Children

I may have mentioned this before, but I come from a town where the population never reaches above ten thousand within the city limits. The skyscrapers and houses of Santiago stretch to completely fill a bowl-shaped valley, a full six-million people strong. Blanket the valley with a cloak of smog, and it is as if there is no end to the urban maze.

The sheer vastness of the city manifested itself in the first half of our bus ride that morning. We started in Florida, situated on the east end of the valley, and were making for Val Paraiso, on the other end of the western coastal hills. It took nearly an hour to make it through traffic and to break through to the fresh air at the other end of the valley.

I kept to myself and stared out the window for the first half of that journey. I was too preoccupied with what had taken place earlier that morning to be intimidated by the millions of people, choking smog, and confusion that had been pressing down upon our group since our plane landed nearly a week before.

Crystal and I had woken up that morning yet again to a sleeping house. Only Hermana Delfina was awake, and she met us downstairs at the breakfast table with bread, blackberry jam, and Nescafe. She was quiet as usual, but somehow it was different that morning. There was a sadness there that she had not shown at the barbeque on Sunday.

"You travel to Val Paraiso today?" she asked as we shrugged on our jackets. It was cloudy and cool outside, the first real traces of the coming winter hanging in the air.

"Yes," I answered. "We are speaking at another Foursquare Church tonight."

"Ah, good," she answered. "My daughter is the pastor there. Can you tell her I said hello?"

"Yes, certainly," I answered. I hadn't realized that she had other children besides Ruth and Jose Luis. I stood there looking at this woman who barely stood level with my shoulder and wondered what her life had been like. I was so curious and wanted to know more about her, but we were pressed for time and in a foreign language I would never be able to form the questions that I wanted to ask.

"Delfina, how many children do you have?" I asked.

"Three," she answered. "Ruth, my daughter in Val Paraiso, and Jose Luis. But Jose Luis is sick."

"He's sick?" I didn't understand. I had just met Jose Luis and his family last night. He looked like a perfectly happy and healthy man in his thirties. What could possibly be wrong?

"Yes," she answered. "He was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and the doctors have said surgery will not help. They say he won't survive another few weeks. Will you please pray for him and his family while you are in Val Paraiso?"

"Delfina, I'm sorry. Yes, I'll pray."

"Okay, now go."

And she shooed us out the door.

When I hear things like that I automatically want to assume that I've been told a horrible joke. I certainly didn't want to believe that Jose Luis, whom I had just met and already liked, was going to die so soon. There are so many things about them that stand out in my mind - how his wife loved to laugh, how Jose Luis had inherited Hermana Delfina's calm dark eyes, and how the children looked after one another and were far closer than any American siblings I had ever met.

But it's the awful truth, and all Hermana Delfina asked of me was to pray. They ardently believe in miracles down there and our team witnessed many of them happen simply through the power of prayer. Men were freed from chronic pain, a blind woman saw light for the first time, the jobless found work and the depressed found hope. Couldn't there be hope for Jose Luis and his family also?

I haven't been able to contact my host family since I returned to the U.S., but I still take moments to sit down and pray for them. I honestly believe God could miraculously heal Jose Luis, if that's part of His plan. Christ told his followers that if someone had faith even the size of a tiny mustard seed, that person would be able to move mountains in His name. If He can raise the dead, He can heal a man who is still fighting for his life.

Of Worthy Mention - They are Blessed

This has no direct correlation with any particular day during the trip, but I would like to note that Crystal and I were living under slightly different circumstances from the rest of the team. As far as living situations are concerned, our host family was one of the most blessed in La Comunida Florida. Over the years, and thanks to the hard work of Hermana Delfina and the rest of her family, their general store and butcher counter had provided them with enough income to build a second story onto their house. There are three small bedrooms - one for the girls, one for Ruth and Denis, and one for Hermana Delfina. They have a car, Internet access, cable television, running water, and a washer and dryer for their clothes, all standard amenities in the typical American home. They even had the luxury of the most comfortable white leather sofa that I ever had the fortune to sit upon.



However, one shouldn't be fooled by the surface values of creature comforts. Every gift had its vices to which most of us back in the States would never give a second thought. Take the running water, for instance. Santiago has a pipe works system that reaches just about every part of the city. But access to running water is not the only issue.

