Testimony of Rebeca Toledo Dinamarca

In November of last year, I was with my two children and three friends at the Shalom Center.  It was one of the most difficult moments that we have experienced in our lives.  My older son, Pablo, had died suddenly in October of a cerebral hemorrhage and his passing plunged us into a dark well of sadness and pain.

In November of last year, I was with my two children and three friends at the Shalom Center.  It was one of the most difficult moments that we have experienced in our lives.  My older son, Pablo, had died suddenly in October of a cerebral hemorrhage and his passing plunged us into a dark well of sadness and pain.It had been more than one month since I had seen my younger children smile or enjoy something and it seemed that we would never exit this place of spiritual and emotional desolation.  Yet it was the simple things that began to transform us.  We walked to the waterfall, we laughed at our fears in the darkness, we listened to the birds, and we embraced the trees.  We sang and we prayed as the beauty of creation surrounded us and we felt that God was taking us by the hand.  We did not leave the Shalom Center as we had arrived.  There have been many sad and difficult moments after this trip, and they will continue to happen, but in that place, just then, God shined a light in our lives and we knew that he had not abandoned us.  In the Shalom Center we took the first steps toward the transformation of our pain.    Shared by,

Elena Huegel

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