Working, Planning, Building, Moving

Dear Partners,

Happy December from Lautaro! We pray that you and your families have a very Blessed Christmas and New Year season, filled with hope for what God will do in 2019 and beyond... May God use each of us to touch the lives of others and point them to Jesus, through our words, our actions and our attitudes!

Here are some photos from the past couple of months, followed by important prayer requests:

(The 1st stage of construction of the church in Melipeuco is almost complete!)

(Gus has been working closely over the past few months with Luis in Melipeuco [top left] and Amador in Los Angeles [top right], and will continue to do so even more this next year as Gus is appointed Regional Coordinator for the projects in the South of Chile!)

(Marisol and Sarai, two young women that are close to our family, attend our home group, are involved in women's ministry with Karissa, and that went to Ecuador on the short-term team from Lautaro in September)

(Isabel, a single mom, and her children Felipe & Cony are a part of our home group, and we as a couple have been counseling them through family issues over the past few months)

(Cristofer & Yenifer, and their two sons, Bastian and Alonso, have become close family friends this year, and both Cris & Yeni got baptized in the past 12 months!)

(Jeremy and Liz passed their final exams, so the 2018 home-school year was a success, praise God!)

(The construction on our house, 10 miles outside of Lautaro is progressing! More on that in the prayer requests below...)

(Marisol's brother is a volunteer firefighter, so he invited our kids go see the trucks at the station a few days ago, including this "really old firetruck", as the kids called it!) 

(We had a very short but fun visit the other day from Gus' sister Lori and her husband Daniel, and they brought a mini-gingerbread house set to do with the kids!) 

These next few weeks, please JOIN US in prayer for:

• Our trip to Oregon for Christmas and New Years’! Karissa's extended family bought us plane tickets, so we will be driving to Santiago this Sunday and flying to the USA on Dec. 19th and returning Jan. 4th. Prayers appreciated for safe travels (driving and flying) and good time with family, both in Oregon and in Santiago! 

• The mission-wide conference, “VIVE”, taking place outside of Santiago, January 9th-13th! There are several families from the south of Chile that we have encouraged to take this step to attend the conference (most of whom have never been to such an event), including Luis & family from Melipeuco, Amador & family from Los Angeles, Cristofer & Yenifer, and Isabel, Marisol and Sarai, all pictured above. Please pray for this conference to be an inspiring, refreshing and transforming experience for all who will participate in this 4-day event, from various countries! (Any one-time gifts contributing toward these specific families' attendance fees are very welcome and appreciated! Please let us know if you'd like more information!)

• We need to be out of this current rental home in Lautaro by January 31st as the owner is going to move here! Which means the house we are building on land outside of town needs to be livable by then... Please pray for all of the details of construction to come together well! 

• Along that same line, our house in Santiago sold for significantly less than what we had hoped for, which means that finances for getting our land here ready and building the new house have been quite strained. And unfortunately we have had to resort to credit again (which was not the plan), in order to make sure we are out of this rental home on time. Please pray with us for God's continued provision, for peace rather than anxiety, and for wisdom in stewardship of the resources He has provided. (Any end-of-the-year gifts are very welcome to help with these construction and moving expenses!)

• Please pray for God’s leading and guidance in all the plans moving forward in 2019 in this part of southern Chile: specifically for the churches and projects in Lautaro, Melipeuco, and Los Angeles, for all of the leaders & workers involved in decision-making to strive for extending God’s Kingdom and working towards unity in purpose.

In this season of gift-giving and receiving, we recognize we would not be here were it not for God’s generous gifts through many of you. We very much appreciate your faithful support through prayers, monthly giving and one-time donations! Our family is blessed by you, and you are a fundamental part in allowing us to serve here in the south of Chile... Thank you so, so much for your partnership in bringing the truth of Jesus to this region!

Because of Emmanuel, God With Us,

Gustavo, Karissa, Jeremy, Elizabeth, Cristina & Diego

"Surviving August"

Dear Friends & Family,

Winter is half-way over in the southern hemisphere! As you way up north are enjoying your warm, sunny days (or not, if you’re more of a cold-weather lover 😉), our wood-stove is hard at work 24/7 heating the house!

There is a phrase used throughout most of Chile, but especially in the south, about hoping to “survive August”. There was a historical seriousness to this expression (i.e. a very real fear of the elderly or sickly succumbing to a bad winter cold-turned-pneumonia, back before antibiotics became more readily available). But nowadays, it’s mainly just something people say to mean, “let’s plough through this coldest month of the year and move on!” And then once September arrives, it’s celebration time, because they survived! 😊 

Speaking of survival, these past months have been very busy for us as a family: Gus has been gone more than he has been home, primarily working with short-term teams in Melipeuco and making necessary trips to Santiago, and I have been very occupied with the women’s ministry and our kids’ schooling. Part of me wants to just “plough through” this season… but at the same time I don’t want to miss the joys & the blessings (or the challenges) going on right now, just because I’m looking forward to what’s coming next! And though things can be very hard at times, life is beautiful, because GOD IS SO GOOD!

