We Started an English Program

On Friday, January 5th we started a new ministry of the church “Speak English”. On the first night we had over 30 adults and 18 children! This is a lot of work as we are developing a program specifically for our city and using faith based principles throughout the course. Please continue to be in prayer that we will be able to have a conversation with each attender and share the Gospel.

We Have a Church Location!

We have an exciting update regarding the church plant, Iglesia Bautista Esperanza.

Today we signed the lease to start services on Sunday, September 3rd at 11am. Would you please be in prayer for the preparations and invitations we will be handing out/posting on social media. There’s a lot of work to do and in addition we will be moving to Valdivia. Currently we are living in Osorno, Chile where we have been learning the language and working with an established missionary family.

5 Months on the Field!

Wow, it’s hard to imagine it’s already been five months since we’ve been on the field. Time is really flying by and we are learning new things every day. Please pray for us as both Gretta and I are taking Spanish lessons daily and learning the language this year. We’ve been blessed with our third child, Isabella, born here in Osorno, Chile. Gabriella, our oldest is picking up the language quickly and making friends in her Christian School she attends. Liam is just happy to be wherever we are and is doing a great job with his new little sister!

Please continue to pray for us as we are planning on starting Bible Studies in Valdivia in the next month. We have the materials, but are looking for a meeting place near the central of Valdivia. This is posing to be a challenge as prices to rent a location even once or twice a week can be expensive. Our other idea is to simply move to Valdivia within the next couple months to hold the Bible Studies in our home.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support as we are sharing the Gospel here in Chile. We don’t have concrete plans yet, but we plan to return home in the summer of 2025 for a couple conferences and will likely spend a couple months raising more support if needed.

On the Mission Field!

We are excited to announce we are currently on the mission field in my home country of Chile. Currently, our main tasks are to get acclimated to living in a foreign country, finish citizenship status for the kids, learn the language, and prepare for our 3rd child to arrive in March.

Many prayers have already been answered and God has provided us with the right tools and resources to reach people with the Gospel. Thank you to everyone who is praying for us, we really appreciate you.

In total, we brought 13 suitcases from the United States to Chile. This meant leaving many of our material possessions either behind or donated. Life is really put in perspective when you can sum up everything you have into several suitcases. The move took a total of 36 hours from the time we left to O’hare and arrived to our new apartment in Chile!

God has directed us to spend our first year in Osorno, a city an hour south of Valdivia where we plan to start the church. We are currently being mentored by a veteran missionary family in the language, customs and essential “must knows” when living in Chile. We appreciate the LaRue family and their willingness to guide us along the way this next year.

A Trip to the Chilean Consulate!

Last Monday my wife and I took a trip to the Chilean Consulate in Chicago to sign some important paperwork.

First we signed the application to receive our Gabby and Liam’s Chilean Birth certificates. This should take about 6-8 months to process in Chile, then they will be able to receive their Chilean Passports and ID cards. This will be important as we won’t have to worry about them receiving Visas then. Gretta will have to apply for her Temporary Visa prior to us leaving for Chile and will have to renew after a year of being in the country. Then she can apply for her permanent residency.

The second document we signed was our application for our Chilean Marriage License. We had to fill out the application and give them our Apostilled Wisconsin Marriage License so Chile can process. This will help Gretta with her Visa applications.

Even though my two children and I are Chilean Citizens, there are still several hurdles to jump. Please continue to pray for this process and even a small miracle that Chile can process the kid’s paperwork before we leave in January.

We have a busy next few months visiting churches on the weekends and working full-time at our church! God is providing and we are excited as we start really transitioning to Chile soon.

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.”
— Ephesians 6:10

Pressing On

It’s July, which means our journey to Chile has been ongoing for roughly 7 months now. Both my wife and I are blessed to still be working full-time for our sending church DaySpring Baptist which keeps us plenty busy during the week.

On the weekends, we have had the privilege of traveling to various churches and missions conferences and are working on filling up the remainder of our year with meetings and opportunities. Pray we can fill up the rest of our calendar year, August/October are fairly full, and a couple meetings lined up in September/November. We’ve been blessed by the many people we have met that are faithfully committing to praying for our family, move to Chile and future ministry. We do all of this for God’s glory and are committed to using our lives to be a witness and testimony of God’s grace.

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.- Galatians 6:9

Keep Your Gospel Message Clear!

One of my favorite passages from the Bible is found in Acts 16. In Philippi, Paul and Silas were imprisoned for being a public nuisance. While completely innocent, they were able to find reason to rejoice and sing praises to the Lord. Probably unaware, they had an audience. The fellow prisoners listened in, who knows maybe they simply woke up because this occurred in the middle of the night. However, there was someone else listening to their worship, the Lord.

