In Psalm 39, David reminds himself in the midst of opposition and difficulty where his hope actually lies. He says, “And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee” (Psalm 39:7). It is very easy to start thinking about all the “if onlies”: if only my candidate wins the election, if only a vaccine is developed, if only we could travel freely, if only we had the documents we need, if only there was no opposition…wait, what are we thinking? Our hope is in God!

We are still waiting to be released from the total lockdown in our city. After another month of being restricted to our homes, the number of new positives continue to rise. Most of our days are pretty much the same. Every day we head out at 7:00 a.m. for the 90 minutes we’re allowed outside to exercise and we walk and run between 5-7 miles. We read together the psalm our church is studying the coming Wednesday night, a chapter in the New Testament that corresponds to our church’s reading this year (we’re in Mark right now), and a devotional book, and then we pray for two families and two singles from our church (so we pray for everyone every week). Mark is taking a class on Romans, a Greek course in Spanish, and a church ministry course in Spanish, and Bekah is doing a 90-day language learning challenge. We follow several YouTube channels and podcasts. We have our regular Bible studies with two couples, elders’ meeting, and last week, Bekah made brownies with a nine-year-old girl from church and read a book to another family of kids—all via video calls. The highlight of the day is usually what we’re going to eat for lunch (sometimes that’s what gets us out of bed in the morning). Please continue to pray for us and our spiritual, emotional, and mental health. Despite a massive vaccination campaign and all the measures the experts put forward, our hope is in God.

We are still waiting as a church to meet in our new building. Since we aren’t allowed to leave our homes, we continue with a Zoom discussion of the messages that we have sent out a few days earlier. Despite receiving the architect’s completed drawings for the remodeling project, our hope is in God.

We are still waiting for word on our permanent residency documents that we submitted in June of 2019. We will continue to trust the Lord to grant us favor to receive those documents so we can continue serving here in Chile. We’ll keep waiting, but our hope is in God.

This is our February 2021 email update. You can sign up to receive our updates in your inbox here. You can download a printable PDF here.