Ecuador's soldiers and sailors hear about Jesus from staff member Alfredo Figueroa.
The man's steely, direct stare doesn't intimidate Alfredo Figueroa, nor does the crisp, white uniform and shiny, black shoes—adornments of Ecuador's prestigious navy. Instead, Alfredo shakes hands with the seasoned serviceman, Padilla Canchingre, and the two talk as equals.
Although skilled and trained for battle, many of Ecuador's 40,000 military personnel are ill-equipped for the home front—their families. Across Latin America, an estimated two-thirds of military marriages end in separation or divorce. "The military prepares us to kill people, not to give life," says Sgt. Luis Ardile, who works with the marines in Quito.
That's where Alfredo comes in. On this Friday night in the port city of Guayaquil, he and his wife, Amparo, staff members with Campus Crusade for Christ, will be training 10 navy couples like Padilla and his wife on how to have better marriages and family lives. Campus Crusade has been given unprecedented access in Ecuador to work with the military, and although Alfredo is an unlikely candidate for the job, he is now doing everything in his power to seize this opportunity.
It started when the Ecuadorian navy noticed a trend of increased divorces and declining marriages in their ranks, and after hearing about Alfredo's ministry with families, they turned to him for help.
"We need to build our marriages on a solid foundation," Alfredo tells the group that night, explaining that having a relationship with God is the key to having a successful marriage.
Much of the wisdom Alfredo, 45, relates is born from personal experience. When he talks about love, he often tells the story of how he first met his wife. Sitting in a prayer meeting in Quito 20 years ago, he was distracted when Amparo walked through the door. "She was like an angel," he says. They married a few years later.
Like most couples, they've had ups and downs in their marriage. They come from different cultures: Alfredo is from Honduras and Amparo is Ecuadorian, which added cross-cultural difficulty to their marriage. Then they lost their first baby to miscarriage, a pain Alfredo still says was unbearable. They eventually had three children, but health problems beset each one, including their eldest's several-week hospital stay because of asthma. These road bumps continually strained their relationship, but eventually brought them closer together.
Alfredo wants to help other couples weather life's difficulties, too.
After the military contacted him for help, Alfredo hosted a day-long conference in the fall of 2007, billed as "A Day to Remember," and 80 military couples showed up. The pressure was on, as the Navy officials waited to see if this civilian could deliver what they expected.
With a limited understanding of the military subculture, Alfredo felt out of his league. "The military is a very hierarchal society," says retired Maj. Gen. Bob Dees, the director of Campus Crusade's Military Ministry, which has a presence in 22 countries. "If you don't earn trust and confidence, you will be cut out in a heartbeat."
But the results of the conference helped Alfredo earn trust. A few months afterward, the navy documented decreases in divorce and domestic violence among the couples that attended. Soon they asked Alfredo to host conferences on additional bases, offering funding as well.
Part of what paved the way for these and other projects was approval from top leadership, bolstered by a retired general from Honduras, Rodolfo Interiano. He spoke to Ecuador's military on behalf of Campus Crusade during a visit a few years ago. As a result of this and other factors, the Ecuadorian military continues to seek help from Campus Crusade. For one project, they sent 20,000 DVDs to military families. Also, several leadership conferences have been allowed.
"We will do whatever we can to help a soldier's home environment," says Brig. Gen. Ruben Navia. "If a soldier can go home and have a supportive and restful environment, then he'll be a happier soldier and do a better job."
Campus Crusade also has staff members working with the military in the capital city of Quito, and Alfredo's work in Guayaquil with the navy sometimes overlaps the other two branches of Ecuador's small military, the army and air force. Yet Alfredo can't help but see his ministry with any military as ironic. Growing up as a troubled youth in Honduras, he was afraid of the local soldiers. One night, he and some of his friends were put in jail and several military men forced them to do push-ups and sit-ups all night long.
He laughs about the experience now, but he says it took time to not let a uniform intimidate him.
This past fall, Alfredo saw amazing results from the 11 conferences he held. More than 400 couples attended, and for many of them, the timing was crucial.
First Sgt. Vicente Vasquez and his wife, Catalina, were seriously considering divorce. Because of his telecommunications job on ships, sometimes Vicente must spend three weeks at sea. The separation strained an already troubled marriage, and, instead of talking through the problems, communication stopped. Then one day Vicente told Catalina he was falling out of love with her.
Vicente's supervisor heard of his troubles, and recommended they attend the Day to Remember in October. At the conference, Vicente and Catalina began learning more about communication, as well as how to rediscover their romance. Catalina says the conference saved their marriage. "In our human errors, we can become ignorant and not open to fixing things," says the 34-year-old. "If you don't see that there is a solution, how could you ever work things out?"
But Alfredo's work extends beyond just better marriages.
Through the spiritual content of the training, Alfredo says that at least 40 percent of the couples indicated that they made a decision to follow Christ. "It's not necessary to be a Christian to learn from this training," says Amparo, 49. "But we tell people it is very difficult to put the ideas into practice without Christ."
As the project continued to grow, Alfredo began training 13 different couples in how to lead HomeBuilders—a Bible study for couples—as a follow-up to the conferences.
The sky seemed the limit. But then Alfredo received a disturbing phone call in early November.
Due to a change in military leadership, the entire project was put in limbo. The new leader wouldn't necessarily approve of the project and could easily shut it down, showing just how fragile this access to the military could be.
Alfredo was tempted to stop the project completely, but instead he kept training leader-couples and working on conference materials, hopeful that the conferences would continue. Alfredo believed that he needed to seize this opportunity, to do everything in his power to make it work, meanwhile trusting God to make a way for it to continue.
"Humanly, this whole project has felt impossible," says Alfredo. "But God keeps taking us through step by step."
Then in early December, Alfredo received another phone call. The recently appointed leader, who had attended one of the conferences, enthusiastically approved the project. Soon Alfredo began planning and dreaming again, as the effort continued full steam ahead.
"My faith continues to grow as I see God work in this," says Alfredo.
While the project is still in the early stages, there is immense potential. "I have always prayed that God would give me a ministry so big that I would never be able to control it," says Alfredo. "Then I would realize that God is doing it, and not myself."
Ecuadorian military families continue to face battles on the home front. For their sake, Alfredo hopes the project will indeed become too big for him to control.
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