When Mennonite mission workers Jane and Jerrell Ross Richer first met Hiter Yiyoguaje of Zábalo, Ecuador, in 2016, he was almost alone in his faith.

Few people in the village were interested in singing hymns, reading the Bible, praying or holding church services.

Hiter, however, was determined to do these things. Each Sunday, he faithfully dusted off the chairs and swept the floor of the village’s little wooden church with open-air windows. There he and his wife and nine children prayed and sang until the Spirit led them to end with a prayer.

Hiter and the Ross Richers, who had been serving with Mennonite Mission Network in Ecuador since 2015, became friends on a spiritual journey.

They read the Bible together, went fishing and drank the local version of banana smoothies as they asked a simple question: “Where is God?”

The Ross Richers, whose home congregation is Waterford Mennonite Church in Goshen, Ind., had what they called a “two-way mission”: accompanying Indigenous communities and churches in the Amazon rain forest half the year and then returning to the United States, where they shared in schools and churches what they learned from brothers and sisters in Ecuador.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic put their assignment on hold. On April 17, 2020, the family — Jane, Jerrell and children Jordan, Naomi and Teresa — boarded an evacuation flight from Quito to the United States.

It was the beginning of the end of two-way mission as they had known it. For almost three years, they had only intermittent contact with some of their old neighbors in Zábalo.

Finally, in February 2023, they returned to their former home in Ecuador for the first time since the global pandemic. They found many changes, most notably this: Hiter and his family were no longer alone.

The once small Christian group at Zábalo had transformed into a thriving congregation, newly named Iglesia Evangélica Kansiañachu Tsa’khu ­(Living Water Evangelical Church).

Now the little wooden church sways with the weight of the whole village as worshipers gather each Sunday morning to sing praises to God.

Church leaders have emerged. Hiter and three others — including his brother Carlos, who had vehemently opposed the church just a few years before — give spiritual leadership to the Zábalo community and neighboring regions.

Church members travel to communities up and down the Aguarico River, holding all-night vigils, weeping with those who mourn, celebrating with those who rejoice and sharing testimonies of physical healings.

The Christian community in ­Zábalo can trace its origin to God’s intervention in Hiter’s life.

The descendant of shamans, or medicine men, Hiter was an heir to spiritual sensitivities, which he passed along to his children and grandchildren.

Afflicted by a long illness, Hiter sought a cure from Indigenous shamans and Western doctors. Eventually he was healed, not by traditional or modern medicine but miraculously, he believed. Both he and a traditional healer attributed this to Hiter’s God — the God of the Bible.

Hiter had learned of this God through the influence of a Christian couple but had never ­attended any church.

Following his recovery, Hiter committed himself to an active faith — serving the God of the Bible, following Jesus’ path and relying on the Holy Spirit for counsel — and worshiping with his family.

The little wooden church where they gathered each Sunday, a 20-minute walk from their home, had been built by a short-term mission team but never hosted regular worship services.

Despite his family’s support, Hiter felt alone in his faith. He invited the Ross Richers, who were in the third year of their two-way mission and had visited Zábalo briefly in 2015, to be his neighbors.

“When we entered the front door of the house Hiter built for us on the bank of the Aguarico River, we felt we had come home,” the Ross Richers recalled in a written report this year.

The two-story house, made of freshly cut lumber, sat about 100 yards from Hiter’s home.

“The house was a gift,” the Ross Richers wrote. “It was full of energy and laughter as children from every clan mingled and played — reading, eating and swinging in hammocks together.

“Sometimes, we heard the Bible being read on the solar-powered MP3 device or Hiter’s son Charles practicing guitar and singing praise songs.

“It is impossible to count the number of people who went in and out of the front door — sharing fruit or parts of animals, socializing, sharing dreams, reading the Bible together, asking questions or requesting counsel.

“It seemed that the house had been birthed for us, and we were its stewards, its caretakers for a time in the larger story of its mission.”

The house has new caretakers now. Hiter’s oldest daughter, Kendra, and her husband, Segundo, have moved in with their newborn daughter. The couple, who met at the Ninawachi Mission Institute, will put their education to use with the children and youth of the Zábalo church.

Observing the local Christian community’s remarkable progress — and grateful for all the ways that the people of the village shared so generously — the Ross Richers believe their time at Zábalo has come to an end.

“The Cofán of Zábalo, the river people, the guardians of the rainforest, helped us to raise our children,” the Ross Richers wrote. “Their children and ours grew up together, learning new ways of being community and of forging friendships across clan lines and cultural divides.

“From the youngest Yiyoguaje to the oldest Mendua (rival clans), we learned that our life is in communion with all life and that if we listen carefully, we can hear God whisper everywhere.”

Not all of the Ross Richers’ discoveries in Zábalo were good ones. They also found increased threats to the Cofán people and their way of life.

“The Ecuadorian rainforest continues to groan for salvation,” they wrote. “Violent conflict over natural resources threatens the Cofán people. We fear that friends of our children will be forced into drug trafficking as they yearn for economic opportunity and that the cries of their mothers and fathers will continue to be silenced by extractive industries and government interests.”

They had hoped to resume Learning and Fellowship Tours, which they led before the pandemic with MMN workers Peter and Delicia Wigginton-Bravo. But a surge in violence and illegal drug trafficking means that the tours, which would support a Zábalo ecotourism project, will have to wait.

Although their two-way mission is ending in its current form, the Ross Richers are waiting for where God will lead.

“Thanks to our friends in Zábalo,” they wrote, “and to all who have faithfully supported this work, we are more convinced now than ever that what gives hope is joining God in working for justice, loving mercy and walking humbly on this sacred Earth.”