“Jesus’ Mission = Our Commission”

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.  –John 3:16-18

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  Matthew 28:18-20

Until we are able to put these two short passages together, we will never be able to fully live our Christian identity, no matter where we live.  In everyday language God himself willingly suffered and died for every one of us in order to bring us back to himself forever, if only we will believe in and follow his son.  Sadly, those that choose to not accept this free gift of pardon will be lost into eternity.  That makes Jesus’ commissioning of Christians to bring others to himself is so important, as God does not want to lose even one person to eternal darkness and punishment.

It’s no wonder then why we are transforming land into a Christian Camp for children, youth, and adults in middle Chile and are receiving parents and other adults in our Santiago mission site.  Thank you so much for your prayer and financial support for CHILE MISSION as we pray for you as well, that we all might be worthy of God’s calling of us as we together extend God’s love to all people.  Thank you!!

SPECIFIC OCTOBER GRATITUDE

CAMPO VIVO: 

• The construction engineer has finished the drawings for our first camp building—the two story workshop/storage/maintenance building. That means that we can start digging holes to pour concrete foundations, etc. for the beginning of its construction.  This important step has been a while in the making and we are very excited and grateful.  TYL!!  The building will be roughly 10 x 18 meters in size.  For those of you that don’t know metric measurements, check it out!
• There are now two separate church groups set to come to help in the work on the camp property early this next year, with various other groups in formation process for a future trip. WE ARE VERY GRATEFUL and Praise the Lord for his moving and enabling!  This in addition to at least one Chilean church group committed to coming and helping in early 2025.  We in the U.S. have so many giftings and skills to offer God’s wider Kingdom. Why not join us and plan a short-term trip to Chile??!!

SANTIAGO:

• The Foundation’s attorney has now submitted our signed (with our electronic signatures no less! 🙂 ) papers to recognize our five current board members and our board positions. This is a praise, due to the seemingly extra-long time it takes for legal steps to take place.  The board consists of Jack & Janine, our long-time worker Juan, Abraham, and Julián the husband of Carolina.
• Joherlit is well under way toward the formation of our Chilean Instagram and Facebook accounts.

Thank you for praying and giving thanks for these areas of progress!!  We remain dedicated and committed to the on-going development and moving forward of all parts and directions of CHILE MISSION, knowing that it is GOD who REALLY enables and moves everything forward!

SPECIFIC OCTOBER PRAYER NEEDS

CAMPO VIVO:

• We continue to pray for more groups—both from the U.S. and from within Chile to come and help with the wide variety of work on the camp property. All contacts and opportunities are appreciated!  Our contact information remains chilemission1@gmail.com and cellphone 949-394-8282.  We have both WhatsApp and Facebook and you can message our cellphone and leave a voicemail message if we’re not able to answer.  We are happy to travel your direction to help with planning.  THANKS!!
• As we shared last month, Eduardo will not be able to continue working with Abraham at the Camp property due to his family situation in Santiago. The cycle of spending two weeks on the property (roughly six hours south of Santiago) and one week at home has been tough on them.  We’re grateful for the time he has spent with Abraham and wish them the best.  In the meantime, Abraham continues to search for someone from the surrounding area to help and live on the property.
• We still need to finish the clearing of trees and brush from the area designated for tent camping and finalize the specific location of the two bathrooms and washing area to be built for campers.
• We also continue to stress the importance for Abraham & Family to visit at least one new church once a month in order to broaden relationships and make known the development work on the camp property. These increased relationships will also be a blessing once we begin receiving groups of children in the not-too-distant future, and hopefully result in a source of additional needed help.

SANTIAGO:

• Please pray with us that Carolina would continue to improve in her resolve to contact and visit more hospitals & clinics in order to bring in a more steady flow of people to find needed housing on our Santiago mission site. She’s very conscientious in doing her job, but it remains difficult for her to go out to other places even though public transportation in Santiago is extensive and easy to use.  Janine has encouraged her in different ways and we’ve suggested a monthly calendar to help in planning.  She is capable and very good with people.
• As with Abraham & Family we likewise are asking Julián & Carolina to visit at least one other church once a month on behalf of the Casa de Acogida (Refuge House) to broaden their contacts and enable area churches to help in different ways in the Refuge House ministry.

