Paralyzed girl healed at the Guayaquil Ecuador Temple.
In the early days of the Guayaquil Ecuador Temple, a fifteen year old girl from Esmeraldas was brought in by ambulance, paralyzed after a life-threatening injury at school. Doctors had done what they could.
A paralyzed 15-year-old girl told her father, "Take me to the temple. This week, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that a new temple will be built in Otavalo, Ecuador. For Latter-day Saints, temples are not just buildings. They are sacred ground. And one family in Ecuador knows that better than most. Anizetto Sosa Quinones was one of the first members of the church in Esmeraldis, Ecuador.
When his 15-year-old daughter suffered a life-threatening injury at school, she was left completely paralyzed. She was transferred to a clinic in Guakill, but the treatments weren't working. Doctors began pushing the family toward more experimental procedures. But the girl had other plans. She told her father she didn't want the procedures. "The Lord just called to me," she said.
He waits at the temple to heal me. The Guayakil Ecuador temple had just been dedicated. The first temple in Ecuador 17 years in the making. And this young girl believed with her whole heart that healing was waiting for her there. An ambulance driver agreed to take her. And when they arrived, her father and the driver carried her to the temple grounds near the fountains. And then Anizetto watched his daughter kneel down, kiss the ground, and rise to her feet.
She testified that the Lord had come to her, that she had felt his embrace, and that he had healed her. The Latter-day Saints of Ecuador have always been a people of deep and quiet faith. From the earliest days of the church in the Andes to this week's announcement of a temple in Otavalo, their story is one of patience, sacrifice, and miracles that can happen on sacred ground.
