We have received this report from Rosalie Langley Judd following her mission trip last summer:
Seeing God at work in Valparaíso, August 2019
Following an initial call to Chile in 2011, God took me to Antofagasta in 2018 and to Valparaíso in August this year, this time with a friend. Before we went Brenda put me in contact with Paula – a key contact who led us to two key men of God, her Father, Pastor Manuel Pérez Jara and her Pastor, Bishop Juan Díaz Calderón. Both opened up significant doors for us and it was a delight to spend time with both families.
This time the Holy Spirit gave me an evangelistic tract to take with us about how the name Chile in the Mapuche language means ‘the end of the earth’ and how from Creation to Salvation the Bible focuses on reaching the ends of the earth. We took 2000 copies in Spanish with us. (It was only on meeting up with Brenda on my return that I learnt of the similarity to God’s original call of Ann and Arnold Page to Chile.)
There were many high points to this short mission trip where we saw God’s hand at work over and over again:
- Visiting Pastor Canipane and seeing God’s faithful people continuing to worship Him in a plastic tent as they waited for their church to be rebuilt;
- Speaking and ministering at the women’s prison and seeing around 60 women and 3 guards give their lives to Jesus;
- Speaking in the market square with the salvation of 3 traders and the little daughter of one of them;
- Speaking at the homeless ministry at the Bishop’s church, with the salvation of one man. Since then the man has been so hungry for the word of God that he has been going back and forth to the Library to borrow a Bible! Now he has one of his own;
- Meeting a female Uber driver who accepted Jesus as Lord and immediately began to evangelise others;
- Being invited to speak to evangelical pastors from across Chile at their annual retreat at the Bishop’s church;
- Being welcomed into the small Sephardic Jewish community in Valparaíso;
- The wide dispersal of the tracts
God is taking me back to Chile in December, this time to Arica, where I hope to make contact with Pastor Federico Bascuñán Mendoza at San Andres Church.