How is it already the end of September? These two months have flown by! I want to apologize for the lack of blogging lately! I’ve struggled a bit with managing my time away from ministry. I appreciate you all bearing with me as I struggle through this transition. I’d like to catch you up on what these two months looked like.
Ministry in Chile was amazing and tiring all at the same time. Our schedule lead to long days but a short month! Our days were filled to the brim with ministry. We spent most of our weekdays helping teach English and Religion in a local Christian School from 8am-6pm with a short time for lunch and team building. After school we would eat dinner with our host families and spend most of the night building those relationships. However, Friday’s looked a bit different; after school we would help with a kids ministry (after school program) for a few hours. Then, on Sundays, we would aid the church with Sunday school or anything else that was needed.
August definitely came with its challenges as well! One of the hardest things about Chile was that our team was split up into four different host families. Our team growth was definitely affected because of this. However, it led to some people amazing relationships with the local families we were staying with. In hind sight I wouldn’t have changed it because of the sweet relationships we formed with those families. It was very hard to say goodbye to our Chilean familia! And they will always have a special spot in my heart.
The last day that we were in Antofagasta was “English Day” at the school. The students studied different holidays of English speaking countries and did a presentation on them. It was a perfectly timed send off for us English-speaking ‘gringos.’
When we left Chile, my team took a few days to recover from the hectic schedule and decided to camp out in the Atacama Desert (the dryest place on Earth) near San Pedro, Chile. We got to spend a lot of time together and see some really amazing things!
After camping, we stayed at a hostel in San Pedro with the whole squad for month one debrief. And it was perfectly timed! My team and I needed time to digest all the things that had taken place in Antofagasta. We had the whole hostel to ourselves and got the chance to learn from and process with alumni leaders, worship together, and just recover from month one.
When we left San Pedro, my team and I took a long bus ride to Cusco, Peru. We did ministry there for about 10 days. And I’d like to share a few stories from that time:
No Food and Full Souls
One day my team and another team on our squad decided to do a fast and use our food money from that day to bless those in need. We went out in twos and Morgan and I were paired together. Toward the end of our time we walked past a man named Juan Pablo. Apparently, I look like someone who would be interested in drugs because Juan and about 6 other people that day offered me drugs. We declined and had a great conversation with him that ended in prayer. Shortly after, we came across a woman who was begging on the side of the road. She only had one eye, get right eye, and she was shaking a tambourine to earn money. I instantly felt that we should give her some food. When we offered it to her, she took it joyfully, holding it close to her heart with a huge smile! Then I asked her if I could pray for her eye, expecting to pray for her left eye (or lack of). She quickly and eagerly agreed, taking off her hat. As I reached my hand out toward her left eye, she grabbed it and placed it over her right eye. After I prayed, I got the sense that she loved and longed for any type of physical touch because she never gets that. In fact, I believe she usually doesn’t even get eye contact from most people. I was moved in that moment to break that barrier again so I kissed her forehead to let her know she deserves love as much as any of us. I couldn’t communicate that through words, because my Spanish leaves a lot to be desired, but I felt like that communicated something that words couldn’t.
Machu Picchu
At the end of our time in Cusco, we traveled to Machu Picchu and got to see the Incan ruins. I’m having trouble with the format of the pictures right now. As soon as I get that sorted out, I’ll send out updates with the pictures.
What’s next? On the 2nd of October, my team leaves Lima, Peru and we’ll take a 38 hour bus ride to Quito, Ecuador. We’ll stay for about 10 days before heading to Columbia with the entire squad.