Suddenly, there was a great earthquake, the floor, walls, ceiling of the jail were literally shaking, then the doors open and every one’s bands were loose. Not just Paul and Silas, but it says all the prisoners were loose! Understandably, the jailer was devastated, how will he explain this to his employers who would likely execute him? Believing Paul, Silas and everyone likely escaped, he was ready to take his own life by sword. Just at the moment of sure death, Paul cries out to the jailer and says we are here, we are ALL here! Believing that he was seconds from death, the jailer takes a deep breath of relief knowing he will be okay. All he can do is tremble and fall at the feet of Paul and Silas and says the famous line “Sirs, what must I do to be saved”?

Think about this plea from the Jailer, how would he have heard the phrase “to be saved”, how did he know he needed to be saved from something? For the same reason Paul and Silas ended up in prison, for being a public nuisance, for preaching deliverance of the people, freeing people from demons, flipping cultures and tradition upside down. They were preaching salvation, they were likely using the phrases “to be saved” in their public preaching.

What would you say to someone who was seconds from death? “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou should be saved”.

Keep the Gospel Message Clear. Keep your terminology clear.

Romans 1:16a "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth;”

Missions Support Video Completed!

Excited about our Missions Support Video!

We are currently in the process of scheduling churches to visit in the short time we have left in the United States. Currently, the plan is to move in January 2023. First, we will help our current church, DaySpring, finish Phase 2 of the building project. Then work to train up a replacement for the responsibilities I hold at DaySpring. Please pray God will send more workers to DaySpring this Summer!

Nosotros Somos Libres (We are Free)

We scheduled visits to two churches with our new good missionary friends (Jared Park) for the morning service and (Jason Holt) for an evening service in Santiago.

Yesterday we waited for our Pase De Movilidad to activate, but it never happened. Without the Pase activated you are technically not allowed to leave your hotel room. (We may or may not have snuck out yesterday to get provisions). I woke up around 4:30am and kept scanning our QR code on the Pase to see if it was activated. The first service started at noon, so we had to get on the Metro (train) by 11:30 to make it on time, however by 11:00am our passes were still not activated. I let Jared know we would probably not make it for the service, but checked one more time at 11:25 and they were both activated, PTL!

Wow, what an amazing day having the opportunity to fellowship with these great missionaries and their families. Their churches are amazing and they are using what God has given them in the city to do great things. I was able to give a testimony (with the help of a traductor/translator) about why we are in Chile and where we feel God is leading us in the near future. Gretta and I are so grateful God put these families in our lives and the instant fellowship we were able to have. It’s amazing how the body of Christ can come together no matter the location and even language barriers.

We got back to our hotel around 9:30 (21:30) after an awesome day, got some Japanese carryout and had a relaxing dinner. Check out some of the pictures of our day!

Pase De Movilidad

Today we arrived in Santiago, Chile. After we got off the flight we had to go through various checkpoints to ensure we had the appropriate travel and health documents. The whole experience took about three hours, but we are glad have made it through with minimal issues.

Currently when you arrive to Chile you must quarantine until your PCR test result from the airport comes back negative and the Ministry of Health enables your Pase De Movildad. This document has a QR code that most business will scan to make sure you are allowed to travel freely throughout the country.

We left the airport and took a taxi to our AirBnb in the center of Chile. Now we wait until our Pase De Movilidad is activated.

Heading Home

Day 1: Friday, January 14th, 2022

 “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” - Matthew 28:19

Today is our main travel day from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Santiago, Chile. We are flying from Chicago to Toronto, then Toronto to Santiago. We will touch ground in Santiago, Saturday at 11am. This survey trip is much more than a “vacation”, it will really set the tone for our future work down in Chile.

This trip seemed so far away even a couple months ago, but here we are sitting in the Toronto Pearson Airport waiting for our final flight to Santiago. Over the next 14 days I will update you on what we are doing, the people we meet, and the churches we visit.

Our main motto of this trip and our ministry is “Be Available, Be Willing, Be Faithful”. If you can do those three things for the Lord, then the sky is the limit. Here we are, hands open, ready to do God’s work, whatever it takes.

Our ministry is never about “The Repperts”, it’s only about the Lord using “The Repperts” to do HIS work. If you take “The Repperts” out of the equation, God will still get His work done, but if you take God out of the equation, nothing can truly get done for His glory. Christians, if God didn’t have work for us to do here on Earth, He would have taken us home the moment we got saved. But here we are, let’s be do His work until we can’t do it any longer.

For His Glory,

The Repperts

Luis and Gretta in Chicago