So, here is a more in-depth look at some of what has been happening lately, full of news and photos:

Melipeuco: With the last three short-term teams that have come (from Eastside, FCC in Yuma and The Grove, thank you all!!), there has been a lot of progress in the construction in Melipeuco! Pastor Luis & Andrea’s house is almost finished, and now the church construction is underway:

(In addition to helping with all the construction, Gus has been one of the main chauffers for teams)

(insulating Pastor Luis' & Andrea's house!) 

 

 (Starting on the beams for the church!)

(Getting the beams ready)

(and the crane is here!)

(The guys worked until midnight almost every night this past week... One night they worked til 2 am!)

(The first 9 beams are up in the church; Luis & Andrea's almost-completed house in the background!)

Women’s ministry: Besides weekly Bible studies for the women in Lautaro, as a group we’ve been able to celebrate a few special get-togethers, including a Mexican Dinner with ladies on the short-term team from Yuma, AZ, and a visit to a needy lady in the countryside, to whose family we were able to take a basket full of non-perishables. Also, both couples from Haiti that got married in the Lautaro church last year, plus another couple that arrived after that, all had babies this past month! I’ve been organizing & taking meals to them with different ladies from church!

 (Mexican dinner with ladies from Yuma!)

(Making gifts as a craft in one of our weekly women's meetings)

 (Baby Wilginia with her proud parents!)

(Babies Waldo Nelson & Sonja, with their proud mothers!)

Deepening friendships: As a family, we continue connecting and building friendships with other local families, both those who are part of the church already as well as those who aren’t in this family of believers yet. As just one example, we’ve been able to spend a few evenings sharing in normal life with this family pictured below, having them over to our home as well as going to theirs. Our kids all get along really well!

(Our friends Cristofer & Yenifer, and their boys, Bastian & Alonso)

Kids’ development: The kids all continue to do well in school and have developed good relationships with many people here. It is so fun to see them each interact in different ways with each other as well as with other families and friends, as they are all learning and growing each day!

(Craft time!)

Family Fun: We have been able to have good times as a family in between the busy-ness of teams and other ministry activities, which in the winter usually has meant watching a movie, playing a board-game or going to walk around a mall: 

 (Thankfully, Good beat Evil in this particular Star Wars game... this time at least! 😉)

And, couple months ago on our anniversary (which is also Gus' birthday and this year was on Father's day!), we were blessed with a spontaneous trip to a natural hot-springs on a snowy mountain with extended family, and we all had a BLAST that day!

(Playing in the snow for the first time in their lives!)

(What could be better than building snowmen while in a hot-springs??)

(Celebrating 12 years of wedded bliss!)

(Driving home after that super-fun family day)

August Prayer Requests:

• Please pray with us that our house in Santiago would sell this month! We have a buyer who is just waiting on another property sale to go through, which will allow him to purchase our house! As soon as that happens, we will be able to start the process of building a house on the land we purchased here, just 10 miles outside of Lautaro!

• Wisdom for the work being done in Melipeuco (construction as well as ministry/equipping).

• For unity in the women’s ministry and an increased desire to serve those who don’t yet know Jesus.

• Continued building & deepening of relationships with families in Lautaro, in the countryside and in Melipeuco.

• For wisdom for Gus and our supervisor as they figure out how best to help a sister-church going through a rough time.

• Good health for all 6 of us for the rest of this winter! Gus had the flu a month ago, but the kids and I haven’t had anything more than a mild cold so far this season, and it would be a blessing to continue that way!

Thank you, partners, so much for faithfully standing in the gap, through your prayers and through your financial support. You encourage us so much, and we hope to be an encouragement to you as well! 

If you or your loved ones have specific prayer requests, please let us know so we can be praying for you too! We encourage you to not go through this life that God has blessed you with, or this current season you find yourself in, just surviving, but actively seek to thrive wherever it is that He has you right now!

With Love from Lautaro,

Gus, Karissa, Jeremy, Elizabeth, Cristina & Diego

(P.S. We’ve realized that we haven’t been keeping in touch with regular, short updates lately. We apologize for that, especially since we know that many of you would like to have updated prayer requests, blessings and photos each week or a couple of times a month. To hopefully remedy this, we are creating a private Facebook ministry/family page, where we will post short notes or photos on a regular basis. We will try to invite those of you we are already Facebook “friends” with, but if for some reason you don’t receive that invitation in the next few days, please let us know! We really want to be better at keeping in touch with you!! And for those that don’t use Facebook: we will continue to send out email updates every month or two!)