More importantly, is the water clean?

Not in every neighborhood. For our water to be drinkable, it had to be boiled first. If we drank anything that wasn't bottled, it was usually scalding hot tea, powdered milk or instant coffee. The safest bet, however, was simply to drink soda or bottled mineral water - safer, but far more expensive than drinking water from the tap.

The water problem reared its ugly head once more in the communal bathroom. The showers? Infrequent. Their water heater had broken before we arrived. In late May the Southern Hemisphere is transitioning from late Autumn to early Winter, and Hermana Delfina already worried enough about our core tempuratures without adding wet hair from cold showers. I think I kept bathing to about once a week while I was there... but don't judge. It's not so bad, once you get used to it. There are bigger problems in the world than lack of hygiene.

I choose to focus so much on the lack of clean and hot running water because we so often take it for granted. I'm a poor college student. I mean, POOR. I think I have twenty-something dollars left in my bank account to last me the rest of the month. And yet I am so blessed! I drink water from the tap all the time because I'm rarely able to afford bottled water, soda, energy drinks or Starbucks. What a luxury! Every morning I can get out of my soft queen-sized bed in my own bedroom, take a hot shower before I go to work in one of the TWO bathrooms in the super-spacious, carpeted (no, the house I lived in in Santiago didn't have carpet) house that I share with only two other people.

But how much more would I think about that glass of water I had this morning if I had to boil it before I driank it? How about if I lived like so many more people in the world who don't have regular access to water, period? On the surface their lives may look so similar, and yet they deal with so many more hidden dangers that many of us will never have to face.

Want to help others get clean water just like you? Visit http://www.bloodwatermission.com/

Day 5 - And You People Mock My Vegetarianism

I am happy to say that outside the United States, there are Christians who sleep in on Sunday mornings. My host family does, anyway. Their church servieces take place on various evenings throughout the week, like the service that I spoke at the night before. The only Sunday commitment at the Foursquare Church of La Comunida Florida is an 11:00 AM Sunday school, open to kids of all ages. Crystal and I crept out of the sleeping house at 10:30 to meet our team at the church - we would be active participants in Sunday school that day.

Now I've been active in children's ministry before, but that is not necessarily what God has called me to do with my life. So anytime the team participated in anything having to do with children's ministry, I was perpetually terrified the entire time. Still, I think I made it through without too much grief. If anything, the kids thought my nervousness was funny, and even though they spoke too quickly for me to understand* I could at least figure out when they wanted a hug, which I gave freely.

After Sunday school we returned to our homes and spent the rest of the day with our families. We stayed for Sunday lunch, which in Hermana Delfina's family is a big, big deal. We met the extended family - her son Jose Luis, his wife, and their three children, two girls and a three-year-old boy.

It felt like Thanksgiving as twelve of us sat down to Hermana Delfina's seemingly endless spread. They had broken out the barbeque (bigger, hotter, and more dangerous than an American barbeque, mind you) and served the meal in three courses: Chicken, Pork, and Beef. Not to mention the rice, salad, sliced tomatoes, guacamole, and six liters of Pap** and Coke that were being passed around. Hermana Delifina fixed everyone's plate, and she asked how hungry I was.

"A little?" I said nervously.

But neither Crystal nor I had eaten breakfast, and she insisted we wouldn't starve on her watch. She piled a heaping serving of everything on our plates, so that lunch stood a good six inches high as we sat to say grace.

"We'd better pace ourselves, Crystal," I muttered. And pace ourselves we did. There was no way we were leaving that table without cleaning our plates. Just like a traditional Thanksgiving, the two of us sat back half an hour later a little fatter, and feeling both content and slightly sick at the same time. I'd never eaten that much meat in one sitting in my entire life. It was certainly the most I'd eaten in the last three years, and I remembered then just how much I missed being a vegetarian. It wasn't bad then, but I would certainly pay for my carnivorism the next day in Val Paraiso.

*Two of my teammates stayed with a host family who had a three-year-old son, Benjamin. While most of the children in our host families eventually came to understand that we didn't speak Spanish fluently, Benjamin insisted that we were fluent in Spanish and really could understand every word he said.

