c h i l e
bienvenido a calama, chile!
location: calama is a city in northern chile, in the atacama desert (driest desert in the world). population ~150,000. it is home to chuquicamata, the world’s largest open pit copper mine in the world. earthquakes are common; in fact, we experienced a 4.7 earthquake our first week! my first earthquake, everyone was fine, apparently that’s no big deal here.
language: spanish.
ministry partner / host: iglesia evangelica bautista bet-el is our ministry partner. pastor marcos and his family are our wonderful and very kind hosts. they do amazing things in their community – polly is a nurse and works at a free clinic, and she is very involved in the church activities. pastor marcos works at the church (obviously) and also is the chaplain of the school we teach at, as well as volunteers his time with children who have physical disabilities.
lodging: we have been extremely blessed this month: we are staying in the kid’s bible study room adjacent to the church. we each have a mattress! we also have warm showers and flushing toilets. we have access to the church kitchen and are responsible for preparing our own meals. additionally, we have wifi at the church.
what are we doing? wednesday, thursday, and friday, we are teaching english at one of the high schools. it is a montessori school, which is a model of education that really involves the students and allows them to take ownership of their education. about 30% of the children there are christian, and the school is very welcoming to us as missionaries. saturdays we clean the church and go with pastor marcos and volunteers to “pray for people who need prayer.” last saturday we set up at the market and we prayed with people. his wife is also a nurse, so i assisted her in taking free blood pressures and glucose checks. each saturday will look a little different. sundays we attend church service and then assist with the kids ministry. we have two days off a week, monday & tuesday – one sabbath and one adventure day. in our free time, we want to form relationships with people in the community. we plan to do prayer walks throughout the city and ask the Lord to direct us. He has all ready brought us together with the owner of a little market near a skate park, and we plan to continue to visit him as he wants to improve his english and help us with our spanish.
our home for the month! the church, our room, us in the kitchen, our neighborhood, and one of the local market stores.
the market on saturdays. most of these pictures were taken by my teammate tori, who has an amazing eye for photography.
our first saturday ministry!
the school we will be teaching at this month! so far, so good. because they are high school students, they all ready know some english, which is helpful. we play a lot of games, like two truths & a lie, and pictionary etc… which they seem to enjoy. many of them have big dreams and want to go to university, so english is a valuable skill for them and we are grateful to be able to try and assist.
our first adventure day! we took a three hour bus ride to antofagasta, a beach town in northern chile.
things are still overwhelming and new, and each day has its own set of struggles, but i’m feeling more and more like i do want to be here – that i’m supposed to be here. God has blessed us with provision this month, and is really easing us into the world race in a gentle way. i wanted to give you an overview of what our month looks like, and hopefully soon will give you some more specific and personal updates. thank you all for coming along on this journey <3.
let the sea re:sound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it –
psalm 98:7