Celebrating the Work of Many Hands, Voices, Minds and Hearts

by Global Ministries | published on Oct 10, 2014

I am still gathering the loose ends from the camp season and savoring the many blessings, the challenges and the learnings at the Shalom Center. I have many reasons to celebrate!

I celebrate new friendships forged in the midst of cultural and language differences! I celebrate the ties of faith, spiritual bonds that are stronger than the powers of destruction, physical or ideological distances, the chaos of violence or the ruin of injustice!

I am still gathering the loose ends from the camp season and savoring the many blessings, the challenges and the learnings at the Shalom Center. I have many reasons to celebrate!

I celebrate the work of many hands, voices, minds and hearts creating, singing, analyzing, loving! I celebrate churches represented in the “gathering place” around the peace pole where diversity is manifested in unity! I celebrate the birth of the “Fundación Centro Shalom” after six years of work and prayer. This is the first no-profit foundation under the umbrella of the Pentecostal Church of Chile. I celebrate and shout, “¡Gloria a Dios!,” with my feet firmly planted on the earth and my hands stretched towards heaven!

Elena Huegel
Journal notes, March 2008

I feel that I have grown more comfortable with myself and have grown closer to God, in a place where I want to be. I feel as though I am not alone anymore in being religious. In my school district, there are not many people who feel committed to God and knowing that there are both people at home and in another country that feel committed, makes me feel more secure. I have grown more comfortable in the sense that I can be forgiven for mistakes I have made, and that people do not have to know every detail about your life to like you and accept you. There were things that I did not tell my delegation and yet they still cared about me and accepted me. I felt that the Chileans accepted me also and I found myself able to take complements more readily. All and all I think I learned a lot about myself, and I am glad I did. It helps me think about my future, and that I am on the right path.

The most important gift I received was the knowledge of myself and how I want to feel. I felt that on this trip I was not expected to be anyone but myself. From this I have a stronger conviction and am more willing to show my true colors. The gift of self-examination would be the biggest and more gifts just blossomed from it.

I feel that God is preparing me to do more with my life other than just study. While education is needed, so is experience. I feel as though God is telling me to get out there and really make change, no matter where this may be. I also feel that God is really leading me on the right path towards service and peace.

Maggie Schmidt, 18 years old
Massachusetts, USA

Every workshop, every Bible study, every group moment have cleared the doubts that I had and have made the fears go away. I have remembered that even great leaders cry, get tired, and want to quit. I am full, very full of Shalom, but it would be selfish of me to want to stay here. So in this quiet tome with my God I recognize my responsibility to take this Shalom to others. I cannot keep this for my self, but in my heart I will always return. I wish I had the words of a poet to express what this experience has meant in my life, but all I can say is, “GRACIAS.”

Mercedes Cadena,
Mazatlán, México

The other thing I need to thank you for is for restoring my faith. A few months before going on the trip so many bad things were happening all around me: from friends, to families, to deaths, and the stress of school. I was even battling myself. I could not convince myself that there was really a God when so much bad consumed my life. While in Chile, for the first time in a long time I found God again. I felt God the whole week. I did not even need to try. I so badly want to come back to Chile again. Being back home I still find myself not being me, but I am trying to stop that.

I feel like my life is back on track now.

Kaitlyn Beaulac, 20 years old
Massachussetts, USA

Perhaps the most beautiful moment I lived at the Shalom Center was the walk on the path to the lookout over the waterfall. I felt peace that I cannot explain; it filled me and made me weep. I opened my eyes to contemplate the wonders that God has made and the gift of caring for all of creation. So I take with me not mementos, not simple memories, but peace, peace with and in God. I want to be an oak, giving shade, a canelo tree with healing in my leaves, a fragrant laurel tree. I want to be a tree planted by rivers of living water with deep roots and no fear of drought or fire.

José Álvarez, 17 years old
El Bosque, Chile

Submitted by:

Elena Huegel
Elena Huegel is a missionary with the Pentecostal Church of Chile (IPC). She serves as an environmental and Christian education specialist.