An apostle’s prophecy, a dream of Moroni, and a temple announced decades later.

A few days ago, the church announced the Otavalo Ecuador temple. But do you really know the story behind the Otavalan saints? Because this story began nearly 60 years ago when Spencer W. Kimell stood on a hillside in Ecuador and saw something extraordinary. In the 1960s, missionaries in Ecuador struggled to reach the indigenous Kichua people near Otavalo. There were language barriers.

Rumors spread about the foreign missionaries and many people were hesitant to listen. Then in 1965, Elder Spencer W. Kimell visited Otavalo and urged the missionaries not to delay sharing the Book of Mormon with the indigenous people. 2 years later, he returned and preached to the Kichua people himself. Near the village of Paguche, a grassy hillside beside a road became a natural amphitheater.

Missionaries invited people getting off nearby buses to hear a living apostle of Jesus Christ. The crowd quickly grew. Spencer W. Kimell spoke about Jesus Christ visiting the Americas and about the sacred ancestry of the indigenous people. At one point, he stretched his hand toward the sky while describing the voice from heaven announcing the appearance of the son of God in the Book of Mormon.

Later, Kimell wrote, "Of all the meetings I've ever attended, none has ever quite eclipsed this one." He said, "The people watched the heavens so intently, it felt as though Christ himself might appear through the clouds." A local member later told me that during one of his visits, Kimble also prophesied that one day there would be a temple in Otavalo. And soon that gathering began changing lives.

And one of those lives was a young indigenous man named Raphael Tbango. Two sister missionaries taught him about the Book of Mormon and his Covenant ancestry. Raphael struggled to read Spanish and worried he would never fully understand the book and so he prayed. Then one night he dreamed of the angel Moroni who read passages from the Book of Mormon to him. Raphael was baptized in 1968 and became the first indigenous Otavalan Latter-day Saint.

He later helped translate the Book of Mormon into Kichua and helped build the church among his own people. Less than 15 years later, Otavalo became the first stake in South America made up almost entirely of indigenous members and Raphael Tabongo became its first patriarch. Then just a few days ago, the church officially announced the Otavalo Ecuador temple. For many members in Otavalo, it felt like the fulfillment of a promise spoken decades earlier on a hillside in Paguche.

Today, Ecuador has nearly 280,000 Latter-day Saints and now three temples either operating or announced.