Greetings from Chile- ***Felipe & Marloes* *Newsletter***

Dear friends and family in Christ,
In this e-mail some updates about our new life here in Puerto Montt, how we are living it right now by the grace of God!

Foto: Lago Chapo; close to our house are beautiful places to find!

If you follow the link below, you will reach our website. On the bottom of this page that will appear there is a video that we made before coming here to explain our vision and expectations of the work in Puerto Montt.
http://felipemarloes.com/en/we-do/

How is life going?
As you might have heard in the video, we were expecting to work with the youth and discipling.
In these first months of being here we have got to know almost all the church members and the rhythm of activities. We are very thankful for these lasts months of introduction. It has not been always easy, and we do expect more challenges to come, but we have been seeing Gods blessing over our lives being here.

Open house

An easy and fun way to get to know people, is to invite them in our home. We eat together, play games and try to build a meaningful relationship. We like it when people can feel home in our house, and can share about their lives. That includes struggles, joys and challenges.
A special group of people that we have invited in our house, are the teenagers. We have started to get to know them, and each time they seem more open to get to know the word. Their questions are deep and challenging. Please pray for us if we hope to guide them into the truth.

OM was here!
In August we had a very special visit here in the South! The group of students with whom we used to work in Santiago, was here to visit us! We were involved in their program by providing them our house to stay in (6 of them in our little home), organizing a prayernight with them, a visit to one of the islands close by, an outreach on the street and many other details. It was good to see how we worked with OM now fromout this new position , being part of a local churchplant! The students of OM felt very blessed and we hope that these experiences will draw them even closer to God and His call for their lives!

Chopping wood!
Now we really live down south, it means we have to warm our house with a hearth! So, Felipe regulary drives up to our woodmen, and coming home, he chops the big pieces small. In the morning it can be a challange to get out of bed because it is so cold! So we all search for the warmest place, including the cat. Cats always know where to go!
We have been noticing that this is the reason that people are visiting each other most of the time in the houses. Our ministry therefor is a lot in our home or in other houses!

Be a disciple, make a disciple
Something that we both are very thankful for, is that we are being mentored. We have regular meetings with the pastor, and both have also our own mentor outside the church. We are very aware that God is taking this special time to form and mold us and to become more the persons that He wants us to be.
Also, we have seen the need to make disciples. There are a lot of believers who need to be accompanied on their road of following Jesus. Many are facing difficulties or need direction on how to practice their faith in their daily life. That also challanges us. How do we make disciples, and how to do it well? Please pray for us when we are both starting to learn how to disciple others on a more intentional and biblical way.

Persevere
The south of Chile is truely beautiful. It is a blessing to just drive away a few minutes, and see so much beauty.
Knowing that God works in and through us, despite the challenges we can feel or experience, we would not want to be in another place.
We have God seen working in our marriage, bringing us closer to each other, and to Himself. That has been the greatest blessing of all, to realize He is above it all!We thank you for all your prayers and help! It is Him who carries us, as much as He will you. We pray that He also will bless you in your ministry and families.
Greetings from Chile!

Click on the image to see our project

Pray & Praise

We ask prayer for:

Pray for us, in building meaningful relationships. We hope to offer a place and heart for people to feel save to share.
Pray that when we feel discouraged that God can comfort us
Please pray for our teenagers, that they can open their hearts and understanding for the true gospel!
Pray for our starting discipleship relationships, that we as them can learn and grow more in Christ
Pray for the families of this churchplanting. There is a lot of brokenness, that we get to know, now we get to know more the people.
Pray for the formation of the church, that by Gods grace will be realized during the end of this year.
Pray for the group of woman that comes together with Marloes and the pastor’s wife.

Dankpunten:

Thank the Lord for all the relationships we could already build
Thank the Lord for a blessed time with OM, that we both could learn from that experience again.
Thank the Lord for what He is doing in our marriage, and the beautiful moments that we have seeing the nature.
Thank Him for a blessed start with the woman group that Marloes is involved in

“Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God”
2 Timothy 1:8 ESV