A couple of weeks ago, Luke Kanagy made me a latte in my childhood kitchen.

I grew up in Ecuador, where my dad* was an MAF pilot for 22 years. I hadn’t been inside that house since my family left Shell in 1991. As Luke, a pilot and mechanic, and his wife, Jaalah, showed me around, everything felt smaller than I remembered.

As a child, I used to watch troops of monkeys swing through the trees from our dining room table. Today, much of the dense jungle vegetation has been cut back. The old water cistern and generator house still stand, but the wooden house where I lived as a toddler succumbed to jungle rot and had to be torn down. The Nate Saint Memorial School, where I attended elementary school, is no longer a school; its buildings now serve as offices for various ministries.

Just as the physical space has changed, so has MAF’s work in Ecuador. Today, most of the missionaries and church workers flying with MAF are Ecuadorian rather than foreign, as are the majority of the hangar staff. This shift reflects the growth and maturity of the Ecuadorian church—evidence of decades of mission work bearing fruit.

I was in Ecuador to help document spiritual transformation in one of the communities that MAF serves. I flew out of Shell in an MAF Cessna 206, headed for Kusutka, alongside Diego and Anavela Ushiña—missionaries who have been serving there for over 18 years.

Kusutka, a Shuar community, is home to a thriving church. We met believers who had walked two to three hours from their villages to attend the church gathering—people who had come to faith through the Ushiñas’ discipleship. Many of them are now sharing the gospel in their own communities.

Much has changed in Ecuador’s Amazon region in 30 years. Yet some things remain the same—like the view of the blue-tinged Andes rising behind the MAF hangar in Shell. More importantly, our unchanging God remains constant, along with His call to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Mission Aviation Fellowship is a faithful partner of The Bolick Foundation.