Mennonite Weekly Review

PUERTO MONTT, Chile — Local Christians are forming an official Mennonite church in southern Chile.

Sarah Gingrich, right, EMM worker in Chile, with friend Constanza Torres Mesias at a rowing competition in Valdivia, Chile. — Photo by Dustin Gingrich/EMM

Chilean church leader Eduardo Caceres and his wife, Juanita, are applying to register a group of believers as a Mennonite congregation. A house church of five core families meets in their home in Alerce, a community outside Puerto Montt.

They’ve organized as Belen Mennonite Church and plan to remodel two neighboring houses for a church. They envision a cluster of six Mennonite churches in the region.

The new church is one example of the progress that Steve Shank, Eastern Mennonite Missions representative to the Americas, saw on a visit to Chile in February.

Missionaries Dustin and Sarah Gingrich, in Puerto Montt, have focused their efforts on two fronts. Each month Dustin Gingrich accompanies Eduardo Caceres into the remote mountainous region of Cordillera, 100 miles inland from Puerto Montt.

Here in the little town of Llanada Grande, a lively cluster of six families has organized into a church. The Llanada Grande church ministers to the needs of far-flung believers who live as sheep and cattle herders in the rugged valleys that surround the town.

The Gingriches also host a weekly Bible study for about 20 young people, friends of Sarah Gingrich from her rowing club.

“These young people are hearing God’s Word, learning how to pray and counting well the cost of giving their lives to him,” she said. “We have explained the path of salvation, and we trust that when the Holy Spirit moves their hearts they will give their hearts to him, fully and without coercion.”

Mike and Nancy Hostetter, who have served in Chile for 16 years, five with EMM, have been involved in the lives of numerous Chilean businesspeople through the Fraternidad, a local expression of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Association.

“They’re looking for spiritual fathers and mothers who can disciple them and organize them into simple churches,” Shank said. “We are planning a church- planting conference this summer for more equipping and organizing of what God has been birthing.”

EMM missionaries Travis and Bekii Kisamore work on yet another front in the fishing town of Quemchi, on the large island of Chiloe. Through a combination of English teaching and relationship building, they are pulling together a house church that is experiencing new hope and healing in a community infamous for alcohol abuse and broken homes.

The EMM team also has strong friendships in Osorno, a German Chilean settlement north of Puerto Montt. Believers there have requested the team’s collaboration in mission and church planting.