap one. Consequently, you can mainly see the husband. The little bit of gray hair in the background is his bride.


After a fairly lengthy praise time (which left me exhausted!), we moved to the sermon. As the children were heading to Sunday School, I realized just how many were there. There were far more than I had realized. Pastor Milton preached a dynamic sermon that covered quite a bit of ground. He talked about the power of God, and how with God nothing is impossible. A major prayer of his is to find some property where a larger church can be built so they can have more room to grow. He was praying for a building large enough for 500. Then he said God told him, "Why not 1000, or 12000!." I hear this from some pastors and just shake my head. With Pastor Milton, however, I was right behind him. I can believe it. He also said it's ridiculous that thousands will gather to hear a foreigner share about Jesus. He pointed out that everyone should be willing to witness and support their brothers and sisters. There's no reason thousands cant be lead to Christ by other Ecuadorians.

As an example of this, he talked about how he recently was able to preach to 80 people who were not Christians. I was wondering how this came about. It turns out the Lamberts wondered too, so they asked him after the service. He said that a woman in the church who lost her husband a year ago was approached by the husband's family about having a Mass for him on the anniversary of his death. His entire family is Catholic, but she and her husband are Christian. She didn't like this idea, so she talked to Pastor Milton about it. He suggested that they have a service at the church instead. She was not terribly enthusiastic about the idea at first, but she agreed in the end. They gathered pictures of her husband, and they put together a PowerPoint presentation of lots of pictures of him. They started the service with that to get everyone nice and emotional. Once that was over with, Pastor Milton started preaching to them. When he asked if there was anyone who didn't know Christ but wanted to, several raised their hand. Talk about being creative! None of these 80 had ever set foot in an Evangelical church before, and here they were listening to a sermon! This is a congregation that is certainly growing!

Danny, a four year old boy who was in Karen's VBS class

After the sermon on Sunday, we transitioned to the baptisms. Just 2-3 months ago, they baptized 11 people. The fact that they were having more people wanting to be baptized was quite exciting. Most churches here will wait for Jon and Karen to be available for them to do something like a baptism. This is not the case at Ofelia. They plan the service and notify the Lamberts that it will be taking place. They're welcome to come, but it's going to happen whether they can be there or not. Pastor Milton is willing to take initiative, and that's one of the reasons the church is growing so quickly.

Pastor Milton was particularly excited because they would be baptizing three couples. He's always excited to baptize a man or a couple because it means the men are making a major change in their life. Many men here treat their wives terribly. This is not acceptable for men in the church and it means that the family will be far better for it. Additionally, everyone who is baptized must take classes first. This is because virtually none of them have grown up in the church, and they don't fully understand the meaning of baptism. The also must be able to write and verbally give their testimony before they are baptized. They share their testimony in front of the congregation just before they are baptized.



Before the baptisms started, Pastor Milton prayed for all of the couples. He then prayed for all of those whose spouses were not yet Christians and baptized praying that they would become saved soon. Then it was onto the baptisms. He invited Jon and Karen to come up to the front so that they could pray with each individual after the were baptized. This was the first time he did not ask Jon to assist him with the baptisms. Rather, he had another man in the church assist him. It was exciting to see him utilizing leadership in the church for such a joyous occasion.


They started with the couples. Each couple was brought forward and he introduced them. Then each one shared their testimony and was baptized. Just as Pastor Milton went to dunk them, the praise band kicked it into high gear and led the congregation in yet another rousing song. The convert stood there until the end of the song at which point they stepped out of the water and hugged Pastor Milton. They then went to the Lamberts to have them pray with them. This continued until all 11 had been baptized. It was a service that was vastly different from any other I'd been too. In the U.S., we tend to treat baptisms as a very reverent event. At Ofelia, it's treated as a celebration. While it was very different, I really enjoyed the enthusiasm of it.

Pastor Milton giving the benediction

By the time the service was over, it was 1:00 (we had started at 9), and I was exhausted! I feel like I had a major workout. As I was thinking about it later, I started to realize that this is how we should be. Not in form, but in spirit. Worship at Ofelia was a celebration. There was a joy in worshiping the Lord. It was not something that was done because they have to, but because they want to. And this is not the only service of the week. They meet together every morning from 6:30 to 8:30 to pray. There's services on, I think, Wednesday and Friday nights. Saturday is a night of prayer that starts at 7:30 and continues as long as they feel led. While the service starts at 7:30 on Saturday, Pastor Milton is there at 12:00 to meet with people for counseling. He's a busy man. I'm beginning to see why they need a new location to worship. The problem is that there is very little available there that would be big enough. Milton has found one piece of property that is nearly half of a block. Currently, there is an oil and lube place there along with a four story building and 3 small houses that he has managed to locate. He even dreams of using the three houses as a type of half way house to get ex-cons back on their feet. The problem is that it's on a prime piece of property. The asking price is $500,000 USD. Pastor Milton doesn’t see this as a problem at all. He says that God will provide. I pray that He will, but the price seems insurmountable at the moment. It's my prayer that God will work a miracle and allow them to purchase the property.