An Amazing Kingdom Story!

I just got off the phone talking to our family friend who lives in the jungles of Ecuador.  You may recall us telling about Manuela Grefa, the Quichua Indian woman who was a part of our family for 19 of our years in Ecuador.  Our boys still refer to her as “Tia” or “Aunt.”

Manuela and Carl circa 1987

Tia ‘Uela (as the boys call her) and I have a standing monthly phone call.  She hikes or rides a rickety bus to the nearest town with a phone (no internet or cell coverage where she lives!) and hires a phone to call me!  We quickly share prayer requests, news and pray together—just long enough for what she can afford.

This month during our talk, I wept for joy!

A little background.  Manuela grew up near Shandia where Jim and Elizabeth Elliot served and established a church before he and four other men were martyred for trying to take the gospel into the Waorani tribe (formerly known as Auca) in January of 1955.  When Manuela was a little girl, she was bitten by a poisonous snake walking home through the over-grown jungle from school one day.  For ten days she hovered between life and death. During those ten days, Elizabeth Elliot sat by her side in the humble hut that Manuela’s family called home and kept the little girl alive!

When God sent Manuela to me, she was an adult.  Our 19 years together were not always easy—it was a true discipleship relationship—Glen and I watched her grow in her faith and maturity in the Lord.  

Now, at retirement age, Manuela has almost nothing to call her own. The wooden structure she has been living in is literally rotting in the jungle humidity.  She lives off a few donations from the States and the crops she can harvest from a plot of land she inherited from her father.  Today she told me that she had led by God to donate one of her plots of land to the church she has been attending.  She cried as she told me that her dream has been to build a church!  The church building is nearly finished and the inauguration is around the corner.  It won’t be like anything here in the US, probably a tin roof, with wooden beams for supports and plywood sides. She told me that she has never been happier as she watches her big dream come to reality.  

Manuela has the gift of evangelism.  She has led over 800 people to Christ since we left Ecuador!  She and the pastor go out every Thursday, leading people to Christ in the vicinity around the new church. She says there is a resurgence of interest in the gospel.  God is using her to populate the new church!

When Elizabeth Elliot last visited Ecuador, she was deeply saddened to see that the church she and Jim built had fallen into disrepair.  Now, the little girl that she kept alive all those years ago, is being used of God to build a church in the same area!

God’s ways are mysterious!  As I write this, my heart is full of thanks and gratitude to Him for the small part He allows us to play in His big plan!