A few years ago, LDS church member Carolina S. Allen had the idea of starting an interfaith women’s organization dedicated to empowering women to actively represent perspectives of faith, family, and motherhood. She named the organization Big Ocean, to represent the power of collective action and voice – each wave may be small, but together we shape the world. The organization took as its tenets the Young Women values and adapted them for an interfaith and international audience. The group is active in holding local cottage meetings where women come together to become educated on global trends, talk about the organization’s tenets, and practice engaging in civil dialogue. Also central to the mission is being actively involved in global conversations around issues that affect women, and to that end, Big Ocean has been attending and presenting at United Nations conferences and meetings.

In October, I (along with seven other Big Ocean women) traveled to Ecuador to participate in the historic United Nations Habitat III meetings, dedicated to the topic of sustainable development. We hosted a panel titled “Engaging Critical Populations in Environmental Sustainability: People of Faith, Women and Girls, and Indigenous Families” and we had a panelist talk about each one of those topics. We were delighted and surprised as the room filled up with a diverse audience, including many indigenous community leaders. It was a humbling experience to be in their company.

Two of those in attendance were Anita and Magdalena who had traveled over 90 hours from their villages in the Amazon to come to the Habitat III meetings and try and get help for their communities. In talking to them after the presentation, Vilma Molina Sagebin, one of our team members, found out that (like us) their hotel reservations had been sold out from under them and they had nowhere to stay. Their plan was to sleep in the city park that night. After a quick consultation, we invited them to come and stay with us in the guesthouse we had been so fortunate to find, which was about 90 minutes away from the Quito city center. And so our Habitat III party grew by two. They stayed with us the rest of that day and traveled with us on our mini-bus out to the small town of Guayllabamba. Our hosts at the guesthouse, President Luis and Sister Nedy Ayala (of the Quito North Mission Presidency) graciously made up another room for Anita and Magdalena so they would be comfortable.

That evening, we asked them to share with us a bit about themselves. Anita told us her astonishing story. Anita’s village is so deep into the Amazon that it is only accessible by bush plane. When she was a child, some Christian missionaries came to her village, and left them with a book. It was a Bible. But no one in the village could read or write or speak Spanish (they speak a dialect of Kichwa) so the book remained unopened and a great source of curiosity to Anita. She desperately wanted to know what was the meaning of that book. So, when she was 12 years old, she convinced a friend to leave the village with her. The two girls set off and for five days they traveled alone through the Amazon with no food or supplies. They arrived safely in the nearest town, but had no way to communicate back to their parents. Anita said that her parents had no idea “if we were alive or if we had been eaten by a snake.” Anita spent the next seven years going to school, learning to speak the Spanish language and finally learning to read and write. At age 19, she went back to her village, was reunited with her family, and became a community leader there — now able to share her knowledge and serve as a liaison between her community and the outside world. She was also finally able to read the book that had been left behind so many years before.

After hearing Anita’s story we asked if we could share another book with them. Our hosts, the Ayalas, kindly tracked down two copies of the Book of Mormon in Spanish for us to share with Anita and Magdalena. We shared with them the story of how this book had changed our lives and how the desire to understand the meaning of this book had sustained us through our own difficult journeys. They graciously accepted not only our book, but also our friendship and our admiration. When we parted with them a few days later, we stood in a circle around them and sang, “God Be With You ’Til We Meet Again.” It was then, and only then, that we saw these beautiful, brave and stoic women show the emotion we all felt as tears streamed down their faces and we all hugged and bid one another farewell. I think we all had the sense that we may not meet again in this lifetime, but the moments we did have together were beautiful and even holy. God be with you ’til we meet again, dear friends.

Photographs:

Top (left to right): Erika Decaster, Magdalena, Vilma, Anita. They are holding Days for Girls reusable feminine hygiene kits, handmade by Relief Society sisters in Utah. We distributed over 700 kits while in Ecuador.

Middle (left to right): Anita, Erika, & Magdalena after the presentation. Their faces are painted symbolically. Anita’s represents all points coming together in honor of Habitat III, and Magdalena’s is the back of the boa constrictor, the symbol of her people, whom she called “the people from the East.”

Bottom (left to right): Magdalena, Erika, and Anita on the morning we parted ways. We wrote our testimonies in the books and marked our favorite passages and they gifted each one of us with beautiful handmade jewelry and pottery made in their villages.