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The story I want to share with you is so incredible that no human, no matter how imaginative, could have created such an amazing and multi-faceted story.  The only explanation is that it is God’s story: a story of God’s faithfulness seen through the stories of two women.

Sometimes when we think of faith we think of something passive, “just have faith” we say to each other, but James 2: 14-17 says “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?  Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them ‘go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?  So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

The first woman in this story is Isabel Valenzuela.  In the 1990’s she and her four children moved from Santiago to Quillota Chile.  While living in Santiago, they attended a church that ministered to people on the streets, children, teenagers, drug abusers, homeless people.  In Quillota, she could not find churches that were interested in such ministries.  She and her children rented a room in a house, in a middle class neighborhood, which backed up to a hill called Mayaca where the poorest of the poor live in Quillota. Isabel began to have concern for the many children who were unsupervised after school either because their parents were working or because their parents simply didn’t care.  She began engaging the children and in December of 1999 she and her daughters put on a Christmas play for the local children.  She soon realized that the children were lacking in basic education so she began doing math and language games with them in the street.  She used whatever was available; the street was her classroom and the dirt and a stick were her white board.

She sensed that God wanted her to continue working with the children, but she had no money, no building, and knew of no way to get either.  Weeping before the Lord she poured out her heart to God and told him all of her fears. The Holy Spirit brought passages of scripture to mind such as the one Kyle preached on this past week, Luke 12:22-34.  She said to herself, “You need to have faith in God, if He wants you to do this He will provide.” Isabel was convinced that although she had no idea where the money or the building were going to come from, her Heavenly Father had a plan already in place and she simply needed to have faith and to get busy working with the children sharing God’s love and way of salvation with them.

With recycled notebooks, pencils, and other supplies she gathered from the neighbors, Isabel began working with the children.  She applied for government grants for alcohol and drug abuse prevention.  She began sharing the hope and love of Jesus with the children, their families, and the neighbors.  She faithfully served God and continued to pray.

The year 2003 is when I enter the story.  I, Maria Isabel Meneses Diaz (known to all of you as Isabel Beveridge), decided to enroll in a 5 year program in family counseling and social work at a local university.  Isabel Valenzuela enrolled in the same program.  One day after class we were talking and Isabel told me she had a friend she wanted me to meet—His name was Jesus.  God had been preparing me to hear what Isabel had to say by stripping the false god of idolatry and superstition away so that I could hear the call of my Savior as she spoke.  Several years earlier I had decided that the God who had been represented to me as the true God all my life, could not be real. I had experienced too much physical and emotional abuse from my earthly father to ever think that I could forgive him.  I harbored deep anger and bitterness from which I thought I could never be free, but as Isabel spoke of Jesus as the God man, a person, a savior, a friend, who forgave me all my sin; I cried and cried as I realized with the blind man in John 9:25, “Though I was blind, now I see.”  Now I was free to forgive my father and to begin working for Jesus, my Savior, to show others the way of forgiveness, healing, faith, hope and love.

I then joined Isabel in the work with the children and families of Mayaca.  Shortly after I began working with Isabel, sharing the love of Jesus with the children, I had a dream where I saw a chess board and our Heavenly Father was moving the pieces as he wished and I woke up thinking, God is working out his plans through us, I better find out want he wants me to do.

As many people do in Chile, I was working full-time and going to school full-time in the evenings. I was working for the municipality in the office of the Mayor.  Luke 12:12 says, “for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you are to say.”  I decided I needed to ask the Mayor to consider a request.  Isabel and I asked the city if there was some property owned by the city that they could let us use to teach the children after school instead of using the streets.  We were told we could have an old termite-infested shack in an abandoned junkyard that the local people were using as a dump.  It was also where the drug dealers hung out. 

So we, along with our families and friends, began the process of clearing out the trash and painting the shack.  We had to remove human filth, used syringes, rusted metal, rats, glass, tires, filthy clothes, motor oil, old mattresses and much more. We named this place at the base of the hill Renacer—rebirth.   These photos show something of the progress we had made and were very proud of at the time:

Isabel Valenzuela has a grandson, Javier, who went to school with the son of Brad and Margarita Wallace—missionaries in Quillota through World Harvest Mission and friends of Tom Beveridge.  Their ministry is primarily building churches and pastors’ homes throughout Chile.  The two boys began talking and Javier invited Joshua to his birthday party.  Then Joshua and his mother Margarita visited Isabel Valenzuela’s house, they learned about “Renacer”.  Joshua and his mother told Brad about the place, and Brad decided to come and see it for himself.  Neither Isabel nor I knew what Brad’s ministry in Chile was, only that he was a missionary from the U.S.  Brad came on a Saturday, when I was preparing food for 25 children.  Isabel was not there at the time, but we had been working, scrubbing, painting, trying to make the place as nice for the children as possible and this man I have never met comes in and looks at everything and declares, “this is terrible, the whole thing needs to be torn down!”