**Pap. They say it is papaya flavored soda, but somehow I detected something more along the lines of Dubble Bubble Bubble Gum. Pap, Fanta, and Coke dominate the soda scene in Chile.

Day 4 Continued - Past the Iron Bars

This blog might take longer to finish than I originally anticipated. I could trump it up to my work schedule, summer classes, and a million other commitments that eat up all my spare time, but I still manage to find myself regularly putting the final touches on a post at three o’clock in the morning before hitting the ‘PUBLISH’ button. Clearly I want to share this; normally I only lose sleep over things I care about very deeply. I just never thought that an experience so amazing would be so difficult to write about. Some nights I will finish a post and remember five minutes later a little miracle or interesting conversation that occurred, but I forgot to write down in the long run. It took me so long to recall those amazing memories that I don't want to risk losing them again.


So I am going to linger on Saturday, May sixteenth, for a little while longer. I hope you don't mind.


THAT AFTERNOON:


In the midst of getting to know everyone Denis took Cata, Areli, Crystal, and myself for a walk around the neighborhood. I was really impressed with the the way Denis successfully maneuvered Cata's stroller over the sidewalk. The concrete ended abruptly in some places where packed dirt and gravel took its place; at intersections the small hills we were walking on dipped and the sidewalk broke off completely, baring jagged concrete and metal scraps ready to catch stray toes unaware.


It made for slow going, but it was nice to be able to explore the neighborhood and take in its urban beauty. The sun was out and the smog wasn't too bad; I had a clear view of the Andes towering over a sea of shimmering tin and tile rooftops. The graffiti melted into itself, a cloud of undending and indecipherable red and white words thrown like strawberries and cream against the brick walls that separated shops, schools, homes, and people.



"Es muy linda,"* I said to Denis. He kept looking forward, keeping a watchful eye on Areli and Crystal hopping down the sidewalk about ten meters ahead of us.



"Florida?" he replied. He scoffed and shook his head. "No!"

I tried to explain how I'd never seen such huge mountains or colorful homes before. It was different, certainly, but that didn't mean that it wasn't beautiful.

"The smog is terrible," he said, and as if to affirm his complaint I coughed into my sleeve. "And it's very dangerous here. There is a lot of crime."

"Is that why there are so many fences?" I asked. The fences we were passing ended in sharp points, but we had passed concrete walls earlier whose tops were embedded with broken glass.

"Yes," he said. "Do you not have them where you live?"

"Well, in a few places. But I'm lucky. Where I live, it is very safe."

"What's it like?"

I spent the next few minutes attempting to explain the small coastal town where I grew up, the freezing clear water of the river that cut the town in two halves, the crowded, slanted house of my childhood and the giant redwoods that grew up all around where the homes ended and the wilderness began. I described to him how the beach was never sunny and the sand wasn't white, but how with the iron-gray waters and the rocks rising like mammoths from the surf, it was still one of the most beautiful places God could have chosen for me to call home.

He said that the America I described was very different from the America he had seen on television, so I told him that America was so big that just about every state is different from the next. How is one to know if they've never been, or never been told? We can only know what the media tells us unless we have the means to go to a place and see for ourselves what it is really like. I think the media has been painting a very skewed picture of Americans for a very long time, and the sad thing is that we let them, because for some reason we believe that strange portrait of ourselves is the ideal that we should live by and the kind of people that we should try to be. How many of us own a six-bedroom house with a pool in a sun-drenched suburb, or drive brand-new sports cars, or have the means to send our kids to Ivy League schools? Those of us who are fortunate enough to live where iron spikes and walls topped with jagged glass are uneccessary still struggle to find well-paying jobs and live on Ramen noodles for weeks at a time. And yet we still happily support that image and flaunt it to the rest of the world. Our blessings as Americans lie in our opportunities, not in our abundance. Any image of affluence that we might have is often borrowed, at best. So why do we lie to the rest of the world and make them feel like they have to attain that impossible ideal as well?





