A portion of our worship team.

The Sanctuary is a nice place to be though, despite the fact that it is getting smaller each Sunday as our attendance grows.  It is here that we join together to worship and praise, to be challenged in our faith and to pray together.  Ricardo will be serving as the head pastor this summer while the pastoral family is away.

We have a good group of faithful adults that is increasing in number regularly.  We have a worship team that is 8 people strong.  In addition, we have begun women's and men's ministries with about 8 men and 10 to 12 women.

at the evaluation conference.

The sanctuary is also the place where our district conferences and meetings are held.  In the beginning of December we hosted a conference for church leaders to evaluate the past year and plan for 2011!  In the New Year, the Casa Grande sanctuary will also become the home of a worship music workshop that will run for 8 weeks - hosted by another one of our local churches.

Now this is also an exciting place to be!  Not only is it beautiful with plants in bloom and new grass growing (thanks to the hard work of Ricardo, Pastor Luis and many others) but lots has been happening here (not only the fine tuning of the automatic irrigation system).

The newly installed patio/stage was host to our 9 nights of Christmas program/devotions for our neighborhood.  While we had a few singers from other churches, the majority of the choir who sang traditional,

Click on this picture to see more photos of the event.

contemporary and rearranged Christmas carols were from right here in the neighborhood.  Even more exciting was the fact that our crowd was also comprised of neighborhood people and grew each night - as one neighbor invited another.  In fact, Beth was told that one young boy called his Mom's friend and said, "You just have to come to Bethlehem with us!" 

We had an average attendance of 70 people each night (high of 100 on Christmas Eve)- not only did they get to hear our music but they also heard an evangelistic message each night.  Actually our total attendance was 633!   Many people expressed a very real interest in our church.  We're hoping to see them again on January 2 when we have our next service. (This year we did a much better job of collecting contact information so that we can follow-up with them as well.)

Our youth in the tree... after one night of the Novena program.

The old saying, "It takes one to know one," certainly rings true here.  This time last year, we had no youth in our church.  A family with two teenage boys started coming and now....POOF....we're full of them!  4 are already active participants in our worship team and we had a total of about 8 who sang in our living Christmas tree. 

Three of our girls...there are about 9 more kids who regularly come to church.

It might not be overly relaxing up there, there is so much work to do!  Our Children's attendance has also increased but we've lost two of our teachers (Daisy has gone to Colombia for the summer and another lady's health prevents her participation).  Perhaps faithful children's workers is another thing you can be praying for! 

Also, despite many, many hours of Beth's hard work - we just can't seem to get caught up on the cleaning up there after all of the roof reconstruction!!!  We hope that while we are living downstairs, we'll be able to successfully accomplish that job.

Ricardo, Beth, Juliana and Jonathan Gomez
Free Methodist World Missions

Our Missionary Support Account (MSA) is still about $23,000 short of budget for 2010.  You can make a difference with your year end gift to FMWM in our name (click here to donate on-line).  Can you help us become debt free for 2010?

We also need new supporters for 2011.  The value of the dollar in Chile has been dropping daily meaning that everything costs more than it used to.  If you would like to become a new supporting partner OR if you would like to increase your pledge in 2011, please let us know at bethandricardo@yahoo.com.