Ecuador sends more bananas around the world than any other country. Today we are asking God for something better than fruit — for every one of its people to know Jesus.
Ecuador sits on the west side of South America, and it is named after the equator — the imaginary line around the middle of our planet. You can stand with one foot in the north half of the world and one foot in the south half, in the same place, on the same day.
Inside one small country — about the size of the United Kingdom — there are four completely different worlds:
Hot, green and flat. This is where the banana farms grow, and where the big ships load up in Guayaquil.
Mountains so high the tops are always snowy. Quito, the capital, sits up here in the clouds.
Thick rainforest and huge rivers. Some families here live days away from the nearest road.
Islands far out in the ocean, full of giant tortoises, sea lions and birds with bright blue feet.
Ecuador has a mountain called Chimborazo. Because the Earth is a little bit squashy and bulges out at the equator, the top of Chimborazo is the spot on the whole planet that is farthest from the centre of the Earth — so it is the closest place on land to outer space.
Most Ecuadorians speak Spanish. But Ecuador is also home to 14 indigenous nations — peoples who were living in these mountains and forests long before anyone arrived from Europe — and they still speak their own languages today.
In Spanish: ¡Hola! — OH-lah
In Kichwa, the biggest indigenous language: Alli puncha — AH-yee POON-cha, "good day"
Thank you in Kichwa: Yupaychani — yoo-pie-CHAH-nee
And in Ecuador a sweet banana is not called plátano — it's a guineo!
Children in the Andes often wear thick knitted hats and ponchos because it gets cold at night, even though the country sits on the equator. Lots of families keep guinea pigs — not as pets, but as dinner. In the high town of Otavalo, families are famous all over the world for weaving beautiful cloth, and children learn to weave from their grandparents.
Panama hats are not from Panama. They have always been woven in Ecuador — they just got their name because people bought them while travelling through Panama. That's the hat in our Andes costume!
Six things you probably didn't know about the world's favourite fruit.
Ecuador also grows some of the best cacao in the world — the bean that chocolate is made from. And a huge number of the roses sold in shops on Valentine's Day were grown high up in the Ecuadorian Andes, then flown across the ocean.
Green bananas get squashed flat and fried into crunchy patacones, or mashed into a ball called bolón for breakfast. There's llapingachos (cheesy potato pancakes), encebollado (a fish soup people eat to start the day), and locro de papa, a thick potato soup with avocado on top.
Listen for the rondador, a row of bamboo pipes you blow across, and the fast happy drumbeat of sanjuanito music at festivals. Ecuador's own slow, sad-sweet love songs are called pasillos.
Family matters enormously in Ecuador. Grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins often live close by or in the same house, Sunday is for eating together, and nearly everybody plays or watches fútbol.
Almost everybody in Ecuador has heard the name of Jesus. Most Ecuadorians are Roman Catholic. Evangelical churches were tiny a hundred years ago and are now growing fast, especially in the Andes highlands and the Amazon. Here are three moments in that story.
In Quito, a small team switched on a 200-watt radio transmitter — weaker than a lightbulb-sized speaker today — and called it HCJB, "The Voice of the Andes." It was the first missionary radio station in the world. Long before the internet, farmers high in the mountains who could not read heard about Jesus in their own language, out of a box on the table. It grew and grew, and eventually broadcast around the whole planet.
Deep in the Amazon lived the Waorani people. Five young missionaries — Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming and Roger Youderian — landed a small plane on a river sandbank to meet them. The Waorani, who had learned to fear outsiders, killed all five men.
Then something almost nobody expected happened. Elisabeth Elliot, one of the widows, and Rachel Saint, one of the sisters, went and lived among the very people who had done it. They learned the language. They stayed. Many Waorani chose to follow Jesus, and years later some of the men who had killed the missionaries baptised Nate Saint's own children in that same river. Today Waorani believers lead their own churches.
Ecuador is no longer only a place missionaries go to. Ecuadorian churches now train and send their own missionaries — to their own Amazon, to their neighbours across South America, and beyond. Ecuadorian believers are also translating the Bible into languages that have never had it.
Older books call the Waorani the "Auca." That was never their name — it was an insult in someone else's language, meaning "savage." They call themselves Waorani, which simply means "the people." Using someone's real name is one of the first ways we can love them.
When we say a people group is "unreached," we don't mean nobody has ever told them about Jesus. We mean there is no strong church among them, in their own language, big enough to keep telling the story without help from outside.
Ecuador has thousands of churches. But some peoples are very small, very far away, or newly arrived — and they are still waiting.
The Sápara people number only a few hundred, and their language is nearly gone — a handful of elders still speak it. The Andoa, Shiwiar, Siona, Secoya and Cofán peoples are also small, spread out along rivers, and days of travel from any city. Very few churches anywhere speak their languages.
The Kichwa are the largest indigenous people of Ecuador, and they are not one group but many — Otavalo, Salasaca, Cañari, Saraguro, Puruhá and more, each with their own way of speaking. Many now follow Jesus. Others still have no Bible, no songs and no church in the exact words they speak at home.
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan families have moved to Ecuador in recent years, many of them walking most of the way, looking for safety and work. Many are living far from home with very little. Ecuadorian churches are trying to welcome and feed them — and they need help.
The numbers on this page are rounded and simplified for children. For current, detailed figures on Ecuador's people groups, look up Ecuador on the Joshua Project or in Operation World.
Read one out loud. You don't need special words — God is already listening.
Every time someone prays, tap the button and drop a banana in.
No bananas in the crate yet
Your count is saved only on this phone — nobody else can see it.
Ecuador ships more bananas than anyone. Around 1 in every 3 bananas traded in the world comes from here.
The mountain range that runs down the whole country — with a llama, a river, a little house, and a real Ecuadorian hat.
"How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news."Isaiah 52:7