*"It's very beautiful." I'll write the rest of the conversations from here on in English, but unless I was speaking to a team member from NCU, about 90% of the conversations I had took place in Spanish. Poor, slow Spanish, on my part, but Spanish nonetheless.

Day 4 - Hug Me

My first few days in Chile consisted mostly of tourism. I've got to be honest - in the midst of doing all these things that were certainly fun and interesting I couldn't help being a little frustrated with it all. I spent six months preparing myself for missions work. When were we going to help people? Where was God supposed to fit in with all this?









I was excited for that Saturday. It was the day we moved in with our host families and visited our first church. I was ready to see something amazing!



















My group had yet to see the neighborhood in which we would be staying. From brief converstaions with Marco the most I had learned about La Comunida Florida was that it "was nothing like the hotel" in which we'd spent the last two nights.


Okay. Telling. Then again, most homes aren't like a four-star hotel.



So our team drove away from the rich city center still unsure of what to expect. The buildings and streets got smaller and more closely packed together, spiked iron fences rose up, and unrecognizable graffiti crowded the brick and concrete walls that surrounded homes and businesses. Thin stray dogs roamed unchecked in the streets and cars were parked on the sidewalks. From our position on the ground, the houses seemed to stop only where the Andes began in the east.


La Comunida Florida was unlike any place I had ever been before. I am from a quiet, small town and I felt like I should have been intimidated, but I wasn't. There was nothing but peace. I only wanted to meet my family and prepare for the service that night.


The night before, during a team meeting, Elizabeth told us how we would be conducting our church services. After the church finished their worship service, the whole team was supposed to introduce themselves, and then sing a Spanish version of "Open the Eyes of my Heart"* Once introductions were finished, three team members would share their testimonies in place of a sermon, and we would make ourselves available for a time of prayer at the close of the service.


Elizabeth asked for volunteers for that first night, and God called me to volunteer. God had to have called me, because the thought of sharing my testimony with a crowd of strangers absolutely terrified me. I would never have done that on my own.


Those nerves were twisting around in my stomach as we pulled up at the church and I met my host family for the first time. We dragged our bags into the sanctuary, where a handful of people were waiting in a semi-circle to meet us. Afternoon sunlight was streaming through the windows onto a brown tile floor and lit up yellow walls. Even though it was warm and sunny outside the room was surprisingly cool.


Our team made our way one-by-one around the circle and greeted our hosts. Because of the language barrier, conversations stayed brief.


Lisa introduced me and my teammate, Crystal, to a petite, elderly woman at the far end of the room. She had stayed very quiet the entire time, to the point that I had nearly forgotten that she was there. Her name was Hermana Delfina,** and she was the head of the household with which Crystal and I would be staying.


A man was waiting in a car for us outside. His name was Denis, and he told us in Spanish as we loaded our things into the car that he was married to Hermana Delfina's daughter, Ruth. He, Ruth, Delfina, and their two daughters, Areli (5 years old) and Cata (1 year old) lived a few blocks away from the church, and they ran a general store and butcher shop from the first floor of their home.


The conversation was entirely in Spanish, but I was surprised to discover that I could understand so much. Crystal had taken French in high school, so I operated as translator most of the time. Although I had to apologize for my atrocious grammar and gringa accent,* I was communicating. After a two-year break from a high school beginner's Spanish class, conversation was a miracle and a blessing from God. Even the days I thought we had wasted on tourism proved helpful; Denis knew about many of the places we visited and it acted as a springboard for more conversation.



We met Ruth, Areli and Cata at the entrance to the store. Areli and Cata were shy at first, and stayed close to their mother as we hauled our things into the house and up the stairs to Areli's room, where we would be sleeping for the next two weeks.



I knew I would like Ruth from the moment I met her. She was young, only in her late twenties, and I thought she was one of the prettiest ladies I had ever met. We chatted while the store was mostly empty and Crystal and I were beginning to get settled in. She told me that Areli was learning English in Kindergarten and she hoped that Crystal and I could teach her some new words while we were there.



When the store emptied of customers a young man who worked at the butcher counter came in and introduced himself. His name was Daniel and he was a relative of Ruth and Delfina. He was twenty, closer to me and Crystal's age, and much to Crystal's delight, he knew a lot of English! He studies biology at a college in Val Paraiso during the week, but on the weekends he helps the family run the store. I asked him where he learned to speak English and he laughed.



