Hopefully this isn't the last entry entitled Answer to Prayer

First off let me say that I’ve totally been delivered from my weird digestion issues! I had a lot of people praying for me and I just want to say thanks to everyone who was. My diet change is definitely going to continue, at least for the next ten weeks. Check out this cool piece of the testimony: So I was stressing about how I can’t seem to digest all the heavy white flower everything is baked with, every breakfast is a white bread bun and most dinners are white bread bun sandwiches, because in Chile lunch in the most substantial meal. In place of the bread I’ve been substituting steel cut oats and fresh fruit and even though they’re both inexpensive Chilean food staples I was stressing because I don’t have the money cushion I thought I’d have over here. When I entered the country I had to pay an unexpected 140 dollar fee to acquire my visa to live over here and the price of the school was a bit higher because the value of the dollar is getting weaker while the value of the peso is getting a little stronger. Anyways after submitting to the fact that this was going to be how I have to eat I was checking my email and discovered that someone anonymously contributed 100 dollars to my missionary fund that will totally cover the cost of my oatmeal and fruit for the next ten weeks! The timing couldn’t have synched up better to the prayers I’d been praying on the subject and I’m super encouraged by it, so if you’re reading this: Thank You!

Living over here is still hard but I so happy to have the food situation hopefully all figured out. Today is Sunday and we finally have the free time I’ve been longing for all week. My body is so exhausted that I’m lying in bed writing this before I have to walk all the way up to the classroom where my netbook can pick up the WiFi to post it. Out of all the houses that the students live in I live in the one furthest away from the classroom. I think that I’m going to come back from this DTS sickly skinny, I’m already tightening my belt a notch tighter than usual. I’m eating less, and exercising more (check out the pictures below for examples of this). However I’m getting majorly fed in other ways. I received a killer word in one of my quiet times this week and, even though it’s pretty much a classic, I could tell that it applied exactly how it was supposed to and I’ll explain the application.

John 15:1-2 “I am the true vine, and my father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit.”

Now like I said, I’ve read this verse a million times before, I even went to a Santa Cruz Bible college age youth group for a few years called “The Vine”. But the bit that was a revelation to me is that this process isn’t as automatic as the verse might lead you to believe. When I read “Every branch that doesn’t bear fruit, He takes away” it sounded like we didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter. I’ve come to discover that not only do we have a choice but if we don’t want the Lord to prune us He won’t, we’ll always have our free will. Now that doesn’t mean that we’re not Christians anymore, we’re definitely still Christians and we can still do good things for Him and He will still totally bless us, but here’s the problem: our “fruit” can only get so big.

(Now if you’re having a hard time understanding what I mean by “fruit” I guess I’m having a difficult time nailing down the definition myself but I think I’ll describe fruit as: All the love that I can give to other people and All the blessing I can receive from God. So if my “fruit” gets bigger than I’ll be able to love everyone around me more and I’ll also be able to be blessed by God more. It’s a pretty hefty definition for a single word.)

I think that my life in Santa Cruz before I left was an example of this, my fruit had gotten as big as it was going to get without a pruning, and I was refusing to let the Lord prune me. I was living in a handful of sins that I was refusing to give up and now living in this place (which I admit is a big Christian bubble) I’m essentially forcing myself to be pruned because I’ve committed to embracing the rules here. Let me tell you, it hasn’t been easy but I’m not bummed on the results. I’m seeing my faith grow and I know that this experience is making me stronger, I feel like I’m understanding more and more just how BIG God is.

More Pictures:

Every week we’re put on different teams to do practical work for our new community. This week I just completed found me pulling wood off a forgotten skateboarding half pipe with just a hammer. After salvaging the boards I striped nails and used this saw to cut the pieces for the staircase we built. It ended up being twice as long as the progress in the picture shows.

Hey Dad, look what I found! Underneath these tasty and underrated Chilean mints is one of my homework assignments: Illustrate all 150 Psalms and write 4 truths from each one and an application, I just finished #16, only 134 to go.

Twice a week there is a 2 hour mandatory exercise time (this place is pretty regimented), but you can do whatever you want, including going off the base and you can go with whoever you want as long as you’re in a group of 3. On this day Enrique, Helder, and I went for a walk to one of Pichilemu’s most popular beaches.

We had a little street evangelism yesterday where we performed some of the dramas we’ve been learning, we all wore black or white and wore face paint to distinguish ourselves from the crowd. The girl next to me is Letticia , she’s from Brazil and like a forth of my school speaks Portuguese (NOT Spanish OR English!)

We opened with our hip-hop dance number titled “Fire” to get everyone’s attention, I have to admit it’s not exactly my thing, and performing anything in the middle of a crowded market, without a permit, with loud music is something that I would never do in Santa Cruz but I came here with this attitude that I was going to just go-for-it in every avenue that I could and so far I’ve been really blessed by it.

My Spanish is getting better but I still can’t have conversations with people yet therefore I volunteered to be in all of the dramas I’ve learned parts for. The photo right above this caption in my big one, where I get to play Jesus :)

This dog is getting more and more annoying the more it loves my ass.

The boys on a hike, woo hoo more exercise time.

The entire crew assembled, it’s a lot more then there was the first week :)