March Prayer Letter

Happy Easter! I hope that you are doing well and enjoying spring! Here fall is coming, and it’s finally beginning to cool off. However, our semester is starting up at full speed. God is doing incredible things here! Here’s a look at what I’ve been doing last month… Thank you for your partnership in reaching Chilean students with the gospel of Christ.
Julie Sorensen
Me at our stand

Freshman Orientation
We decided to have an orientation for the freshman about how to get good grades while still having fun in college. We wanted to meet students, give a talk that would be useful to them, and give them a chance to get involved in small groups that objectively study the Bible. We planned for weeks, advertised with posters, flyers, and a stand. We bought an IPOD shuffle for a drawing, bought some food, and made a video. A lot of students showed interest and said they would come. It was all going well until about an hour and a half before the orientation was scheduled to occur. That’s when high schoolers, who were protesting something, marched their riot right through our campus with the police right behind, throwing tear gas bombs, squirting water cannons, and throwing students into their vans. As you can imagine, the campus was then closed, and that was the end of having our meeting. At least for that day— we have since been able to reschedule it for next week. Hopefully students will still come! These riots are a pretty common occurrence here in Chile. If students don’t like something, they hold protests, which usually bring the police and their teargas. This is Chile!
If nothing else, the stand allowed us to get the name of Vida Estudiantil out among the students so they know who we are. It also let us meet several strong Christian students who have good potential to be leaders in the movement! These things in themselves make the stand worth it.
We’ve also started up 2 English clubs again for students of all levels to come learn and practice for free. This is a great way to meet students, because many are interested in learning English. Continue praying that we would develop good relationships with the students and have boldness in sharing the gospel with them.

Freshman orientation— (not ours!!) all the freshman go through this initiation process the first week of school– they smell terrible!

Expansion
There are over 60 campuses in Chile, and currently, Vida Estudiantil is only at 4 of them. We’re trusting God to begin new movements on 2-3 campuses this year. To make that happen, we’re currently visiting about 10 different campuses to see where he is opening doors. This is very exciting to me, as I have been praying since I left Chile in 2005 that God would bring Vida Estudiantil to every campus in Chile. Pray that God would show us what campuses we should go to and for favor with the administrations.

Spring break planning
Nathan, my co-leader for the summer project, was here for a week on his spring break trip. We were able to get a lot planned and ready for the project. Continue to pray for us that we would plan well and have wisdom and for the students as they raise support.