"From television," he replied. "I love American TV!"



I think I'm going to do myself a favor and start watching Telemundo more often. My language skills need all the help that they can get.


Business started to pick up again after lunch, and Crystal and I were left to entertain ourselves for the afternoon. They had cable and internet access, so Crystal checked her email and watched cartoons with Areli while I prepared for the church service that night.



I sat with a pen in my hand and my journal open in front of me. I knew I should write it down (I would be pausing frequently for a translator), but where should I begin?



I had told my testimony to others in the past, but I had never been able to bring myself to write it down.**** How on earth could I tie it all together and make it make sense? There was something about writing it out that made it seem all the more real and permanently fixated in my memory, and there was much that I would sometimes rather forget.


So I prayed as I wrote. God is the author of my story, not me, and I kept that in mind as my mind blanked out and my pen scribbled across the page. I put it all out of my head and trusted Him to give me the right words, even though I was scared that they would be neither recieved nor understood. I finished with barely enough time to change into a skirt and blouse before we left for the service.






Our team drove through heavy traffic for nearly half an hour to get to Puente Alto, a community in another part of Santiago. In the dark it looked almost exactly like Comunida Florida, and I wondered how we made it there without getting lost.











The Puente Alto church was slightly smaller than the church in Comunida Florida, but it was filled with smiling people and a wealth of energy.



The worship service began, and the congregation exploded as people began to sing and dance at the top of their lungs. Girls in white and pink flowing skirts swayed to the music and waved brightly colored scarves, and a boy blasted out a brassy melody on the trumpet. I could not understand the words but I could feel God's presence nonetheless, so I began to sing and dance with them. I had never worshipped with such carefree abandon before, and I was almost sad when the music ended and my team took over for the service.






After our introductions and the song, I was the first to speak. It took me until I had walked up to the podium and opened my journal to realize that all my nervousness had disappeared. I wasn't scared at all. Why should I be? I was reading verbatim from notes, Lisa was on the stage with me to translate, and the end, God was in charge of it all.









I spoke calmly into the microphone and forgot the crowd completely. The story was telling itself with hardly any true effort on my part. The world didn't become real again until I realized that I finished and everyone was applauding and I looked over to see that Lisa was crying. Before I went to sit down again, she gave me a hug.



I was exhausted and stayed very quiet after the service. Somewhere in it all, God had affected some people very deeply that night, and I wasn't sure what He'd made me say to produce such an effect. Three women approached me after the service crying the same way that Lisa had been and just held me for a while.























No words, just a hug, warm and comforting and full of nothing but love. It reminded me of "The Hug Poem," by Bradley Hathaway. It is my favorite beat poem, and it brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it read aloud. If you would like to read it (and I strongly recommend that you do) I've attached a link to a video of Bradley Hathaway performing "The Hug Poem" at the end of this blog.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AYvnfGJoxg





*The Spanish translation (Abre Mis Ojos)


Abre mis ojos, O Cristo
Abre mis ojos, Senor
Yo quiero verte
Yo quiero verte

Verte alto y sublime
Brillando en el luz de tu gloria
Derrame su poder y amor
Cuando cantamos santo santo


Santo santo santo
Santo santo santo
Santo santo santo
Yo quiero verte


**Hermana is the Spanish word for "Sister." It is not uncommon for adult members of the congregation to address each other as Brother or Sister in conversation.

*** "Lo siento! Soy gringa, y mi gramatica es muy, muy mal!" Marco loved that one.

****If you haven't heard my story and would like to hear it in its entirety, I would be happy to share it over coffee or a long walk around town. It is too long and personal for me to share here, but I am very open to questions at any time.

Day 3 - My Mother's Favorite Angel

By noon on Friday my paperwork had been taken care of(praise God!), and I was released to spend a day of toursim with the rest of the team.

