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!)