STATESIDE IN THE USA:

We annually put in a plug for the ICOM annual November Conference on Missions.  Mentioned last month, we travel to and participate in it every year with our Chile booth, and this year it will be held November 14-16 (Thursday thru Saturday) at the Rupp Arena in Lexington, KY.  It’s a conference specifically

dedicated to connecting the CHURCH to Jesus’ Great Commission.  Teens attending have their own speakers, music, and on-site mission project to be a part of.  After all, Christian Churches ARE Jesus’ body in the world to jointly extend hope and him to peoples’ real needs and salvation.

Please give real thought to making the trip to Lexington this year with a small group from your church.  Not only that, but we know of a certain CHILE MISSION booth that will love to welcome you with our extremely large display of ‘for sale’ Chilean made and hand-painted marble figures and sets. 🙂

SUMMARY

We constantly give the Lord thanks for CHILE MISSION and also for our partnership with each of you churches and special individuals in our work in Chile.  We are EXTREMELY grateful FOR YOUR PRAYERS as we go forward together!!  THANK YOU!!

It all comes back to salvation and life with Jesus.  He truly IS the Hope of the entire world and our one and only SAVIOR and LORD.  May we all connect and reconnect together to his love-based Kingdom Mission and our Kingdom Commission! 

Great are you Lord

You give life, You are love
You bring light to the darkness
You give hope, You restore every heart that is broken
And great are You, Lord

It’s Your breath in our lungs
So we pour out our praise, we pour out our praise
It’s Your breath in our lungs
So we pour out our praise to You only

All the earth will shout Your praise
Our hearts will cry, these bones will sing
Great are You, Lord!

Praising, praying, and fasting to Our One & Only JESUS’ MISSION = OUR COMMISSION God,   

Jack & Janine

“TRANSFORMED LIVING SACRIFICES ”

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.  –Romans 12:1-2

Jack’s Chilean coffee mug fits right in with this month’s encouragement to us all.  “Quién conquista su mente conquista su vida” translates to “Whoever conquers their mind conquers their life”.  It seems so easy to fit our life into the world instead of transforming our minds to God first and letting him lead us forward in the way he’s prepared our lives to best serve him.  Add praying for each other to the mix and you get a SUPER POWERFULL JESUS IN MOTION!!  Many thanks for your steady prayers for us and for CHILE MISSION!!  Except for Romans 12:1-2 CHILE MISSION would not exist.

Our 2-1/2 week Chile visit is now at a close, and God as always used it to his glory, including our university visitor, Elena, and her time with us as well.  She is living Romans 12:1-2 as she continues in her studies and uses her summers working with children and exploring options as to where God would send her.  Here are two photos from her jam-packed 10 days with us.  The first selfie photo we took on a Santiago metro trip, and the second is of us with a church in Lota, Chile two hours southwest of the camp property where Abraham was invited to preach.  The church has many young adults and teenage members, and they are looking to come to the camp property this coming Chilean summer (Jan-Mar) to help work.  TYL!!

As we re-enter the States to travel to churches and visit individuals on the part of CHILE MISSION we would love to visit you this fall to explore the possibility of your making a mission trip to our camp property in 2025 to help work/construct/plant/prune/clear trees and otherwise help make progress in our development of the property.  We are also very much praying for and seeking persons that will be able to make a large one-time financial donation to CHILE MISSION toward this huge project.  We have already been overwhelmingly blessed by the extra financial support of many of you and we are exceedingly grateful!!  Our email is chilemission1@gmail.com and our phone number is 949-394-8282.  Thanks, and thanks for your continued prayers as we move ahead!!

During our Chilean time much progress was made inside of our Chilean team and also as a board of directors of our Foundation Misión Chile.  Thank you to all who prayed for our trip and details to be accomplished!

IN SANTIAGO

The Foundation board met and it’s good to know that several recent changes to the Foundation’s statutes will be forthcoming from the attorney.  We now need to name the positions of our five board members and the board will be able to open a checking account in the name of the Foundation in January when we will be returning to Chile for an extended period of time.  Lastly, we talked about the need for Abraham & family and Julián & family to visit other churches at least once per month in order for more churches to know about the work of CHILE MISSION and participate in it in different ways.  It has been difficult for them to see the need for more community contact and development of our networking possibilities.  Thanks for your prayers about this!

