chile is living up to it's name . . .

in temp and in spice!

many of you have been wondering where i've been and what i've been up to. well i'm going to tell you. it's been almost four weeks now that we've been in the north of chile - - most specifically arica, it's a city of about 100,000, twenty minutes from the peruvian border. we've been over the border once in order to get our re-entry stamp, qualifying us for another 90 days in chile.

pichilemu was beginning to get a bit cold and just after we departed the rains came which i'm told makes for quite the mud bog, the big miracle there was the lack of rain while several projects got buttoned up. the major one was the delivery and installation of the steel for the roof of over the pool. the strange thing is that i feel like i was in on this from the outset, as i met mitch the director of the ywam base in february when he was in santiago buying the steel and hiring the the welders. i helped offload the semi trailer in the middle of the night (20 guys per beam and me in my flip flops) i was scaling the cross members to paint the welds (in my flip flops, mom you would have been proud! . . i mean freaked) the last coats of paint were being applied the day the rains came. that same day i was helping one of the leaders wrap his construction project in plastic as we put the last few nails in the rain began to fall. i left pechilemu four days later. spent a day in santiago running errands then the next day it was into a bus and 27 hours later i was in arica.

this city is much larger than pichilemu, and my current living circumstances are much more comfortable than the boat, actually the last place was better than the boat also. odd because i'm here on a mission outreach yet i've had four meals served to me everyday, the bathroom is closer and it's been warmer. people have been doing my laundry. it's not supposed to be this easy. i feel bad because i came to serve and somehow i don't feel like i'm giving as much as i'm getting in exchange.

one of my biggest struggles here has been the dramas we've been practicing and performing from time to time. over the last three weeks that was a main focus. i was really resistant, because i saw so many other places where i felt i could actually be of service or interacting with people. the biggest missed opportunity was the rip curl pro invitational which was here for two weeks, we went on a friday to scout it out and there were thousands of kids milling about. but no one was excited about going back. finally i spoke with the assistant pastor about going back out on the last friday and taking sandwiches to give out and talk to people. we heard a rumor that the competition might have ended so thursday evening we went down and discovered that it was over. still not sure what to make of that, it seems a shame because we could have had a major impact on people here. i'm trying to figure out where and when or if i should be more vocal. we are here learning to submit to our leaders, who in-turn are submitting to the will of the pastors at the churches we are visiting but i didn't get a feeling that the pastor was totally opposed to us going to the comp. it's water under the bridge but i'm still trying to figure out my lesson.

saturday i made my first pasta sauce from scratch, the tricky thing was that it was for 250 people. we got tomatoes, garlic, oregano, onions all in bulk. oh yeah and some red chile pepper. well those of you who know me know i like it hot and that my taste buds are fried, there in lies the problem i put a 1/2 kilo of peppers in the sauce -- you'd think people who live in a country called chile would like chilies -- well they don't - i got some very interesting responses, the first taste was usually a positive look followed within seconds by looks of agony as some ran for glasses of water. the strange thing is i couldn't taste a the slightest hint of spice. the kilo of garlic didn't seem to bother them. an emergency purchase of bland sauce was arranged as the vast majority of our victims (i mean guests) were children. the following day we took the left overs down to an area where there were disadvantaged people living many substance abusers, these folks probably didn't suffer from the excessive spice, having abused themselves in so many other ways. we nourished them for one day and hopefully the time we spent with them was a time of encouragement.

i had some really encouraging interaction with some children here, one young girl was exceptionally kind to me. which made it very difficult when we had to depart. we had such brief interactions but her aunt said that she really made some major break throughs since she'd been with her. it's very sad here to see the absences of men in the lives of their wives and families. i guess it's everywhere but here it seems that women are given this role of servant, and men just kind of come and go as they please. i notice a bit of that behavior even amongst the guys in my group, their used to having been raise this way so they have no problem living that way. i have hire expectations of myself and these guys who are calling themselves christians. but that's me harping and i'm trying not to do that so much, i've got much in my own life that i need to address.

so that's a taste of what i've been up to in the last three months since i filled you in, hope you are all well.