In my last update about our time in Chile, I wrote about our ministry being cancelled due to rainfall in Calama.
My last post was about an adventure we took with Marcos and Poly, our host family, into the surrounding mountains during a snow fall, and how we had a snowball fight.
Today, I’d like to let you in on what the rest of those “unscheduled ministry” days looked like.
At the beginning of the month, my beautiful teammie Sammie held a team time called “Vision Casting.” She led us in a group sharing and discussion of what our goals, directions, prayers and praises were to be for that month. We had all agreed that we wanted to be faithful in going above and beyond scheduled ministry.
We wanted to challenge ourselves to see every single moment as an opportunity for ministry, not just the scheduled “on” hours.
Now that our ministry had unexpectedly been cancelled for the remainder of the week, we found ourselves faced with the opportunity to practice what we set out at the start of the month to accomplish.
After the rain came, sprinkling the earth with newness and stillness, the sun rose and shone in place of the grey, clouded skies.
We packed up Marcos’ car, and one taxi, with all 9 of us girls, one guitar, one cajon, one professional hair kit, one hipster pastor, a lot of signs, and a whole heck of a lot of enthusiasm and set off for the cathedral park in the heart of downtown Calama.
With signs blazing, “free prayer,” “Free English conversations,” and “Free hair cuts,” we camped out all over the park and began to wait for the Lord to show up.
Soon enough, the ridiculous sight of a bunch of gringoes playing Spanish worship songs, holding signs that advertised free hair cuts, and dancing like happy little weirdos was too enticing to ignore. We, of course, drew a crowd.
Toni was able to bless a lot of strangers with free hair cuts that day. One man even told us with tears in his eyes, that he had been on his way to the bar to get drunk, because his heart was heavy, when he stopped to read our signs and something in his gut said, “you need a hair cut.” A few people on my team developed a good relationship with this man, and even saw him a few more times throughout the month and encourage him to continue meeting with Marcos and to come to church.
We prayed with a lot of strangers that day, too. I met a man named Raoul who had been teased and ignored most of his life for having a mental disability, and he asked for prayer over relationships in his life, and decisions involving those people who had mistreated him, and for joy. I felt so blessed to meet him and be able to pray over him, and rejoice with the Creator over how Raoul bears His image.
We all had so much fun loving on the people of Calama that day, that we decided to go back several more times and do the same thing. Each time, we met a new person with an amazing story, and were able to offer love and service to everyone we came into contact with.
It was such a joy to live the truth that ministry is always out there, you just have to be willing to go and find it.
Thanks for hearing another of my favorite memories from my time in Chile during month 9.
