Since the last time I wrote, we have had a couple of earthquakes, a volcano has erupted, and a tornado showed up. We do have the occasional earthquake or volcano eruption, but a tornado is something we never see in Chile. The tornado struck the same town that our excellent brother and sister in Christ, Roberto and his wife Catalina, moved to earlier this year. God watched over them and they were not harmed in any way. They are pretty close to where the volcano erupted also. Maybe the good Lord is trying to tell them something. Here in Santiago, I am just dealing with the cold.
Our retreat in November was such a success that we decided to have another. In May, we held our retreat at the same place where we held it in November. This place is convenient for us because they provide a place to meet, a place to sleep, and they provide all the meals for a low cost. The only complaint that I have about the place is that the beds are super hard. It is owned by a fellow who is the owner of a chain of jewelry stores. The fellow is a friend of our brother Toño from his evangelical days. Toño did us the service of suggesting that the owner invest in a bunch of new mattresses. Thank you, Toño.
I made a mistake in the beginning. I tried to do the power point slick presentation. It soon was apparent that was not working so I returned to my usual way of presenting things, which is teaching. Sometimes we have to do what we do well. Fortunately, I was able to tell that it was not working. I apologized and told the congregation that I would not make that mistake again. The theme of the retreat was Singing Praises to God. Before we had the retreat, I asked the congregation if they had a theme in mind. They preferred this one. I thought it was a good choice, because we had attracted a lot of attention with our singing last time from the different groups that were meeting in the campgrounds. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to help everybody understand the worship that God asks of us. I started in Ephesians 1:3-14, where the formula God made us his adopted children in order to praise him was repeated three times. In verses 5 and 6, we find he predestined us … to the praise of his glorious grace. In verses 11 and 12, we find we have obtained an inheritance… so that we … might be to the praise of his glory. In verses 13 and 14, we find in him you also … were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit… to the praise of his glory. I mentioned that with this formula, God makes Christians the instruments of his praise. We are children of God so that we might praise him. The orientation is from us to God. I went on to show that this same orientation is mentioned in Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:19: to the Lord with your heart. One of the things that distinguishes the Churches of Christ from others is that we look for that form of worship that pleases God rather than the form of worship that pleases us, which is of course idolatry. We also looked at other scriptures such as Hebrews 13:15: let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. I spent some time talking about the worship service as a sacrifice that we offer to God. As you can imagine, after spending time with these themes, the singing in the retreat was spectacular. I am sure that everybody was motivated by our weekend together.
Something that has me motivated is that I have several younger men coming to my Monday morning Bible study. A young man, David, from the Los Nogales congregation is participating. Also, Marlene’s youngest brother, Daniel, is coming to the class. Currently, I am teaching the theme of How to Study the Bible. Eugenio Palma and Juan Carlos Varas from the La Florida congregation have also been participating. Hector brought a friend of his last Monday. We also have the usual bunch, such as Saul from Domeyko and Sebastian from Los Nogales.
Milton is currently in Peru teaching. Pedro is in the USA visiting various congregations. He reports four baptisms in North Carolina. He visited churches in Winston Salem, Greensboro, and Charlotte. Evidently he has also visited Lexington, Kentucky, Houston, Texas, Searcy, Arkansas, and maybe a few other places. The brother spends more time in the USA than I do.
Sergio and Elizabeth spend every Wednesday in Rancagua, evangelizing a family there. Several of us go every Sunday to conduct worship at Eduardo and Yaya’s house. We always have visitors.
On Tuesdays, Sergio and I continue our studies in Los Andes. One person has been baptized. The congregation meets in the afternoon on Sundays. Several of the members from the congregation in La Villa are now going to help them in their worship services, while Felo, Liza, Serio, Romina, Paulina, and I go to Rancagua. So the entire congregation is busy on Sundays.
Domeyko reports a baptism. I am going every fourth Sunday to this congregation and preaching and teaching there. Saul is really helping the congregation to grow. They are planning to have more baptisms this Sunday. I will be preaching there then.
Pedro made a trip to Colombia. He reports that there were eleven baptisms in the different congregations there. He visited ten congregations there. I will see if I can make his report available to you.
I posted a video on YouTube. You can find it here. I may try to do more of this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9AtCOc4ijk
My class on Wednesday night has nearly doubled in size. We have some visitors and a couple of the young university group is coming. We are studying the dynamics of faith.
I had my stress level go up a lot the first of the month. The owner of the house that I live in called and said she wanted to sell the house. This means that I have to either buy it or leave. I have been looking at my different options.
One of the options that I looked at was buying a lot and building a house. Here in Santiago the lots are pretty expensive unless you buy in a poor neighborhood, which opens you up to having your house robbed. In my neighborhood, we had looked at the prices they were asking for a couple of spaces several years ago. One spot was on the market for half a million dollars, and they were asking a million dollars for another good sized lot. This was in the middle of the boom when they built two shopping malls close to here. Now the prices have gone down considerably. Since I have lots of visitors to my house, including women, I am looking to locate in a fairly secure neighborhood. So I am looking at either paying more rent of buying, if I can manage that. Either way, I am looking at spending more money. One of the benefits of living where I am is that the landlord has never raised the rent in sixteen years, which is pretty remarkable. So now I have to see what I can do.
While we were looking at my options, we came across a lot off of one of the major thoroughfares here in Santiago, Vicuña McKenna, not too far from my house. I was looking to see if I could but it, when several of the members started talking about buying it for the church. We started to look into it and we discovered several things.
· It is a good location for a church, since it is a block from a major street in Santiago, located close to a major mall. It is two blocks from the subway.
· The architect for the municipality told us that it was zoned to build a church on it. That is to say that a church building was one of the options of land use for this property.
· The architect said that it also met the minimum space requirement for a church building.
· A member of the church that works in building construction went over to the site to see if it was stable enough to handle a large building. It was.
· Marlene’s husband, Alan, who is a banker for Banco Santander, contacted the real estate agent for the property. He negotiated the price to 27.000.000 pesos Chilean. The congregation has 17,000,000 pesos saved up, which is about two thirds of the price. Roughly, the lot costs 60,000 dollars USA and the church has about forty thousand dollars USA saved up (in Chilean pesos of course).
We have been saving up and looking for possibilities for sixteen years or so. We have spent time in prayer about this issue. We have considered this option, and we believe that God has given us a wonderful opportunity. As a congregation, we decided that we would buy this property. This is an enormous challenge for us. We have decided to move out on faith. We still lack twenty thousand dollars to complete the purchase. This will be for the purchase of the property only. Once we purchase it, we will still need to build on it.
I have decided that I will do whatever is necessary to buy the property for the church. If I need to sell my car, or get a loan, I will do that. I was thinking that I could buy the property and build a house on it, but when the church started showing interest, I remembered Haggai 1. It is time to build the Lord’s house.
I would like to invite you to help us in this project. If you are interested in helping, please write me. harryh@vtr.net or hamilton.harry@gmail.com .
Thank you for your consideration and your support. May God bless you;
In Christ,
Harry R. Hamilton
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