Brad talked with World Harvest in 2005, and although this project was outside the scope of their usual projects, they were so moved by what God was doing through Renacer that they decided to provide teams to build a safe building for the children. Luke 1:37 tells us that “nothing will be impossible with God”, He even changes the minds of rigid North Americans! J A major concern for World Harvest was that the city was only loaning us the property and building for four years. Brad and Isabel V. met with the Mayor and the City Council. The city officials were so moved by the story of Renacer that they unanimously decided to grant Renacer a 90-year lease on the property.

Through the connections God gave me in the Mayor’s office, many city employees began to volunteer their time and skills to help with the preparations for reclaiming this place as a place of hope and faith. Key people, including John, the city Architect, Walter and Patricio, both technical design architects, Arturo and Mariela, Civil Engineers, all volunteered their help with the architectural and engineering plans.  1 Peter 3:15 tells us, “but in your heart regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” I attempted to live out my new found faith in Jesus in my work place and these friends saw the change. They saw in my eyes the change in my soul and in the process of working with us on the project; two of them have come to faith.

God is so good to have larger visions for us than we can imagine for ourselves.  Once I came to Christ and began working with Isabel at Renacer, I decided that I would finish my degree, be a professional woman, continue working with Renacer, be single the rest of my life, and adopt a child who needed a mother.  Thankfully God had other plans, because in the first year of the project God brought Marvin Beveridge to stay in our home while he was working with Brad and the team.  My mother is one of the boldest people God has put on this earth, and the first night at dinner she asked Marvin, “so, are you married?”  He said “no”.  She continued to ask further questions until finally she looked at me and said, “Well, my daughter is not married, she does not have a boyfriend, and she has no children.” After kicking her under the table several times, I quickly changed the subject, but not before God had already planted the seed in both of our hearts.

Although it was hard to leave my life in Chile (family, friends, job, ministry) I knew God had brought Marvin to me and Luke 9:62 tells us, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” I came in faith and God has not only given Marvin to me, but also Nathan and all of the extended Beveridge family.  I could never have imagined how deeply God would bind our hearts together in Christian love.  Psalm 20: 4 says, “May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans!”  In this case I am thankful that He saw deeper into my heart than I did and gave me a Christian family.  He has also given me all of you, my CPC family!

Since the first teams went from the US in 2006 and 2007, the ministry that began with one woman doing math in the streets with abused and neglected children has now grown to include a ministry to parents, counseling, teaching computer skills, and life skills, and family budgeting. Renacer also has a ministry to the elderly and the home bound and has recently begun working with the homeless. Not only did the City give to Renacer the 90 year rent-free lease of the property but in 2011 Renacer received the highest commendation from the City of Quillota for its service to the community.

Brad’s first visit in 2004 began a partnership between our two continents.  That partnership eventually brought me to Santa Barbara and is now taking me back to Quillota to be part of the team He is sending from our congregation to help finish the next phase of the project.  Please pray for Tom, Richard, Sam, and I and the team members joining us from Virginia, that our great God will prepare our way and prepare the works He has for us to do. Ephesians 2:10 reminds us that “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”  Pray that we will be his faithful, loving, joyful servants and trust Him with all the details.  Pray that our faith will not waiver, for Hebrews 11:6 says, “without faith it is impossible to please God.”

The three teams this year from Philadelphia, Santa Barbara and Virginia, will be building the next phase of the project, which includes a kitchen, two bathrooms, and a large meeting room. With this additional space, the volunteers at Renacer will be much better able to serve the 80 or so children and their families who regularly come to the facility for programs, as well as the programs and food preparation for the elderly and the homeless.

This miracle of rebirth, Renacer, once a city dump, now a place of Faith, Hope and Love, has been brought to life by our Savior who “is making all things new!”  (Revelation 21:5)

God bless you!!!!, with love in Jesus Christ!!!

Isabel Beveridge

Santa Barbara, February 2012