A year ago, the first 15 students graduated from Quichua Bible School, the first Pentecostal Bible school for the Quichua in Ecuador. Ultimately, Quichua will train their own people at the AG school. Quichua must study with Spanish texts because materials are not available in Quichua. The students are all bilingual in order to work in Spanish-speaking Ecuador. Carolyn Orr, who began translating Scriptures into Quichua in 1954 for Wycliffe Bible Translators, notes that there are eight Quichua dialects in Ecuador alone, five in the mountains and three in the jungle.
Complete Bibles are available only in two of the dialects.
The dialects are dissimilar enough to be not understood by outsiders, especially for those who do not have a long history of a written language and for whom sixth grade is the average education level attained. Before the Bible school in Riobamba opened, only half a dozen Quichua received training from the denomination's Bible schools in Quito and Guayaquil, both four hours away. There are now 31 Quichua AG congregations. Denominational Differences another critical element for the successful missionary outreach among the Quichua has been the willingness of the Quichua to accept responsibility for supporting themselves and responding to community needs. But despite the spread of churches, the fledgling fellowships also have inherited a legacy of denominational division that began with the earliest missions activity in the region.