I fear I lack the energy so late in the week for a comical tirade about chairs or phlebotomists. But I do want to keep everybody updated on what we have been up to here in Tocopilla thus far, and what our days look like.
But first I want to give a shoutout to my boy Zachary Taylor (not the president) on team Ablaze over in Santiago, whose “love for Matt grows each second each day”. Evidently his team leader RJ Taylor (no relation) also misses me so much it “hurts his heart to look up at the stars ? and imagine Matt staring at the same stars…”
. . . I’m not sure how to respond to that.
Also, the air here is so heavily polluted due to mining contamination that I actually haven’t seen any stars yet.
But I digress. I finally got over being sick, and we have finally settled into a routine here in Tocopilla, and started doing our ministry tasks. A typical day includes waking up around 8 and walking about a half-mile to the church for breakfast. Sometimes David and Grecia will join us for breakfast, but its normally just the team. It’s always eggs and toast. No complaints here. After breakfast we start our mission work for the day. We have been spending a lot of time cleaning and making repairs to the church. It’s an older building that’s scheduled to be demolished in 2020. But until then, we’ve done our best to atone for the damage done by 30 years of earthquake damage and dust build-up. (We had one earthquake wake us up our third night here!) Eventually we eat lunch. My team is nice enough to let me have seconds most days as we eat on a budget and our meals can be rather thin compared to what I’m used to. But the Lord has provided, and we always have enough. For lunch sometimes we go out, other times we cook it ourselves at the church. If we have some free time, we can head back to the house to update our blogs/journals or shower.
We then return to the church to pray and get water, and then we hit the streets. David says street evangelism is the most important part of our mission here. Of the 28,500 people here in Tocopilla, most aren’t religious, even though most would identify as Catholic or Mormon. But we have prayed ceaselessly that God would use our time in Tocopilla, and future generations of racers to grow the church here. Anyways, we go door to door asking people if we can pray for them. It’s a relief when Grecia is with us, because that means we get one Spanish speaker per group. When she’s busy, the duty of telling people who we are and what we are doing, and praying for people falls to me. Not being fluent, I don’t always know exactly what struggles these people face as we pray over them, but that just means I get to rely more on Christ to give me the words to speak. Despite my limited vocabulary I can say “Jesus is the way, the truth and the life” in Spanish, probably in my sleep at this point. Anyways, we do that for probably two hours a day, and then do dinner- sometimes at a restaurant, but normally we cook it ourselves.
Then we do our team time. This could be a time for feedback, testimonies, Go-Fish (Amy cheats). Then we hit the hay. As I drift off to sleep, I get to listen to the sounds of the street below, the ocean waves beating upon the rocks down the street, and the ear-splitting bullhorn that is one of my teammates snoring.
We make time to read the Word, have our quiet times, etc, but our schedule does change a bit. One morning we met with the Director of Education in Tocopilla at the mayor’s office. My boy Tim was crestfallen when he found out we weren’t important enough to meet the mayor herself. (And before my anyone asks- yes I just used the word crestfallen intentionally.) The meeting went well, and now we get to spend four days later this month teaching English to school kids here around town. We met their English teachers, who are excited that their kids get to hear native speakers for once. Tomorrow is Saturday, and will be our first day playing at the beach with several kids from the housing projects downtown. Then Sunday we get to travel to Calama to see the San Pedro Geyser.
Things have gone well so far. I know that as I earnestly seek Christ, He will continue to reveal himself. My friend James Parker recently reminded me that our God is a good father, and that when he his children ask him to feed us, He doesn’t tease us. He shows up. This has brought me great comfort these past few weeks.
“Jesus Christo es el camino, la verdad, y la vida.” Juan 14:6
-Matt
