Friday, September 16, 2011

Report from Santiago, Chile for August, 2011

            Greetings from Santiago. I hope that all of you are well. During the winter here, it has rained and snowed about once a week, so we have had pretty mountains overhead for most of the winter. The other blessing of that is the air has been pretty clean. Of course, we have to put up with a lot of cold to get these benefits.

            I have a few things that I want to share with you so I will get right to it.  Last Sunday, we went to Rancagua in the morning instead of the usual evening hour, because it was the 11th of September, which in Chile is a protest day. In order to not get caught up in the protests, we went in the morning, held church services and had lunch together. Then we all returned to Santiago. On this particular morning, I preached about 1 John 1:5-2:2. John creates a tension in the reader as he draws a contrast between “God is light and there is no darkness in him” and “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” The tension is between sinning and not sinning, which we all feel inside us. We do not want to sin, but we sin. John draws attention to this conflict so that we will not sin (v.1). John also mentions being in the light (v. 2:10) and walking in the light (v. 1:7). Being in the light is a reference to your spiritual position (Where are you?). Walking in the light refers to your practice (What do you do?). I mentioned that he who walks in darkness and is in darkness will not be saved. I also mentioned that he who is in darkness; even though he practices the light will not be saved. I then said that the person who is in the light but practices darkness will not be saved. The one who will be saved is he that is in the light and walks in the light. After church, I was sitting in the living room alone with Aileen who is a teenager, and Liza’s niece, Marlene’s cousin, etc. Aileen told me, Tio, your sermon really touched my heart. I used that as an opportunity to explain that in the church we all help one another to be the best Christians we can be.

            We had a lady come to church with us there in Rancagua. She heard us singing and asked Ya-ya if she could participate. Ya-ya is good about inviting her friends as is Aileen. We always have visitors.

I want the church to take root among the young people. I have known a lot of the young people, like Romina and Paulina, Daniel, Sergio Paolo, and others all of their life. This is one of the blessings of being a long term missionary. I always wonder if they understand and believe the things that I teach. So I am always looking for signs that they believe. An example of this is that Paulina is always putting up verses on her Facebook. She asked me the other day what she could put up there. I explained to her that what we want to do is attract people by helping them to think about things that they had not thought about before. So we want to put up Scriptures that challenge people. I offered as an example of that is 2 Chronicles 15. I often preach this chapter when I go to evangelize someplace, because it challenges people to look for God. It also makes an excellent sermon, at least in Spanish. So Paulina put the Scripture up. She has also put up a lot of others.

Pedro went to the USA for a couple of months. He did an excellent job of preaching to Hispanic congregations all over the place. Unfortunately, he became ill and returned to Chile, where he had an operation. He is currently recuperating.

Milton has been teaching in Peru. He has also gone down South. I see him every Monday, but I forgot to ask him last Monday how his latest trip went. Milton has also been teaching in Los Nogales.

Sergio has been involved in activities also. He helps with the young people in the Villa. He has classes with Domeyko on Thursdays and Fridays. He goes with me on Sundays to Rancagua and on Tuesdays to Los Andes. He has several ministries that seem to doing well.

I should mention that Sergio’s father passed away recently. I went to the funeral and also visited in the home. I have known the gentleman for many years, maybe thirty or so. It was a disappointment for Sergio that he never decided to become a Christian, even though we all had taught him through the years.

I continue to receive good reports from Pablo and Marcelo in New Zealand. The New Zealand folks evidently really like them.

On Saturdays, I have been helping to teach an evangelistic class with Eugenio in La Florida. We have had visitors. All of my classes are doing well. I have new people in all of them.

One of the blessings of being a long-term missionary is that people know where to find me. Not too long ago, one of the brothers who I had not seen in ten years or so called me up and asked to come by the house. I agreed. When he showed up, he brought his cousin with him. The cousin is from the South. We had a Bible study here in the house, and I signed him up for the Bible Correspondence Course. When he returned, he signed up twenty others to study the Bible through Bible Correspondence Courses. Since then, Helmer and Luis (one of the elders in Los Nogales) went down and studied with them. They report a group of people that want to know more about the Word.

            The young people meet every other Saturday in Beto and Pilar’s house, where we also meet on Wednesday evenings. Beto and Pilar I have known for more than twenty years. I know their children, Tomas and Javiera, all of their life. All of these children are now young adults. These young adults have been involved in different activities, such as going to Rancagua with us to help us get the church going. They have also been good about inviting their friends to their Saturday meetings, which Sergio teaches. Elsa, a young lady who was baptized last year, invited two of her friends last week. Paulina has also invited her friends, as has many of the others. I am hoping that our congregation will attract lots of young people.

