Newsletter from David and Gina Hucker,SAMS missionaries in Arica Chile.

13 wonderful weeks!

This is the only way that I can describe these past 13 weeks of deputation here in England. The journey started when we visited some friends, in the USA, who we haven’t seen in 15 years. Reunions sum up part of our deputation time in England as well as in the USA. After too many years we had the privilege to meet up with Diane Rickard, who was our director along with her husband Pari during  our YWAM – Mercy Ships days. We also caught up with ex colleagues from the same ministry who flew in from Germany to London just to be with us for one day.

Our deputation here in England started in fine fashion with a visit to a new link church in North Munsden, near Chichester. Then we travelled as far away as Sedbergh and Barrow-in-furness, while visiting the odd church in St Helens (where we are based with Jean’s sister, Angela) and not so far afield, such as Formby and Knowsley Village. We really appreciate all the folk that encouraged us by the fact that they are praying for us and for the warm welcome that we received at all of our link churches. We are greatly encouraged to see what the Lord is doing in each and every one of the churches that we visited – 1 Thess 1.24. We serve a mighty God!

New Exciting Developments

We are thankful for Andy, Lesley and family. As you know and have seen, they blessed us tremendously when they paid us a visit last year and have gleaned an enthusiasm from their visit to become co-workers in our efforts in Arica, Chile. They will fill an important communication gap for us that has been absent for some time. We thank the Lord for them as they are God’s gift to us in this area and know that you will be receiving monthly updates/prayer points from Lesley. In fact, as a trial run, this news letter will be sent to you on our behalf by her and we would appreciate any feedback that you consider relevant to improving our relationship with you.

Church Roof.

The roof represents the beginning of what the Lord wants to do with us and through us this year. We were blessed in our absence by our church family in Arica who managed to install a temporary roof upon our “shed” church building. While being temporary, we hope to use the same roof to eventually build the permanent roof when it is put in place some two metres higher. It has changed the overall appearance of the church for the better and now it will be unnecessary to use sun block during the services, given that the previous roof, a net, only provided shade without filtering out the UV rays.

Prayer Requests.

Based upon the Word given to us, about the seven years of abundance, we feel that this year is important to the growth of the church. With this in mind there are various things that we have planned for this year that need lifting up in prayer.

·         Key to lives being saved in Arica through our church is the EMA course (marriage-building weekend). Substantial growth has been achieved in the Anglican Church in Chile because of the Lord’s anointing upon this course. The difficulty of running this course, as we explained to many of you, is the logistics of training couples from Arica, in Santiago or Vina del Mar (1000 miles south of us!).

·         Please keep in your prayers the people who we will be sending down to Santiago to participate in the ministries and training of the Anglican Church centrally, with the vision of seeing these ministries established in Arica. I think the name of the course for men is SHOCK. Juan, Alejandro, Gerardo, Yamil and Cristobal are the men that we want to participate in this event.

·         English is our open door from the Lord and we must take advantage of what we can do with our friends this year. We shall establish an English service once a month. This will be initiated by a week-long visit from the Reverend Clive Evans in March. Thankfully, we can also receive communion with him. We would like to integrate this into a once-a-month bi-lingual service. From these services we would like to do the ALPHA course also in English. We have a young girl, Lydia, coming to volunteer for six months. Part of what we want her to do is to lead the ALPHA course with many university students that we have come to know, who are studying to be English teachers.

·         We plan to continue the beautifying of the property that we have. So as we have shared with many of you, we want to build the front of the church and have the garden complete and hopefully extend the temporary church structure to the end of the property. This can only be done because of God’s faithfulness and the many gifts that you have given us.

·         Chincha, in southern Peru, is a city that was affected by a massive earthquake and we want to take teams and minister in this city, following our visit in late 2007. We want the congregation of San Andres to have a vision for mission. Personally as part of our calling as missionaries, we feel that the Lord is also moving us out to minister in other countries as well, whenever the opportunity arises.

Finally.

Earth tremors in England! The other night we just arrived home and went to bed when suddenly the room started to shake and I said to Jean, “that’s a tremor” and sure enough the following morning confirmed our suspicions. Can you believe that? Well we thought that the Lord was preparing us to return to Chile. Thankfully only minimal damage occurred.

Reflecting on our time in England we were truly blessed to meet up with all our link churches. We are thankful for the friendships that the Lord has given us in all our churches. We want to say thank you for all your support and especially prayers.

David, Gina, Wesley and Caleb Hucker.                                     February 29^th 2008