(Sept. 19, 2014 - by Ruth Pike)  If you were to travel from the mountain town of Mariana de Jesús to the jungle community of Washintza in Ecuador you could hardly believe you were in the same country. Not only would you have to go on an airplane to make the journey, but you’d also experience dramatic changes in climate, culture and language.

High in the Andes, overlooking rolling fields of maize, the community of Mariana de Jesús in Ecuador’s Bolívar province is more than a 1½-hour drive from the nearest supermarket. Most of the people there are farmers, living on a diet rich in corn, beans and rice and making a living by selling their produce at the local market. Some are native Quichua speakers, and although they are conversant in Spanish in public settings, they usually speak Quichua among themselves.

A five-hour drive from Mariana de Jesús takes you to Shell in Ecuador’s Pastaza province and a further half-hour flight to the jungle community of Washintza. The climate there is much more humid and farming is purely subsistence.

The women grow plantain and yucca (cassava) while the men go out hunting and fishing. A core part of daily life is drinking chicha, an alcoholic beverage made from fermented yucca by the women. Shuar is the mother tongue for the majority of people, but Spanish is also spoken as a second language.

Separated by language, culture and geographical distance, the people of Mariana de Jesús and Washintza have never met one another. Yet, contrary to appearance, they had much in common. Both communities needed clean water, and both needed the gospel.

Mariana de Jesús Project

“Mariana de Jesús is a community in one of the most under-reached parts of Ecuador,” said Reach Beyond working visitor engineer Stephen Pike. “There is no evangelical church in the nearest town, Chillanes, so witness in this region is key.”

The community had been promised houses and water if they purchased land, but after scraping together money to buy a small plot of land, promises were never met. Some managed to build houses, but they lacked a clean water source.

“There wasn’t any place to get clean water,” explained resident Fanny Agualongo who was forced to fetch water from a river that she described as “dirty with ducks swimming in it.”

The community of Mariana de Jesús learned about Reach Beyond through veteran missionary nurse Martha Craymer and asked for help with a water project. They were so motivated that they completed their water system within five months (six weeks of cumulative work), carrying heavy sacks of gravel and sand down a hill for the spring protection and digging 500 meters (1,600 feet) of trenches for the gravity-flow distribution system which carries water to their homes.

“We are happy because water is here now,” said Mariana de Jesús Treasurer Lorenzo Sánchez.

“On behalf of all of our community, thank you,” added Agualongo. “We are grateful to you.”

In August the residents celebrated the inauguration of their water system with a ribbon-cutting ceremony followed by a meal with chicken soup and fritada (traditional dish of fried pork) and speeches from Reach Beyond, government and community representatives.

During the water project, Craymer had given lessons on hygiene combined with short reflections on the Gospel of John while Pike had prayed each day before work commenced, explaining how water was a gift from God.

“While the water project is complete, we pray that God’s Holy Spirit would continue to work within the hearts of the people of Mariana de Jesús,” said Pike. “That He would bring them to know Jesus, the living water.”

Washintza Project

Similarly, the jungle people of Washintza lacked clean water and a relationship with Jesus. Prior to the water project, a study conducted by Reach Beyond revealed that more than 80 percent of the community had parasites and nearly two-thirds had worms as a result of drinking dirty water and practicing poor hygiene.

“We wanted to have a water project because we have never seen … and we have never been able to drink safe water,” said Alberto Shakai, president of Washintza’s water committee.

The water project in Washintza kicked off with the implementation of latrines and spring protection in 2011 together with hygiene teaching that continued throughout the project.

However, work on the water system was set back by reduced flow in the protected spring and milky water, thought to result from the building of a new school in the catchment where water was collected.

In 2013 work resumed to protect a new spring for the community and complete the distribution system, pump house and collector tank. In July 2014 the water project was complete. The community is making plans to inaugurate their new system officially.

“The community is super excited and has grown in many areas,” said Wim de Groen, Reach Beyond’s director of water projects in Ecuador.

“The people of Washintza had heard the gospel but they’d never received it in their hearts,” he related. “We had the privilege to share with them what God has done in our lives, and we began to work with a Cuban pastor who started a church in Washintza.”

By the end of the project in Washintza, church services were not just led by foreigners. “When we go to Washintza now we go to church on a Wednesday night,” said de Groen, “to a Shuar service led by the community president and his sons.”

Source: Reach Beyond