For lunch we squeezed ourselves into the second story of a crowded restaurant and ate hotdogs, Chilean Style. They really are quite popular down there, and they do use hotdogs, but there is something distinctly Chilean about them. I think it’s the amount of avocado, tomato, and mayonnaise piled on top - the actual hotdog was hiding somewhere underneath the mountain of condiments. It was an interesting experience in itself, but I could only handle about two bites before I snuck it into the trash. (vegetarian, remember?)

That afternoon we went careening through the trees in a park on top of San Cristobal Hill. I rode with Marco and my teammate, Crystal, and it was in a cramped, rickety bubble of a sky trail car that I discovered they were both afraid of heights. It is never a good thing to discover when you are a few stories in the air and the door won't shut all the way, but nevertheless, we bonded and survived.

Both of those activities were certainly adventurous, but the most memorable part of the whole day was spent in silence. We visited a Cathedral in one of the city's main plazas. It was so ancient and beautiful, all stained glass above and creamy marble sepulchres below. There were statues all around, monuments to Christ, angels, and the saints. I stopped in front of a statue of the Archangel Michael casting Satan down from heaven and stood there for a while. Looking at it and thinking about it brought tears to my eyes. There is so much sadness in it all. Was Michael sad when he had to battle his fellow angel? What if Satan had just kept loving and worshipping God like the rest of the angels? What if his heart had never blackened and twisted itself beyond recognition?

But he fell, and man fell too when we chose to trust him over God, and now we cause ourselves so much needless suffering. We'll never know the world that might have been, only the world that will be reborn through Christ's restoration. And thankfully God commissions good people and angels like Michael to protect us and show us true courage until the darkness passes. It stuns me to think that there are people who faithfully attend mass every week in these beautiful, illustrative buildings, with constant reminders of Christ's sacrifice staring down at them from every angle, who do not understand or even recognize the staggering weight of His love for them. My heart breaks for them, and I pray a passion for Him rises in their souls once again.

Day 3 - Officiated Tourism

This day was a day of reckoning, the day that men in shadowed garb would decide whether I would be given safe passage through their land, or whether I would be forever exiled…



All right, so the situation wasn’t nearly as epic as that. I think I’ve just been watching too much LOTR these days.



Still, that day was the day Elizabeth, Lisa, and I went to the Chilean Department of Immigration in downtown Santiago in order to get my paperwork officiated. Apparently it wasn’t enough to make it through immigration and customs at the airport! While the rest of the team wandered through plazas and looked at statues and fountains, the three of us stood in a windy line in what looked like the lobby of a nice hotel, or an upscale bank, and stared at our shoes for fear of standing out.



Not that we could avoid standing out. I had to be the tallest, whitest girl in the room.



But Lisa didn't seem to notice as we crept to the front of the line and she cheerfully bounded to the graying man sitting at the front desk. The desk itself seemed rather plain, but it was covered in tiny black and white origami animals. I looked them over while Lisa worked her magic.



She said a few things to him in Spanish I could not understand, and he laughed and reached for my passport and customs paperwork. I had to remind myself to relinquish my iron grip; Elizabeth had told me before we left just how many problems we would have if, for some reason, the paperwork was lost. This man, like the others, never bothered to look it over. He stamped my papers with a red seal and handed them back to me with a wink in Lisa's direction. Before we walked away he handed her one of the tiny paper animals.



Lisa handed me the paper figure once we were outside. "Here, take this as a souvenir," she said.



"Why'd he give that to you?" I asked, turning it over in my hands. It was a tiny, tiny dog, and it was made of what looked suspiciously like a rejected customs form.



She smiled. "It was a gift. They like to flirt here."

Of course they do. How else would I be allowed into the country?



TO BE CONTINUED...

Day 2 - Nuns, Air Kisses, and Nacho Fries

I was blessed to awake to a sight not many people will ever get to see - the sun rising over the Andes near Santiago.



A clear view of the Andes is rare even for the people of Santiago.

The valley in which Santiago lies is one of the most polluted places on the planet, directly below one of the infamous holes in the ozone layer. On its worst days the snow-capped peaks, which lie only kilometers from the outskirts of the city, can hardly be seen through the haze. The opportunity to see the mountains in total clarity was brief; ten minutes later we descended into a thick layer of morning fog, and the world around us disappeared.



