Latest News

We have just received this report from our contacts in the church in Osorno.

Osorno is in a state of emergency due to contamination of drinking water. From Thursday 11-21 July the city of Osorno remained without a supply of drinking water owing to an accident which originated in the storage plant of water from the Rahue river, where 1100 litres of petrol poured in, which contaminated completely the water network of the town. About 200,000 people were without water.

This situation caused a state of chaos in the town: the supermarkets, restaurants and commercial shops had to close through not being able to rely on a water supply and churches were closed by order of the authorities.

During this time the young people of the church set up a team of response and aid to the community, transporting water from outside Osorno in special containers installed in trucks. With this we could help the inhabitants of different needy sectors of the town and deliver water to the houses of the brothers of the church in order to cover their basic needs. We were involved in this work for five days, when we delivered about 8,500 litres of clean water.

The water supply was restored for a couple of hours in the town, but it is not suitable for drinking – the water shows a blue colour (petrol) and a bad smell. We have to buy bottled water to drink and still there is no definite date for a solution to the problem.

We pray that everything will be restored quickly: to live without water in a town is very difficult, and already many people are beginning to show illnesses such as cholera, typhus and other stomach upsets.

See this news report in Chile Today.

Wonderful news from Gerd and Rosi Bergmann – their School for Transformational Leadership has been officially accepted as part of YWAM’s University of the Nations.

Gerd writes: Our school lives in the faculty of counseling and is open for all who have successfully completed a DTS and have some years of ministry and leadership experience under their belt. What does that mean? We can promote our school now through the global training catalogue of YWAM. We can also multiply this school into other parts of the world through the network of YWAM. We hope to offer future schools in Spanish and English. That would make it accessible to a wider audience. For that we would need a bilingual team. We rejoice in the door that God has opened for us to share the gospel as we train young leaders in the ways of our Lord Jesus Christ and the cross.

Great news indeed! Please continue to pray for Gerd and Rosi as they build up this training ministry in Chile and beyond.

Do you use the PrayerMate app? We now have our own feed which you can subscribe to in order to get the latest prayer requests from Chile for Christ. Find out more here.

If you have a smartphone but don’t yet use PrayerMate, do give it a try. It’s a great way to make sure you pray for all those things you would like to pray for without being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task!

There are so many things going on in the church here. These pictures show:

• A special day for couples in a Conference for Marriages, with themes oriented to family life (2)
• Celebrating the Mothers of our church with a special morning, a breakfast and attention to the mothers (3).
• A conference for women in the city of Puerto Montt, given by our pastors Anita Pinela and Carolina Pérez with the assistance of a hundred women from several nearby towns (2).
• An important Conference for Entrepreneurs and people with business ideas. Attended by university students and people with small businesses and a desire to grow (3).
• The 60th anniversary of the Association of Pastors in Osorno (2).

Rodrigo Pérez Pinela has sent us these pictures of the Youth Camp that took place recently, in a place near a lake. They met to study the Bible and spend a weekend together. It’s really encouraging to see so many young people engaged with the Word and work of God.

The church in Osorno commemorated International Women’s Day in March this year with a beautifully organised and thought out activity.

Our long term partners in Chile, Gerd and Rosi Bergmann, work very hard in their ministry of training and resourcing those in ministry in Chile – pastors to the pastors. One of the resources they make available is a flat for pastors to stay in on retreat, but the building needs work to make it more weatherproof.

Our balcony fills up with water if the rain comes with wind, which it does. That water than finds its way to the inner wall of our living room below. So the solution will be to put windows in which would keep all the dust out as well as the rain. That is the easy project as part of waterproofing!

The more difficult and challenging part is to put cladding on our entire north front and on one side. So we are talking 2 storeys and 20 metres long. The winter rain comes with strong winds that push the water through every nook and cranny. We have covered it with silicone but through the heat and the salt in the air it wears off every year.

Gerd Bergmann

Adding the windows will cost about £400 but the cladding will cost a further £2250 including a discount of 25% given by a trusted Christian friend who is a carpenter. They are hoping to complete the project between March and May before the winter rain comes, but they could use some extra help finding the funding for this. If you are able to help, please go to our donations page.