In the next few days CMS missionaries Frances Cook (SA), Tim and Andrea Field (SA), and Stephen and Rebecca Shead (NSW) will be having their commissioning services.
These services are an opportunity for the missionaries to publicly commit themselves to doing God’s work in the countries to which they are sent, and for Christians in Australia to affirm their partnership and ongoing support for that work and to uphold them in prayer.
Please pray for these missionaries as they prepare to leave Australia and resume (or in the Sheads’ case, begin!) relationships and gospel work overseas.
See the Care section of this website for a comprehensive list of suggested ways in which you can serve and encourage missionaries both while they prepare to leave Australia and when they arrive at their destinations overseas.
If you would like to attend any of these commissioning services to show your support and partnership in the gospel work Frances Cook, the Fields, and the Sheads are undertaking, please contact the relevant branch office for the details of time and place.
Frances Cook will continue her work with the Centre for Pastoral Studies in Santiago in seeking to encourage and equip church leaders for the Anglican Church in Chile. The Fields will resume their places as teachers at a school for the children of missionaries in Germany. Stephen and Rebecca Shead are about to begin their first term of service in Chile, also working full-time for the Centre for Pastoral Studies.
Compañeros en Misión¨ Needed As San Joaquin Youth Project Takes Shape
Published: www.samscanada.ca By TIm & Peti Webster.
We have been working in ¨La Iglesia del Salvador¨ (Church of the Saviour) since 1998. With the help of many of you, across southern Alberta and other parts of Canada and the USA, much has been accomplished in this parish (new church building and Sunday school rooms).
James Palmer comes to SAMS with a strong sense of God's leading in his life, an impressive academic record and a call to work in theological education.
James born in 1976, he spent his early years in Lincolnshire, coming to faith while still at school. For 3 years as a young man he suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and in retrospect sees that as a wonderful time when God was working in his life through suffering.
James has a first class degree in Theology from Durham University and an MPhil and PhD from Cambridge. He believes that if the church is to mature, it needs ministers who know Scripture and love the Lord. His faith has found expression in a number of areas: music group, student ministry, work with pre-teens, writing and leading Bible studies.
Role Play Terry Barratt has stepped down as Archdeacon of Chile's Fifth Region and handed over to Juan Carlos Chamorro. Terry looks forward to an interesting final year or so at San Pedro, Viña del Mar, prior to retirement - not least because his new archdeacon is his Assistant Pastor! As Terry comments, "These exciting things can only happen on the mission field!" Juan Carlos was expected to take on his new responsibilities in March and at the same time a new deacon, César Guzmán, was to be ordained for ministry in Villa Dulce. But this is a different César Guzmán from the one who heads the Centre for Pastoral Studies in Santiago and who spoke at last year's SAMS South-East Roadshow. And we thought the Church of England was complicated!
from: www.samsgb.org - Experienced Chilean pastor Eliseo Ortiz, most recently serving in Renca, Santiago, and formerly Archdeacon of the Metropolitan Region, has moved across the Andes with his wife Margarita to help lead La Iglesia de la Gracia, the Anglican church of Tucumán in Argentina's northern diocese. The church will lose both its expatriate mission partner couples this year. Tony and Roz Hanson complete their missionary service in mid-April while Chris & Lindy Mulherin return to their native Australia towards the end of the year.
Su Fischer brought a year's Chilean fizz (and German planning) to the British youth scene before returning home in February. She tells us about herself and her work: Su, what's your background?
I'm from Santiago and go to La Trinidad, Alf Cooper's church 2 or 3 doors away from my house. It's a crazy church, just like Alf - very evangelistic and sending lots of folk to do mission overseas. I'm one of them. At home I'm the eldest of three children and I gained a degree as an architect in January 2005, just before coming here.
We greet you in the Name of our glorious and resurrected God.
We are already working on what will be our "Creciendo Juntos (Growing together)" encounter for 2006
This year we will be meeting in Santiago, and have already begun preparations to receive you and have time to get to know you and see the Holy Spirit manifest Himself in our churches, being challenged to continue in the works of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
A schedule of 25 talks in five days is a huge task for anyone to undertake, but for the Rev Simon Manchester the hard work has bred nothing but admiration for Chile’s pastors.
“There are fifteen million people in Chile. Four out of five call themselves Catholic and one in five protestant,” he says. “The number of theologically trained pastors is tiny. A number of pastors are part time because they work in other jobs such as a clerk or book binder.”
