HCJB Mission in Ecuador

HCJB Radio Station In Quito

Quito, Ecuador has been home to Bruce and Cherith Rydbeck for thirty years as missionaries to the capital city and rural communities in the Andes mountains. Before them Cherith’s parents served as missionaries in Ecuador as far back as the 1950’s.

The Rydbeck’s parent mission organization, HCJB Global, is now over 80 years old and now has a presence in 100 countries.  Their stated vision is “To partner with Christians in media and healthcare to bring the voice and hands of Jesus to the unreached peoples of the world.”

They believe in serving Christ by helping the poorest of the poor improve their overall health while bringing them the Gospel through media, water projects, and health/wellness training.

Bruce Rydbeck, a civil engineer who has worked all over the world, manages their clean water projects in Ecuador, providing the expertise while the host communities provide most of the labor. Materials are either donated or provided by the communities or other charities, sometimes with the help of the Ecuadorean government. These are typically projects for indigenous Indians, generally considered the lowest social class in Ecuador.

HCJB Global runs Hospital Vozandes-Quito

The Rydbeck’s periodically welcome mission teams from supporting Churches in the United States. The teams bring goods and goodwill from home,  get involved to a varying extent with the work projects, and help minister in the communities. Together they bond with the community for a short time, bringing God’s love along with a great project. According to Cherith and Bruce, it means a great deal for these people to see westerners come and work alongside them and treat them as brothers and sisters in Christ. Many of the people may have never seen a westerner before.

By the time we arrived in Quito, we had taken a three hour flight from Boston to MIami, then a four hour stopover, then a four hour flight to Quito. With travel to and from the airports we had been traveling 13 hours by that point and were trying to adjust to the nearly 10,000 foot elevation. Clearly we needed a day or two to adjust before making the four hour trip to our destination in the mountains.

Bruce and Cherith were great hosts! Bruce is a very knowledgeable person, and took us around Quito visiting important sites. Cherith was the primary organizer, who made sure we had clean, healthy food to eat. When we were in Quito, we generally ate at their house or a restaurant that was pre-screened for cleanliness by Cherith. She is an excellent cook and made us feel right at home; so much so that she immediately put us to work!

Cotopaxi near Quito is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world

After viewing some of the charitable efforts of HCJB in Quito including the hospital, our group from Free Christian Church began preparations for a four hour trip into the Andes. Our destination was the community of Yana Cocha (black lake) where Bruce was about to begin an ambitious effort to contain a spring and bring clean water to around 100 homes built into two separate very steep hillsides.

Communities that want a clean water project make a request to HCJB and commit the labor necessary to build it. They also know that it may take time to raise the funds for the materials and other expenses for the project. Typically the trenches are hand dug, and most of the work is done “the old fashioned way”. Labor is cheap and readily available, while money and heavy equipment is largely unavailable. 

Having started to adjust to the culture and high altitude, we were ready to move on to a more rural part of the Andes.