Customs was a nail-biting experience. My team had been praying for weeks that the process would be easy and that I would be allowed into the country without any hassle. For my team leader's sake, I was glad I was the only minor in the group. Pulling together the official paperwork for ten people would have been an absolute nightmare!



The cause of all the worry? In order to crack down on child trafficking many countries, including Chile, now ask that minors unaccompanied by their parents have additional documentation along with their passport ready to present to officials to ensure that they are not being taken across international borders against their will. In my case, the additional paperwork included an officiated letter of intent and a full itinerary of the trip, complete with times, addresses, and emergency contact information. If I were to be stopped by an official and they found a glitch anywhere in my paperwork, they would have the power to send me back to the United States, and my mission trip would be over before I could claim my luggage.



Fortunately God was with me in customs. Every person I spoke to merely glanced at my passport and waved me through, and the same held true for the rest of the team. Every one of us made it into Chile without any problems. Praise God!



Our host missionaries met us outside the baggage claim. Lee and Lisa Schnabel work with the Foursquare Church and have been serving as missionaries for twenty-five years. Santiago is their newest home and they have been spending most of their time training Chilean pastors for ministry in the one hundred and twenty Foursquare Churches around the nation. Our first day was a day of debriefing about the situation in Chile, and this is what they told us:



1. Chile is still a developing nation. This means that the features of a modern society are present, but there is an obvious line of separation between the haves and the have-nots. Poverty is a very real and pervasive problem, and class distinction is very common.



2. Evangelical Christians are a small-yet-growing group in Chile. The Catholic Church is still very influential, especially among upper-class citizens. Religion in Chile has become more of a routine than a path to salvation.



Because of this we were told that our ministry in Chile would be more relational than physical. The Schnabels planned for us to travel to several Foursquare churches in the Santiago and Val Paraiso areas so that we could share our testimonies with the congregations and offer prayer for any needs that they might have. One of our biggest goals was to encourage the already-existing Chrsitian community and to help them grow in their faith, so that they in turn would be prepared and eager to share the Gospel with others even after our return to the United States.



With that information in mind, our first stop in Chile was the mall.




Wait... the mall?


Actually, on a day of adjustment to a foreign culture, the mall is a good place to go. There we could exchange our U.S. Dollars for Chilean Pesos, check out typical Chilean fast food fare at the food court, and see firsthand how the locals interacted with our group and with each other.

Lee and Lisa told us to pay attention while we were in the mall in order to gain insights about the culture. So what stood out to me?

Besides the obvious fact that everyone around me was speaking Spanish, I also noticed how much nicer everyone was dressed compared to me. Suits and ties were common for the men, and the women wore blouses, skirts, and trendy jeans or slacks. We were in a very, very nice part of the city, and in my North American Walmart wardrobe I felt very, very out of place.

On a lighter note, I remember walking by a nun who seemed to have taken a very keen interest in a clothing display outside a high-end fashion store. I felt like I had walked smack into a physical manifestation of an oxymoron.

Lunchtime begins around one or two o'clock and is the biggest meal of the day. At that time we split into pairs and were given 10,000 pesos* to spend in any food court restaurant of our choosing. My partner and I chose Taco Bell. That sounded safe enough.

But I soon discovered that Chilean Taco Bell is very different from the Taco Bell I knew and loved. I ordered (in Spanish!) French fries, but they came with all the trimmings one would usually find on a batch of nachos in the U.S. - cheese, sour cream, lettuce, tomatoes, and ground beef. Even more surprising - nothing was spicy. I tried to imagine corn chips in the place of deep fried potatoes and ate my nacho fries in silence.


I spent most of my meal trying to follow a conversation Lisa was having with Marco, a Santiago local who was helping our team coordinate our activities and travel details. Marco is a tall, dark-haired, tan Chilean man and Lisa is a petite blond American woman who just happens to be fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese (her parents were missionaries in Brazil for a huge portion of her childhood). She is also one of the most energetic women I have ever met. I tried to listen as hard as I could, but the majority of their laughter-punctuated, rapid-fire Spanish flew right over my head.

In all honesty, it made me feel a little uneasy. Would I be in the dark the entire trip?

