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As you will know, there has been considerable unrest in Chile over the last month or so, with large scale protests and riots taking place. In Santiago there was a mass protest in which over a million people took to the streets, and there have also been riots and violence.

The flash point was a rise in Metro fares, but this unrest comes from a deep-seated resentment at the huge inequality between rich and poor in the country. Chile has a two-tier system in both health and education, a blend of public and private, with far better results for those who can afford to pay. The privately-run pension system makes a steady profit for the fund managers but provides low and often delayed payouts to pensioners. The people are demanding change, and one of the main issues for them is the constitution. Chile’s constitution was created in 1980 by General Pinochet following the 1973 coup with a few later reforms and although it was approved at the time in a national referendum, it is viewed by Chileans now as a ‘Dictator’s Constitution’ which keeps power in the hands of a select few.

Constitutional reform is much more common in South America than it is in Europe, so there is an existing model for this. Typically the reforms focus on:

• A commitment to greater equality
• Recognition of civil rights
• Acknowledgement of indigenous groups and their languages
• Re-establishment of the Catholic church and greater equality between religions

In practical terms what is also being discussed is an increase in pensions, an increase in health spending and a guaranteed minimum wage. These provisions have been agreed in parliament and are now progressing through the legal framework.

At the same time President Sebastián Piñera is facing a Constitutional Accusation, broadly similar to impeachment in the US. Opposition parliamentarians are trying to hold him accountable for human rights violations during the crisis, as it is generally believed that the military and the police used excessive violence against ordinary citizens during the protests. So far 22 people have died and many hundreds of others have been injured, including loss of sight from rubber bullets. There are allegations of arbitrary detention, abuse and torture by the authorities.

There is another darker side to these protests with arson, looting violence and vandalism taking place. It is being reported that there are Anarchist groups behind this, taking advantage of the unrest to further their own cause.

The cost to Chile has been huge. Many businesses have not survived, either because of physical damage or simply because they have not been able to trade. The COP25 climate conference which was being hosted by Chile had to be cancelled, as was the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. There has been widespread damage to infrastructure, and less visibly, the social and emotional damage of being affected by or witnessing violence.

There is now hope for reform, but there is still a great deal to pray about.

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.

It’s good to hear some good news in the midst of all the violent protest going on throughout Chile.

Pastor Jose Canipane Segredo and his congregation are finally rebuilding their church, following its total destruction in the 2017 forest fires.

This picture shows the temporary ‘tent’ structure being removed in preparation for the brick walls and roof of the new church building. We hope to have more pictures soon.

You may have seen occasional reports about the riots in Chile following a rise in metro fares. Although this may have been a trigger point, tensions have been brewing for a long time due to the great inequality in the country as this BBC report explains.

Paula, our representative in Chile says:

The events of this weekend had been something surprising and terrible. We are not used to this. It all started when the subway ticket rise, anti-socials burned more than 10 subway stations in Santiago and then they robbed supermarkets across the country. Today there will be “Toque de queda” (curfew) which means that we have to stay at home from 8 pm until 6 am to give space to the police and military so they can keep order on the streets. No school will open tomorrow.

People voluntarily arrived on the outskirts of the Santiago subway to help remove the rubble.

Please pray for the situation there, for the people of Chile and for the Christians trying to bring peace.

President Piñera has declared most of the Valparaíso region to be a disaster zone following one of the driest winters in the last 70 years. Rainfall in the July 21 to September 21 period was only 70mm compared to the expected 255mm. This follows a similar declaration in the Santiago region a month earlier. To add further to the worry, snowfall in the mountain ranges has also been lower than normal, and it is melting snow which fills the aquifers.

Please pray for relief from this drought. As ever it is the poor who suffer most.

You can read more in this article from Chile Today.

Pastor Ronny Pulgar continues in his ministry to the people of Porvenir, Tierra del Fuego, visiting families and taking words of encouragement and prayer.

This requires a considerable commitment of time as the ferry takes about two and a half hours each way across the Straits of Magellan from Punta Arenas where Ronny is based.

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.

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.