So. My last post was about how we spent our weekday mornings at a local school, but it was far from everything we did last month…
We also lead Chilean youth groups, participated in leading vocational training for locals, taught four levels of English classes at night, did manual labor, traveled an hour south to visit a young adult group, and volunteered to lead children’s church services. We also spent time and shared meals with local musicians, soccer teams, other churches, and neighbors.
See, our host, Daniel Trujillo has a mission. He has spent the past eleven years in Santiago, Chile growing a home called Caza Esperanza. It is a home for ladies who have had it rough (abuse, violence, etc.). After being rooted for so long, God asked him, his wife Jessica, and their three daughters Anais, Alicia, and Matei, to pick up and move eleven hours south and start another Casa Esperanza in Frutillar, Chile. Six months ago, they said yes, and uprooted their entire life to follow what God had asked.
Daniel invited my team, Team Burrito, to be the first group of missionaries to come visit and help him in Frutillar. One of our main objectives was to help connect Daniel, and his vision, to the city and community of Frutillar. Everything we did was to help Daniel establish connections in this new city to ultimately open a second Casa Esperanza.
This networking included us living out our day-to-day lives. When we had to request help from a local seamstress, shop at a local dried fruit shop, or even walk to a local restaurant we were networking for Casa Esperanza.
See, what I didn’t realize is that while Frutillar is a medium-sized town, it is incredibly well connected. And while Frutillar Bajo, with Lago Llanquihue and Volcán Osorn, may get tourists, Frutillar Alto rarely received visitors- especially gringos (what they lovingly call white people).
We were noticed. By everyone.
That became most apparent to me one day when Shelby and I were out buying dried fruit from a small shop in the downtown strip. When we walked in, the store owner, Tatiana, lit up. We had never met or seen her before. We started talking to her about her fruits, and a few minutes in the conversation had shifted. She started gushing, in Spanish of course, “you’re the gringos the whole town has been talking about! We have seen you walking everywhere. I am so excited to tell my friends that I got to meet you and talk to you. Where are you staying? I think I live a couple houses down from you! We are neighbors!”
It wasn’t until after the conversation, and after we had left the shop with our five bags of dried fruit, and after I told her about Daniel Trujillo and Casa Esperanza, that I realized what had just happened. We had just gotten confirmation that our main goal was being achieved. It was working. We were capturing the attention of the city, literally by being a loving group of gringas that seemed to be sticking around… and all the attention was going back to Daniel and his house of hope. Daniel was making connections in his new city simply because we were faithful to talk about it.
Wow. God used something as simple as our presence to plant seeds for His Kingdom. How cool is that?
*Location Update: My squad is currently in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile in the Atacama Desert for debrief. We leave tonight for our next ministry location- Cusco, Peru. We will be there for 11 days before heading to Lima, Peru where we will partner with YWAM.