That night we went to Lee and Lisa's apartment for dinner and more debriefing. While we ate pizza ( I had yet to see an authentic Chilean dish) we discussed customary Chilean greetings. There are two ways to greet people in Chile, depending upon whether you are a man or a woman.

MEN:

1. To greet another man, and handshake and a brief hug will usually suffice.

2. To greet a woman, give her an "air kiss" by gently bumping your cheek against hers.

WOMEN:

1. Greet both men and women with an air kiss.

...but don't kiss them on both cheeks. They do that in Argentina, and that's just weird. **

Dinner with Marco and the Schnabels concluded my first full day in Chile. We spent the night in a hotel downtown, and I barely had the energy to write about everything I'd seen in my journal before I fell asleep.

*The current exchange rate in Chile is about 550 pesos to 1 U.S. dollar.

**Marco happens to disagree and says that the Argentinian "double kiss" is just fine. We decided not to take Marco's word for it...

Over the Rockies - Day 1

I found out before I even left the country that this trip was not going to be easy.


See, just about everything that has occurred in my life up to this point has been a first. First car, first year living on my own, first published poem, and now my first journey overseas.

It also marked my first journey on a commercial flight.

And my first time getting sick on a plane.


It wasn't even dizziness or nausea, but full-blown, I-feel-so-sorry-for-myself-and-the-people-around-me sickness. Thank God it happened as we landed in Dallas, Texas, and not mid-flight.





I practically crawled off the plane, and the moment my group made it to our next departure gate I curled into a ball on the carpet, closed my eyes, and tried to rest. The ground was moving up and down beneath me and there was an unbearable weight pressing down on my temples.


I didn't understand why I was feeling this way. I never get motion sickness in cars or boats; I had not eaten any strange foods yet; last time I checked, I was in good health. What was going on?




In retrospect I contribute nearly all of it to fear of the unknown. I had spent most of the night before whining to my friend Tobyn, worrying over whether or not I really was ready to take a step so far beyond my established boundaries. I had not spoken of it much to anyone before, but I was genuinely terrified to encounter the language barrier, the new food, the unfamiliar culture - even the different climate. After being a vegetarian for two years, would I be able to handle the meat people served me? I also had not practiced Spanish since my second year of high school. Would communication be possible? There were so many uncertainties I knew I would inevitably encounter, and I wasn't sure if I would be able to handle it. If I couldn't handle a bout of motion sickness, would I be able to handle two weeks of a completely new way of living?


So I was literally worrying myself sick, and I had yet to even cross a border. Sad.


Of course, once you begin a journey by plane it is rather difficult to turn back, and I realize now that I was blessed to not have a choice in the matter. If I had, I would have made the wrong choice and run back to the familiar. Instead I remained where I was on the floor, and for the rest of the layover I fell in and out of sleep, and prayed.


"God, if You want me there, You'll get me better before I get on that next flight."


The next thing I knew I was awake and feeling tired, but fine. The ground was no longer moving beneath me and my headache had disappeared. I got up cautiously, afraid that it might return as I stood up, but nothing happened. I was okay. I joined the other ten people in my group and we boarded the plane together. The plane took off and climbed to 30,000 feet, but my nausea did not return.


I suppose He did want me there, after all.

Why I Left the Country

I recently returned from two-week stay in La Comunida Florida, one of the neighborhoods in Santiago, Chile, but I didn't go there to do the tourist thing, snap some pictures, gawk at some old buildings, and go home.

I went there to see God work miracles.

I saw the old buildings, but I tried to look beyond the architecture to the people living and working inside them. Ten of the fourteen nights I did not sleep between crisp sheets in a hotel, but in a spare bed in a small, colorful house with one of the kindest, closest families I have ever met. My monuments were neighborhood churches. My recreation took place in the plazas as I played with local children and told them how much Christ loves them. For two weeks this city, where the blanket of smog turned the sky blood red at sunset and hungry dogs and people roam the streets, was my home. And it was a beautiful home indeed.

Starting today I'll add a post every day from the journal I kept while I was staying in La Comunida Florida. It certainly is not the same as seeing Chile for yourself, but God can use things far more mundane than a blog to speak to people. Have a blessed day.