“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 14th through the 16th 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,
Chile Mission 