Greetings in Jesus' name to everyone as the Fall season begins. It's a time of transition for our ministry in Chile, as we begin the next steps forward to establish our K-12 Christian school, Colegio Cristiano Conosur. Your prayers and support continue to move the project as we see God's will a little bit clearer each day.
Thanks to all who spent a special time of prayer during the 40 days between July 12 and August 20. You may remember that within three days of beginning the 40 days of prayer, our site was robbed of about $5000 worth of tools. The Accuser of the Brothers (Rev. 12:10) continues to believe that he can destroy our faith in God's purposes by introducing physical loss into our lives. Won't happen. It's obviously a setback, but God will provide.
Another difficulty we are facing is that income has dropped dramatically as we approach the finish line on renovation of our 5800-sqft house to be used as offices. As a result, I had to tell my Chilean coworkers that their monthly aid from the mission was about to come to an end. These people are indispensable to the progress of the the school project. We have been helping two of the three with university costs, but in truth they all are working for a fraction of what they are worth. Within a day of my warning to them, we received very generous gifts from a Hillcrest Christian School family and from a church, allowing us to continue forward for two months. Again, all this occurred during the 40 days of prayer. Prayer changes things.
Sadly, we have come up short on the funds to finish the house. We are about 90% done, but the architect underestimated the total cost. We will have to finish each sub-project as the funds become available. This is how missions work, and while we are a bit grumpy with the development, we are confident that God will provide everything we need when he is ready. Jesus said that we should count the cost of our projects before beginning (which we did), but at the same time we must go forward in faith (which we are doing).
I'll give a testimony to what I'm saying. (if you get bored, just skip down to the last paragraph). When Cheryl and I wondered whether God was calling us to Chile, we decided to make a trip to test the waters. We didn't have the $4000 for tickets, but we had our airplane up for sale. It had been on the market for a month with not one call. I was in my office in the labs at Unocal Research and prayed, "Lord, if this is your will, it would be great if you would sell our airplane. And even better if you would sell it for a little more than we expected." Fleecing God 8-) Well, 30 minutes later our agent called to tell me we had a buyer. Bottom line, after commission, taxes, etc, the bottom line was $4066 more than we had expected. The $66 went for airport fees. Not bad, huh?
Another testimony... When the time came to buy a building for our rapidly-growing Chilean church in 1996, the mission had no money. Sensing that the time was "now", Cheryl and I sold our last possession in the US, our house. We used the $50,000 to buy the building, a unit at the end of a small strip mall. Obviously, we had family plans for that money, but God had put the church in our hearts. Two years later, we were traveling through the back roads of Oklahoma on a tour of supporting churches, without enough money to pay tolls on the main highway. As the bugs splashed on the windshield, I suddenly had this strong sense that God was going to replace a part of the funds. I even told Cheryl what I felt. Long story short, on our visit in Phoenix, the church took us to lunch, and for dessert gave us a check for $80,000! Our mission gave us permission to replace our funds and put the rest into savings. In 2000, the extra $30,000 went toward the purchase of the church's second building, asking price $100,000, purchase price $40,000. Another move of God, but I won't bore you with details, hehe.
So, you can see why we remain confident that God will provide for the school and our workers. Cheryl and I are into it to the tune of $250,000 - how could we resist when we sensed God's call to put in that money? He has been faithful to provide our needs in the past, we have no reason to doubt that he will in the future.
At the same time, I do not think it is a lack of faith to ask you to participate financially with us in making this school a reality for the families of Chile who desperately need a high quality Christian education. As one of our church leader friends put it, our total need for the next two years would be met by 200 people setting aside $1 per day for the two years. Perhaps God is making a special call on you right now to participate with us. But if not, please keep the school and mission in prayer. God will provide.
Hoping that our God will bless you to overflowing!
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