Once a Month

Sorry, it´s been almost a month since my last entry. The idea of the blog is to update every few days and what not, but I usually run out of time in the internet cafe or say I´ll do it tomorrow and that never happens. Here we are October 4th almost a month later. Some of the highlights of the last month have been the Independence Day celebration on the 18th. We ate many fried empanadas, which is fried dough, meat and spices. We have traveled to Puerto Montt twice this month for a time of relaxation and fun. Spring is knocking on the door and the rainy days are being replaced with sunshine.
This past weekend we were in Puerto Montt for some team bonding, which means game playing every night, eating out and working a little bit. We spent the last 5 days with Dustin and Sarah, playing hours worth of Settlers cities and knights, and canasta. We had a great time Sunday at the house of Eliana and Ricardo celebrating Eliana´s 33 birthday. Church ending at one and we finally sat down for lunch at 5.
Dustin and I worked at Island Tenglo for a day, destroying the last of the crazy thorn bushes. With me controlling the ultimate weed wacker and him on the chainsaw we knocked off the rest in a few hours.
We returned to Quemchi Nation last night and will be here for about three weeks unitl heading up to Puerto Montt for meetings with our EMM bosses and then at the end of the month heading off to Argentina for renewing the visas and vacation.

The Rain has ended

One day soon I´m sure I´m going to put some pictures on my blog. Like the new me picture, because I look normal again. A picture of the family that we become good friends with and anything else I can think of.

We had our first official taste of Quemchi Nation winter last week. It started raining on Sunday afternoon and continued into Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday, then Friday, then Saturday, then Sunday, and then on Monday of this week the sun reappeared. Since spring has arrived and the weather is beautiful. The day temperatures are probably reaching close to 70 and the evenings are still relatively cool, but at least there is no rain. The only ones that though the rain was unusual were the two gringos in Quemchi. What I found odd, was not that it rained for over a week straight, but that it rained hard for a week straight. I´m talking heavy down pour and yet there was no flooding. We did loose power for 24 hours, which meant we had a nice candle light dinner on Tuesday night.

The Lord Reigns

Last night Bekii and I met together with our friends Charley and Anna, Paulina, and Juan Carlos for a time of fellowship and dinner. We ate around 9 which is normal and then waited for about two hours to start our Bible study in the book of John. Last night went much better than last week. This time I was able to understand more of what was being said and where the conversation was going. I was also a little more prepared with some questions to help lead the discussion.
God showed up and did some amazing things last night. He showed his power and mercy and grace inspite of my weaknesses. There were two distinct acts that happen last night that are note worthy, I´ll start with the second. The two little girls were put/forced into bed before they wanted to go and decided to let the entire house know that they were not happy, they started wailing in loud uncontrollable screams, demanding to be heard. Bekii then prayed for the even and she prayed that all distractions would be silenced, that the little girls would not be a problem. As soon as she said Amen the girls went silent. Not a peep from them until we finish about 45 minutes later.
The second amazing incident happen just before dinner. Anna asked her husband Charley to pray for the meal. Charley told her that he didn´t know how to pray, that he has never prayed to God before in an intentional manner. Anna told him that you simple start with Dear God or Lord and thank him for the day or the food or whatever else you want to say. So Charley did that last night and blessed our dinner. I was in awe, that God´s child was communicating with Him for the first time in a very long time and that bekii and I had the privilege of witnessing it.
This was a good reminder to me that it is not about me at all. That God is fully cable of leading a great Bible study even if I don´t think that I am able. At this point in my language skills I simply am not able to lead a good study by human standards, but God doesn´t seem to care about the standards that we place on ourselves, He is only interested in the fact that we are listening to what He is asking us to do. Praise God.

Where does the time go

Where does the time go? We have almost completed another month here in Chile. This coming tuesday we will travel back to Puerto Montt and house sit for Mike and Nancy while they go on vacation. The following week, bekii and I are leaving for our vacation to renew our visas (three months already gone) in Argentina, where I hope to ski the Andy´s.
The sun has returned for a least one day and I took advantage of it by chopping the rest of our wood, to help speed up the drying and burning process. I worked for a few hours in the wonderful sun light with my shorts and T -shirt. We have nice little pieces of wood and a front yard that looks terrible, if only I could figure out how to borrow the rake from the land lord that is in the locked cage in the shed.
Last night we had some friends come over for coffee cito. It´s supposed to be tea, coffee, cookies, bread, ham and cheese a light snack. However, we bought lots of food and nobody ate anything. This happens each time we invited people over to the house. We buy lots of goodies and then are forced to eat them by ourselves for the next few days.
Tonight we are going to celebrate the 22nd birthday of our friend Paulina at her parents house. It should be a good time of eating lots of chocolate (least that was the rumor last night in their store)

