The Republic of Ecuador is located between Colombia and Peru in South America. It is one of the smallest countries in this part of the world at 283,561 sq km (this includes the Galapagos Islands), and its capital city is Quito.
This country, which main language is Spanish, like many other places around the world, is filled with interesting facts about its people, economy, culture and many more.
The following are just a few examples of such.
US Currency
For many years, that is from 1884 – 2000, the Sucres was this country's legal currency and its most recent bank notes ranged from 5 to 50,000, with various colors such as orange and green, red and black as their main colors which helped in the distinguishing of the notes.
Eloy Alfaro, Dr. Eugenio de Santa Cruz Espejo and Antonio Jose de Sucre are just a few of the predominant people whose faces were printed on these bills. Whereas, the coins ranged from 5 centavos (1946) to 1000 Sucres in 1997.
However, due to problems in the economy, according to Wikipedia, on the 7th January 2000, 25,000 Sucres was equal to 1 US dollar. Two days later, the President of that time stated that the US dollar would soon become Ecuador's legal currency.
On March 13th 2000, this was realized and on the 11th September 2000, the Sucre was no longer the legal currency here. Yes, in the year 2000, the US dollar became this country's legal currency.
However, while the notes are strictly the US dollar the coins, although they range in 1, 5, 10, 25 and 50 cents and has the same weight and size as the US ', they have Ecuador's personalities on them. Therefore, they are only "valuable" here, neverheless, American coins are accepted here.
Provinces
There are twenty-four provinces in this country, whereas, in countries that are vastly larger that it, has about half of this total. In fact, the entire country is about the size of the state of Nevada, in America.
Philip James Elliot
Many people would be more familiar with the name Jim Elliot than with Philip James Elliot. Neverheless, we are talking about the same person here. He was born on the 8th October 1927 in America and in 1952 he went to this country as a Christian missionary to peach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people there. While he was there, he and Elizabeth Howard were married in the capital city Quito, on the 8th October 1953, on his birthday.
In 1956, when he and four other missionaries were trying to reach the Waodani people with the Christian message, on the 8th January they were killed by a group of Waodani people. He was 28 years old.
Before they were killed, they were able to communicate with a few of the people, however, according to Billy Graham Center Archives, one of these "friendly" people told his people, that these visitors were going to eat them and that is why the group had attacked and killed them.
About three years after their death, Jim Elliot's widow and Nate Saint, who was the pilot in the group, his sister Rachel Saint went to live with the Waodani's and as a result of this continued reaching out, many of this group of people turned to Christianity.
In fact, one of Nate Saint's sons, whose story is told in the film, End of The Spear shares a close relationship with one of the people who had attacked his father and the others.