Pentecost had come to a small community in Nebraska. My grandmother was one of those souls deeply touched by this. She had been raised knowing the Lord, but this was whole new dimension opened up to her by a traveling evangelist holding meetings every night. She entered in with all her heart wanting more of the Lord and she was greatly blessed. My grandfather was sceptical of it all but he did not stop her from going or the children. My uncle was 14 at the time and he had started running around with a bad crowd and was starting to smoke and be very rebellious. When Grandma gathered up all the kids to go to church with her that night, my Uncle Cyle hid under the front porch. Grandpa went after him and pulled him out and told him under no uncertain terms that he was to be respectful to his mother and he was to go. So he did. He sat in the back and dug in his heels. At the end of the service the evangelist gave an altar call. The Spirit of God began to work on my Uncle’s heart and he took that step and walked down that sawdust aisle and accepted Jesus as his personal Savior. His life was transformed. After graduating from high school, he went to a small Bible School that was established by this evangelist. Part of the Bible School training was to send the students out like Jesus sent the 70 disciples, in the New Testament, to preach the good news. Jesus sent them out with just the clothes on their backs and a hearts full of the truth. My Uncle did this in the mid-west. They came into a town and he began to preach on a street corner. A crowd would gather to hear him and responded to his call for salvation. After a week of this, they would have enough funds to rent a small hall. There they had meetings each night until a church was formed and a building was built or bought. Then my Uncle would move onto another town. He formed a number of churches throughout the mid-west in this manner. He married his wife, Helen, in 1939 and they had 2 daughters. During this time he received a call from the Lord to go to Chile and preach the good news of Jesus Christ. When their youngest daughter was just a baby, they were sent out by the Assemblies of God to Chile. My Unlce learned Spanish but he carried a very heavy English accent. That did not dent the people that he was sent to. They were drawn to him because of his great love for the people in Chile. He loved them as his own and served there for 50 years. He started a large church in Santiago and also established a Bible School there. Many, many people came to know Jesus Christ as their personal savior through his life and ministry in Chile. When it came time for him to retire with the organization he was with, he said he didn’t want to and his heart was to live all his life in Chile and to die there. So, he came home and raised the funds to return and he lived and served in Chile until he was 81, he was flown to the US with a very bad heart condition and ended up not making it back to Chile, but he had his ashes placed in Santiago.
I was inspired to write this story about my Uncle Cyle as our church had a missionary from Chile, Rick Ellis, speak yesterday morning, sharing about their ministry in Chile. I was able to talk to Rick after service and he remembered my Uncle and told me that the church in Santiago that he started is still going strong. When I was in the middle of typing this story, I decided to go to the Internet and do a quick search to see if I could gather some more information about him. To my joy and surprise I found a Chilean website used to promote Christianity in the country. Today, December 6, 2010 this website posted an article honoring my uncle. For the link to his article go
here.
The article is translated from Spanish to English by the computer. I don’t believe in coincidence, more in providence and I think that this is one of those times. It was not an accident that this man published this article the very day I sat down to honor Uncle Cyle and write about his life. I hope it is an encouragement to some one of the great work of the Holy Spirit in peoples lives, transforming us into the likeness of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
December 7th - I need to make a correction. I thought the date at the top of the web page was the date the article was written, but I logged into it today and it has changed to today's date, Dec. 7th. So, I am not sure of the exact date the article was written but I am still amazed at finding this article of my Uncle 11 years after his death on a current web page.
