(A. Santos, Guayaquil) More than 400 persons joined for the Covenant Celebration in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Ocotber 18^th, 1999. Many of them were persons who had received the Blessed Mother in a Pilgrim Shrine during the Schoenstatt October Mission: Our Lady to every parish.

The first part of our Covenant celebration took place in the Morning with a Eucharistic Celebration sponsoered by the the Mother´s League at 11:30a.m. This was a special day for the Schoenstatt Mothers because they had just made a gift to the MTA, they had covered the Custody of the Shrine with gold and jewels and spiritualy conquered this renewal. It was a great effort for them, they had given to the MTA as a gift their most prized jewels in order to decorate the Custody. Father Eduardo blessed and consacrated the beautiful Custody.

Pilgrim Shrines Around the Shrine

Then at 8:00 pm, more than four hundred people united to renew our Covenant of love. Many people came early and brought their Pilgrim Shrines.

We can say that we had a very "ecclesial" celebration. Presiding the ceremony was the Auxiliary Bishop from Quito and the participants of a Pastoral meeting regarding the Marian Shrines in Ecuador that was taking place in the beautiful House the sisters have beside the Shrine. Around 12 Rectors (Principals) of our Marian Shrines concelebrated the eucharistic celebration.

After Father Jose Luis Nieto´s introduction, the Auxiliary Bishop gave us very emotional and deep words. He congratulated the Schoenstatt Movement and spoke beautifully about the shrine and our Father and Founder. He told us to be like "living shrines". He shared with us the experience that the people of Quito are going through right now, because of the Guagua Pichincha volcano. He said. "We are going through moments of pain and maybe fear, but we too are going through moments of faith. Our churches are filled with believers and non- believers. They come to our Mother, to Jesus, they pray novenas. The morning of October 7th, the day of our Mother, Queen of the Rosary, while we were praying a novene, we had a wonderful sight. The sky was clear and blue, and from the Volvano got out a big cloud which was about 20 kilometers long. We didn´t have fear, I was like in exthasy, it was like a sign form God, a gift from God".

The chorus played and sang beautiful songs as the celebration went through,and finally the Bishop blessed us specially. He led the renewal of the Covenant of love while the offers Capitla of grace, wirten on slips of paper, were burning in the 'Hands of our Father and Founder' - the monument beside our Shrine that reminds us of the blessing he gave to the Schoenstatt family of Ecuador .

After the Holy Mass everyone wanted to go to the Shrine, especially those who have been visited by our Mother in the October Mission. Everybody agreed that this had been a very special and beautiful celebration.