This past week June 24-July 3 Bekii and I spent the week in one of the smaller islands, the island on Butachaques. Our goal was to teach english in the small country school for five days, and meet with the small house church on sunday and generally just get to know some of the people on the island. We managed to teach for two days, we didn´t get to meet anyone new, and because of the weather we didn´t really get to explore the island at all. It was a slightly disappointing trip. Not all was lost. One day while sitting on the shore of the ocean watching a group of dolphin feeding on some tasty little fish I got to hear them speaking to each other. It was the first time in my life that I have ever heard dolphin in the wild speaking to each other. That was pretty awesome.
I also got my share of soccer watching in, during the week. Copa America started last week and continues this week and into next week. For anyone not aware the beloved USA did terribly and has been eliminated. However, Chile also did pretty terrible and was eliminated by Brazil 6-1 last night.
July 4-today we have been enjoying some down time trying to get reorganized and ready for some more time in the school. I am meeting with two different people that are going to help teach me Spanish. I meet with Roger and Noami Friday mornings in Castro, they are a YWAM couple, then Tuesday evening I meet with Carlos who teaches lit in the school were we are working.
Life is good, but difficult. We are daily reminded of God´s promise that He has brought us here to serve. I have seen more rainbows in the month than I have in a year back in PA. Here is the latest one that appeared out of our front window.

Spaghetti Dinner anyone?

Does anyone out there not like spaghetti with garlic bread? I did´t think so either, until two nights ago when we invited our Chilean friends over for dinner. They have been so gracious to us in the last two weeks, inviting us over in the evening for mate and pan (tea and bread) that we wanted to return the favor. When trying to decide what to make, we took into account that we should give them an ¨ American¨ dish. The dish had to be something that we could make without too much effort. Spaghetti.
The family came over around 7:30 and the food was hot, the first was roaring, I was pumped. Everyone was served and the littlest girl who is three took a bite after staring at her plate for the longest time. Her face curled up in disgust. After that experience the bread didn´t seem to look all that good either. The rest of the family just did not seem to chow down the dinner either, some odd about noodles with meat sauce. Thankfully our garlic bread with melted cheese was a big hit, the father took two pieces.
We have been eating left over spaghetti and garlic cheese bread for two days. Who knew.

FIRE!!!

Fire. It´s a really simple basic thing, that can be used for heat, cooking, hanging around singing songs, just relaxing in front of. Well here in Chile, fire is used for cooking and most importantly to me Heat. Growing up we had a woodstove and a fire place and I would watch my dad start fires on cold winter nights, sometime I would even help. In high school we´d go camping and I loved to start fires. So coming to Chile I thought having a fire would be great thing.
Nobody told me however, that in Chile most of the time all the wood is wet. It´s very difficult to start a fire with wet wood. Coming to Quemchi I made it a point to cut the firewood into small pieces and even cut some kindling. Once the fire is started there is no problem. Saturday night we returned from a good trip to Castro to find the stove almost cold, which was fine, I needed to clean out the ashes anyway. After I had cleaned out the stove I was ready to make Fire. After an hour I was still waiting to make Fire. All my hard work was for nothing everything was damp or wet. The paper would burn, the tissues would burn, the paper bags would burn, I even managed to fill the house up with smoke, yet no fire.
As it got later into the night, with no fire and the house got colder and I got angrier still no fire. I called the land lord and told him the problem, however, I don´t know enough spanish to understand what he was telling me to do and eventually he hung up on me.
After 3 hours still no fire. We saw smoke from the neigbhors and decided that we would go over and get some of their hot coals to start our fire. Putting all my pride on the shelf I went with frying pan and metal spoon to get fire. We met, we look fire back and...still no fire would light. We gave up after 4 hours of trying and then suddenly...fire appeared out of know where in the stove.
The lesson we learned, is that we needed to meet the neighbors because they are new and are a christian family. God has his plans and purposes, which many times we will never understand. He does what he wants when He wants.