The board also met with the newest member of the Chile team, Eduardo, working two of every three weeks in rural Chile helping Abraham with the development of the camp property.  Spending so much time away from his family has been too hard of an adjustment, so he will continue to work with us through November as we look for a person to replace him.  We take nothing for granted when it comes to our relationships as a CHILE team and we again thank you all for your prayers on behalf of our team dynamics and health!

We met with Joherlit, a former team member who is helping set up social media accounts with Instragram and with FaceBook and we’re grateful for her help!

The Chile mission Santiago site also continues forward with some good news to share:

Bruno is doing better health-wise (leukemia) and was released at the end of August to go home to southern Chile.  He does have a monthly checkup to come to Santiago for, but it was so good to see how well he’s doing and pray with him while we were there.

You also might remember the new-born boy, Dominíc, who was born at the end of August, 2022.  At that time his parents were told to “say good-bye to him” as he would be dying shortly.  That was over two years ago and as you can see from the photo, he is still “as cute as a button”!  He was born with many of his internal organs mixed up in wrong places and the prognosis is that his malfunctioning heart will not keep up with his growth.  At some point in his young life his heart will thus give out, and there is nothing that surgeries will be able to correct.  That may be true, but these extra years have given them as a family more time to love each other and be together.

God tells us in Romans 8 to not worry about how or what to pray for, as “the Holy Spirit pleads of us believers in harmony with God’s own will”.  It is God that gets all glory in answering prayer, even when that answer falls short of our own expectations and Dominíc’s final chapter is yet to be written.  Praise God and thank you for your prayers for him!

We are pleased to share that Catalina’s mother, Julia’s, blood test numbers are back to normal, almost three months after her surgery to have a tumor removed from her brain.  The tumor led to Cushing’s Disease which caused her health to rapidly deteriorate.  As she had a very serious case of the disease it has taken these months for her to begin to return to normal, but we are all extremely grateful for God’s touch!

Our and your prayers for all of the above are more powerful than we know and as we titled last month’s Prayer Needs & Gratitude Letter, it is HE who will always be capable of doing IMMEASURABLY MORE than all we ask or imagine!!

PROPERTY IN RURAL CHILE

During a recent week on the camp property Eduardo was able to attend a meeting of those who live in the general area of our property.  The police announced that they are adding police (including women of course J) on motorcycles to help patrol the area for the safety of the residents.  We’re grateful!

Abraham also recently met an excavator operator, Luís, who took a look at our excavator and gave Abraham good advice with regard to some needed maintenance.  Luís has been clearing land near ours and as it turns out, that contract ends this first week of September.  The wage he charges for his time is reasonable and it looks like he will be able to do some projects for us, which will be a blessing that hopefully will lead to his continuing to help in the clearing and leveling of our land.  Thanks for praying these possibilities forward with us!

In two other important developments Abraham has been able to make more progress in the upcoming construction plans of our first building in early 2025 (a great reason for short-term work trips to Chile if you’re able to plan for early 2025!! 🙂 )  through his meetings with our construction engineer to plan design and materials to be used.  Also, the surveyor who is outlaying the subdivision of the northern 1/3 of our land (30 acres of 90 in total) received government approval for his amended plans submitted early this year.  That means that he might be ready to physically outline the lots to be sold in the coming years.  Both of these developments are praises for God’s plans in motion!

STATESIDE

These next months in the States leading up to this year’s ICOM (Int’l Conference on Missions) held in Lexington, KY the 14^th through the 16^th of November are bound to go by quickly.  With God’s blessing our annual CHILE MISSION booth will be busy as ever, alongside the hundreds of booths of other world-wide missions represented, and excellent main session speakers will encourage and inform all in attendance.  The conference also sponsors a wide variety of good workshops for churches, individuals, and missionaries alike.  The conference brings special energy to Kingdom Work!  If you are able to go, please stop by our CHILE MISSION booth to see us.  We’d love to both chat with you and also sell you some of our popular Chile-made marble figures and sets! (marblepeople.com)

Praising, praying, and fasting to Our One & Only TRANSFORMING LIVING SACRIFICES God,   

Jack & Janine