We are sad to report that Patricia Ann Page, the wife of Chile for Christ’s founding director Arnold V Page, left this earth on August 12th, 2019, at the age of 77.
It was in August 1970 that Ann and her young Methodist minister husband asked the Lord where he wanted them to serve him next. The Lord replied by showing Ann a series of crystal-clear visions of rural scenes overlooked by snow-capped mountains, followed by a map of South America and then of Chile. A minister friend was praying with them, and the Lord told him to read Isaiah chapter 49. “I have called you to be a light to the nations,” he read, “that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” On the first page of a library book about Chile Arnold read, “The name ‘Chile’ is believed to be derived from a Mapuche word meaning ‘the end of the earth’.”
It took nine years before the Methodist Church was eventually able to station them in Chile, and once there the Chilean church sent Arnold, Ann and their four young children to Punta Arenas, a city at the southernmost tip of South America and truly at the end of the earth. Ann taught English in the British School there, while Arnold assisted a Chilean pastor, José Pulgar.
However in 1981 a serious house fire led the Methodist Church to recall the family to England. Having made many friends in Chile and having learned of their many financial needs, Arnold founded what in 1992 became the registered UK charity Chile for Christ. Thus Ann’s original prophetic vision was not only the key that unlocked the couple’s ministry to the people of Chile but eventually it led to the founding of our charity too.
Ann’s closeness to the Lord provided guidance in a number of other important decisions in the family’s life, and her prayers for individuals brought profound changes to several lives. Someone wrote recently:
Ann’s prayer for me thirty-five years ago totally changed my life and restored my faith in ways I could never have imagined. I do not believe that the light of her life will ever go out.
While Ann’s spirit remained as strong as ever, in recent years she began to find everyday life a struggle, and she finally succumbed to a terminal disease of the liver. Her spirit now rests in Christ awaiting the Day of Resurrection, and what will surely be a great reward from her beloved Lord and Saviour Jesus.