Heppner Gazette-Times, Heppner, Oregon Wednesday, March 13, 1H I - THREE
Pastor Benjamin helps build chapel in Ecuador
Larry Benjamin
There are volunteers, and then
there ate volunteers.
Pastor Larry Benjamin of the
Nazarene Church of Heppner not
only endured missed planes, long
hours of waiting and a bout with
dysentery to help build a chapel in
Ecuador, but his church paid for the
privilege of him doing it.
Benjamin left Heppner in mid-
January for a two-week stint on a
“ work and witness” team in
Ecuador. The team was comprised
of 41 people, 33 pastors and eight of
their wives. Getting to Ecuador pro
ved to be the first hurdle-every
flight was late. Benjamin left
Spokane an hour late on a flight to
Chicago. From Chicago he flew to
Miami and was scheduled to fly
from Miami to Quito, the capital of
Ecuador. But, the plane had pro
blems with the landing gear and his
team was forced to switch planes.
The pilot of the chartered plane,
how ever, believed that his
passengers were already in Ecuador
and his mission was to bring them
back to the States. He was finally
contacted somewhere over Cuba. In
the meantime the team members got
word that war had broken out in the
Gulf. Benjamin said that one of the
pastors had a son in the Middle East
and most everyone else had people
there. He said they got very little in
formation about the war at first,
because they had only a small por
table radio.
The team finally took off for
E cuador-12 hours late. En route,
however, the captain of their plane
informed them that because they had
taken off so late, they would be
unable to land in Quito, because the
Quito airport closes at 11 p.m. Ben
jamin said that the 11 p.m. closure
is projjably because the elevation at
Quito is 10.000 feet, and Quito is
surrounded by higher mountains.
“ You don’t work fast there because
of the altitude," said Benjamin. “ It’s
really easy to run out of air.”
The team landed at Guayaquil a
seaport city by a bay, and then
traveled to Quito, where they spent
about a week building a chapel.
Besides their work for the church,
the team was able to tour a little of
Ecuador, which ranges from desert
which was "much driver than Hepp
ner” with cactus six to eight feet tall
to areas with palm trees to equatorial
jungle. (The Spanish word for
equator, is equador, he noted.) The
group took a tour down the Amazon
in a'canoe, visited a preserve with
monkeys, was offered a chance to
hold a live boa constrictor-which
Benjamin turned down, and watch
ed natives mine for gold. Some of
the Ecuadorian people looked very
Hispanic, while others very Indian.
Benjamin said that many of the
natives were descendents of the
Aztec especially farther back in the
jungle, and some spoke no Spanish,
but only Indian dialects. The people
there were very short, with some of
the taller ones reaching only five
feet.
A six-foot-six pastor travelling
with the group on a shopping trip
aroused much curiosity on behalf of
the Ecuadorian people.
The inflation rate in Ecuador was
so bad that the people no longer use
metal coins. Benjamin said that the
exchange rate was 940 sucres, (the
Ecuadorian dollar) to one American
dollar when they arrived, but had
risen to 1.040 sucres to one dollar
when they left. He said it was dif
ficult getting used to prices, with
items in the shops priced in the
thousands. The biggest bill was
5,0(Xf sucres. He said that the
average weekly wage in Ecuador
was $14 a week.
During his stay there, the mission
team stayed most of the time in mis
sion compounds, except for a few
trips during which they stayed in
motels. The missionaries who hosted
the teams were very protective of
their visitors as far as the food they
encountered and warned them
against eating anything except food
that*was prepared by missionaries
them«<(.ves. Benjamin said that street
vendors sell food which is served on
regular plates, rather than
disposables. The plates however,
were not sanitized, but were dipped
in a bucket of water in between
customers. When team members did
eat but, the missionaries tried to
scrupulously check the restaurants
ahead of time. Unfortunately the
missionaries were incorrect on one-
-the last night the group was in
Ecuador they were taken to a “ real
ly elaborate restaurant, with the
waiters in tuxes and music,” and
Benjamin ended up with dysentery.
The food in Ecuador was not Mex
ican, said Benjamin and was not too
much different than that in the U.S.
Chicken and pig were the main
meats, but the Ecuadorians “ didn’t
have all the desserts and sweets.”
Rice was a staple. Vegetable markets
were set up much like carnivals, he
said, with booths and meat was often
hung out in the open air with no
refrigeration. An encounter with a
roasted pig head in a meat market,
proved to be very unappetizing.
Because the water was so bad the
Americans drank Coke, Fanta
Orange, Sprite and mineral water out
of bottles. Diet Coke was very hard
to come by, he said. Dysentery is
common there, and the missionaries
said they expected to get it once or
twice a month, despite precautions.
The regulations on medicines in the
U.S. do not exist in Ecuador and
medicines can be purchased over the
counter without prescriptions. One
man became so ill while in Ecuador
that a doctor had to be called. The
doctor, however, just handed the
man a packet with a syringe and then
left, expecting the man to inject his
own medicine.
The major modes of transporta
tion, besides walking, are cars, taxis,
and city buses, which travel into the
country as well as the city. “ We
don’t know what a crowded bus is,”
In lower class housing areas, the
houses were made of bamboo with
thatched roofs, then bamboo with
galvanized metal roofs, then cinder
block and from then on the size of
the house reflected social position.
A lot of the poorer homes were as
small as 10 feet square. And it was
common to see eight or 10 children
in such a home, Benjamin said. He
said that Guayaquil has large “ inva
sion areas” or slums of bamboo
shacks which were thrown up by the
very poor and then tom down by the
police. When the police get tired of
tearing the shacks down the squat
ters claim the property. The inva
sions are so large in Guayaquil that
the real population is undetermined.
“ Electrical service in Ecuador is
very unreliable,” said Benjamin,
said Benjamin, commenting that it
is nothing to see people standing in
the aisles and doors of buses. The
top of one bus, he said was com
pletely covered with chicken boxes.
The mission teams were transported
mostly by bus and Surburbans.
While the Ecuadorian population
is predominantly Catholic, the Mor
mon faith is relatively strong and the
Nazarenes “ are coming along. ” The
church population is growing faster
than the number of churches and lay
people are often ministers. Benjamin
said he saw 10 church buildings that
had been built by different mission
teams. The buildings and upper class
houses there are made of cinder
block and stucco, and even the
power poles were made of cement.
»;»**!*.v ‘ i 'V
re. f .
I
with voltage ranging from 173 to
218 on which is supposed to be 220
volts.
If the houses had any heat, it was
supplied by a fire place. The climate
in the desert was, of course hot and
dry, but Guayaquil was hot and
humid and Quito was cool in the
morning, but warm in the afternoon
Benjamin’s trip back “ was very
uneventful, almost a letdown,” Jje
said. The worst didn’t come,
however, until he had arrived home
and had a reaction to the medidhe
he had been given in Ecuador for his
dysentery.
‘
* *
^
A dinner is planned at the Church
of the Nazarene April 7 at which
time Benjamin will show slides of his
trip.
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