In my last blog, I talked about how my spirit entering month 9 felt like a dry desert, and how God had whispered a promise to me that the rain was coming.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, friends:
God doesn’t lie.
A few days into our month in Calama, one of the few inhabitable cities in the Atacama desert, God miraculously sent the rain.
When we first met our host, Marcos, around 10:30pm at the Calama bus station, he told us not to expect to see any trees over the next month, because it was too dry for vegetation to survive. It was too dry for vegetation, but also too cold for anything to grow regardless, because it was the middle of winter in that part of the world. When he told us that trees don’t exist in Calama, we thought he was kidding.
He wasn’t.
Over the course of the next few days, as we began to get to know our host family better, Marcos told us that it had only rained once, exactly a year prior, in his recent memory of living in Calama.
As our boggled minds struggled to wrap themselves around this information, we slowly settled into desert life in our comfortable new home with our enchanting new family. Marcos, his wife Poly, and their two kids Valentina and Tito became such dear friends to my team that month. To this day, we still joke in fond remembrance of Marcos and Poly, their love of sarcasm, practical jokes and “hipster pastor” dance moves.
I witnessed them leading a church in a city that did not feel like home to them, as they were missionary transplants from Santiago, and had only been in Calama for two years. They still led with humility, grace, gentleness, encouragement and servanthood to their congregation.
Marcos was often seen laughing with church members, praying with them, for them, whenever they needed uplifting, engaging with strangers in his community, participating in basketball games with his son and friends. Poly was often seen hugging everyone, making sure they had something to eat or drink, serving with the Sunday School classes, or simply holding someone else’s baby so a young mother could get some much needed peace and encouragement.
It still amazes me that you can come to know a person’s heart and see their influence and learn much from them, while also growing to love them, in the span of just a few short weeks. Especially when you’re communicating in that smoky grey area of “this is definitely not my first language.” There were a lot of hilarious mistakes in English and in Spanish, and many funny, awkward moments as we lived with them. They’re still some of my favorite moments from the Race.
About a week after our arrival in Calama, we woke, startled, to a swollen grey sky and miraculously, rain began to fall!
Remember, kids, I mean it when I say:
GOD DOESN’T LIE.
He sent rain for the first time in over a year to this dried-out desert town, and He sent rain for the first time in too long to my dried-out desert spirit.
To this PNW girl, the rain came as a sweet, sweet balm to my dry, dusty soul, and I think there was a little extra pep in all of our steps as we went about life the day it rained.
Funnily enough, the single day of rainfall had shut schools down across the city for the next 4 days. As our ministry was primarily teaching English to high schoolers, this left us a little high and dry for scheduled ministry.
The first official day of cancellation, Marcos decided we were going to take a mini vacation into the wilderness for an adventure, but didn’t tell us anything about it. Instead, he quickly packed all of us, his kids, Poly, their dear friends Roberto, Belén and their son Sebastian, into two 4WD cars, and we headed out for a wordless, unknown adventure somewhere in the desert.
When I tell you that he didn’t say much about where we were going, I’m not kidding; he just popped his head into our kitchen and said, “We’re leaving in 10 minutes! Dress warm!” And slid out, grinning and chuckling to himself as we set off in a whirlwind, desperately unsure of what he meant by dressing warm. Even though it had only been a week, we knew to expect that if Marcos and Poly were planning anything, it was sure to be a wild ride.
We decided in the end to pretty much pack on every single layer of warm clothing we had, and it was a good decision to, because a few hours later we found ourselves on the side of a desolate mountain in the Atacama desert, standing in a rapidly accumulating snowfall.
Rain+winter+desert=SNOW!
I’ll never forget the look on Marcos’ face as we stepped warily out of the SUV, and suddenly were pelted by a furious fire of snowballs from him and Tito. We immediately began to shriek and slip and laugh and run around in one of the most exciting and unexpected snowball fights I think any of us had ever experienced.
We played in the freezing snow for awhile, as long as our hands and faces would allow it, and then travelled into a tiny historic town for some sopapaillas (think elephant ears without any cinnamon or sugar) and hot spiced tea after the sun had gone down. We crowded into the tiny, wall-to-wall crowded restaurant with our huge group of 15 people, and had a hearty meal together in celebration of the day’s adventure.
As I’ve said lots of times before on this blog, ministry doesn’t always have to look like changing something, serving someone, or fixing anything or anyone. A lot of times, ministry just looks like making memories with people, taking the time to learn their stories, sticking around long enough to learn the sounds of their laughter, or sharing a hot meal after a tiring snowball fight together.
When I look back on my time in Chile, my heart smiles fondly at the memories we’ve made with our new family. Already, the transformation of my desert spirit had begun to take place, and I was starting to feel refreshed and renewed, and excited about what else the Lord had in store for the remaining 12 weeks of the Race, but particularly for the remaining days we had left in Calama with these beautiful people.
