August Prayer Letter Update

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Ephesians 1:3

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Greetings once again from Chile!! This past month has seemingly gone extremely quickly for our family so we wanted to get you caught up with what has happened.

Since our last letter I have taught in our church Sunday school and preached for two weeks while our youth group went north to Iquique on a mission trip. We have spoken at two different youth mission camps, and Heather has been busy with kid and ladies ministries (discipling, Ladies Bible Study, kids’ English classes) in the church.

It has been a busy first six months here in Santiago, so two weeks ago we were thankful for the chance to celebrate our anniversary and go away for a short family vacation to a little cabin in a canyon not to far from Santiago. It was extremely enjoyable, especially as the mountains just above us got covered in almost two feet of snow, unfortunately we only had rain.

This month we wanted to give you a little more information about our church that we are working in so that you know better how to pray both for us and for the church. It is an exciting time for the church, and we believe that God is definitely working here in Chile.

The church is located in “La Reina,” on the east side of Santiago, and at the base of the Andean mountains. The official name of our church, which has changed recently, in English, would be “Good News Baptist.” The church has existed for over 30 years I believe, but in every sense of the meaning we are a completely new church. In the past 10 years the church had experienced several difficulties which really suffocated the church and was causing the church to slowly die. In December 2008, when Pastor Christian started at the church there were no more than 15 people, and maybe 2 people would show up for prayer meeting. Today we are consistently in the mid 40’s and we have roughly 17 attending prayer meeting on Wednesday. We have also had several new visitors in the past three weeks so please pray that God would continue to bring new people to the church to hear the Good News!!

We have been extremely blessed in the last month or so to have a new young couple, Daniel & Ibodne, become members of our church. Daniel is Peruvian, and Ibodne is from Ecuador. The blessing is that they have both graduated from the local ABWE seminary, and are a strong vibrant couple who want to be active and involved in the local church. As the church is still small, to have another biblically trained couple who can help carry the load is a tremendous blessing.

With their addition this will allow Heather and I to adjust some of our energies to possible future ministries. Daniel and I possibly may split some of the Sunday school teaching, while Ibodne and Heather work on the various kid and ladies ministries. Daniel also brings some musical depth to the church with his chimes, and I believe the guitar as well. In speaking with Pastor we would also like to get a keyboard for the church. If you would like to give to this please send the money to our ministry account at ABWE noting it is for a keyboard. We are also beginning to frame our discussions around starting a kids program similar to Joy Clubs or Awana in the future as well as a teaching English program to reach our community. La Reina is a working/business class community and there is an incredible educational push to learn English here in Chile, so this would be a great opportunity for the church.

Please continue to pray for us as we seek to diligently serve God in the church with our teaching, in the office, and in our family. Heather and I are thrilled to be here in Chile, and blessed by God to have our first term start in such a wonderful fashion. There is much to do – but we serve a GREAT GOD. Thanks for praying!!