            Another of our young people is Daniel, Roberto and Fabiola’s younger son, and Marlene’s younger brother (also Liza’s nephew, Romina and Paulina’s cousin- you get the idea). Daniel has been participating in my Monday class. He has also been going with me to Los Andes. He has been preparing a Bible study and sermon on Mondays, and has been participating in the youth activities, as well as the class on Wednesday night. This is encouraging to me to see that he is preparing himself like he is.

            Not too long ago, one of Liza’s neighbors rang her doorbell and asked to speak to her. This was a Monday morning right before she was supposed to come to work. The lady unburdened her heart. She said no one in her family had a job. She did not know what to do. Liza said she would talk to the church. Liza knows that I have a policy that no one will go hungry if I can help it. We have helped lots of people in this way. So after the men’s class, we went to the grocery store, which I do every Monday since they have a five percent discount on everything. I told Liza to get a basket for this family, and I would shop for my house. So we filled a shopping cart for them. I took it over to Liza’s house. She and her husband then took it to the neighbor. Liza told me that the woman started crying on the spot. From this, Liza began to talk with her about God. She had a Bible study.The lady has a daughter that is a young mother. When they started studying the Bible, the young lady said to Liza, “Tia, we do not know anything at all about the Bible. Nothing at all.” Liza said, “In that case, let’s start on page one. What is the first thing that God tells us in his Bible? He is the Creator. And we are his Creation. This is the basic spiritual relationship that everyone has with God.” When she said that, the young lady’s eyes got huge, and she said, “no one has ever told me that before.” I told Liza later that that reminded me of Hosea 4:1, where God complains that there is no faithfulness, no steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land.

            Sergio and Liza go every Wednesday to Machali where they study the Bible with Camila’s mother and a few others. Camila is Anais’s mom, if you have seen the picture of Anais and me on Facebook. Anais is three or four months old. After they study with the group in Machali, they then go over to Liza’s dad’s house, where Sergio studies with him, and Liza studies with her sister-in-law Patricia. If all Christians worked as hard as Liza to ensure that their families were Christians, then the church would be growing.

            For the last twenty years, I have been meeting with the ministers and a few of the men on Mondays as we have a Bible study together, which lasts through the middle of the day. Obviously at that time, I do not expect many men to participate, because most people have to work. Here in this year, we have had people participate, that I generally do not expect to participate, such as students and working men. As it turns out, I have at least three participants who are taking off work to be with us. How they can arrange that, I do not know. The students I can explain, because all of the college students are on strike this year, and have been for the entire year. Here in Chile, being on strike means protesting in the streets, throwing rocks, burning tires, and general mayhem which the police respond to with water cannons and tear gas. A couple of weeks ago, I was returning from Los Andes with Saul who works with the congregation in Domeyko and Sergio. We were arriving at Domeyko about 10:30 p.m. I noticed that the area around the church in Domeyko looked a little foggy, so I rolled down the window to see better. A huge cloud of tear gas filled the car. Sergio started tearing up and complaining. I told him that he needed to man up. Then I looked over beside the car, and beside me was a water cannon. I decided I need to get out of there, because people always throw rocks at those things. The last thing I needed was a rock through the window. So I left there as quickly as I could. At any rate, I am happy to report that at least some of our students are not out on the streets throwing rocks, but are studying the Bible with us on Mondays. Of course, they might be doing both. We are having excellent classes on Mondays. The men are working at learning to study the Bible and preparing sermons from the passages in the Bible they are studying.

            I am happy to report that we bought the lot. The church paid for two thirds of it, I paid for a sixth (from my savings) and Austin Avenue Church of Christ paid for a sixth of it. The Smiths in Missouri gave $100.00. We have received the title to the property. The next step is that Marlene and Liza will go over to some government office somewhere and get it re-zoned to a house of prayer. Several members from the congregation, including myself went over to clean it up. That proved to be a daunting task. We moved a mountain of rubbish. We are now waiting for the municipality to send over a truck to haul off a ton of trash.

            The congregation is really excited about our purchase. We have all been going through our houses, finding out what we can donate to sell in the ferias so that we can make some money for the building. I had Liza go through the entire house, through every nook and cranny to see if we can find something to sell. I had given a lot of stuff away in the earthquake, I had given a lot of stuff to Sergio and Pedro and I had thrown a lot of stuff out, so there was not that much to sell. I did sell a space heater, at the wrong time of the year, because it got cold afterward. We have made a little bit of money. The next step after getting it all cleared away is to build a wall. That is to close it off. We cannot do that though until we get it re-zoned. So we have some things to do.

            We will need some help in the building, or we will have to wait until we get enough money to build. If you would like to help, please let me know.

            Thank you for your support.

            Harry R. Hamilton

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