Even the Stork in the Sky knows her Seasons: Manantiales.

I should have known better than to think that this first week of the outreach in Mantellis would be a boring week filled with just team building exercises. We were greeted warm welcome from the family of farmers that received us; while they were going to be in Santiago for the week selling their harvest they allowed us to stay in their house and treat it like our own. Before they left they also left us with an enormous box of pears and apples that they had just picked off the trees (definitely more than 10 people could eat in a week if we were on a strict fruit only diet). The following day was the team’s free day of the week, and while we either rested or took the bus to San Fernando (the nearest medium sized city) the leaders looked for something for the team to do during the week, and they were successfully.

We were invited to do our presentations of dramas and dances at a local elementary school and it was a huge success. We kept getting invited back, after our performance the first day the teachers loved us so much that they invited us back the next day to paint a mural on the wall of their school with their teachers and students, I spent the whole afternoon having to talk to all the kids in my Spanish and while at first I was a little nervous I realized that these Chilean kids had more in common with the awesome kids at Soquel Elementary that I originally thought. We talked about Tech Decks and the Transformers movie and favorite sport teams and I was so grateful to God for giving me enough of the language up to this point to talk to a school full of kids for 3 hours strait. I also think it helped that during the mural painting time I was 24 hours into my water-only fast.

The beginning of this outreach for me I felt really strongly attacked spiritually; I was having a hard time shaking thoughts that I was the weakest link in the team because I know the least amount of Spanish. The second night I woke up frozen to my core and when I got up to use the bathroom my entire body was stiff and no matter how much clothes I put on I couldn’t warm up (and the weather hadn’t changed at all from the night before), when I finally did get to bed I had nightmares all night long and when I woke up in the morning all I could think about was how nice it’ll be to be back home in Santa Cruz and too finally be able to take a break from all this “God Stuff”. I brought all these feeling to God during my quiet time and I really felt led to do a 24 hour fast while I was praying in the middle of our afternoon presentation at the school. I received two pieces of encouragement during this time that I can tangibly write about, one was that my mood stayed positive the entire time, which I happen to take as a miracle because if I go 3 hours without eating I become a total grouch but even after breaking the 24 hour wall while painting with the kids I stayed in great mood. I feel like this was the Lord reminding me that He’s in control over problems that I had originally perceived as “un-fixable” like feeling cold, being hungry, or feeling lonely. Also I received a word in Matthew that just jumped off the page when I read it. It’s the story of when Peter walks on water to meet Jesus.

Matthew 15: 28-31
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come out to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

Starting this DTS for me was my way of getting off the boat and trying to walk toward Jesus and everything started out great. But then the Outreach started and I started going whole days where everyone only speaks Spanish and I started feeling like I wasn’t good at anything and I began forgetting all the testimonies I had that brought me here and have sustained me here so far; I started to “sink into the water” as I started venturing out into the unknown. However after the fast I really saw how much God is with me and with our team, I may have doubted but God hand was indeed immediately there for me. After we painted the mural the teachers invited us back for a third day for the guys on the team to play a football game against the staff while the entire student body watched. All the while, everyday, we were able to plug our big outreach we miraculously received permission to do in a plaza in the middle of town the Saturday before leaving for Ecuador. After the football the entire staff of the school brought us to a conference room where we just shared Jesus with everyone for over an hour, giving testimonies and words of encouragement. After this time, to our surprise the teachers had set up a big dinner for us in the school’s library complete with guitar for us to play worship songs with after we’d eaten.

During the dinner I turned to Estabon, one of our leaders who’s been on 3 separate outreaches in the past and asked “Why are they doing this for us? We’ve spent maybe a total of 6 hours working with their kids and even though the kids love us they’ve never met any of us before!” I was expecting him to say something about how Chile is more hospitable than the United States but instead he said “It has to be the Holy Spirit! It’s against the law for us to even bring up God at a school in this way at a public school! God is with us and this is only the beginning.” After the party the school told us that they arranged us to do our presentation at another school in the neighboring town and that went down excellently too with students coming to Jesus there as well.

The week ended with a big presentation in one of the town’s local plazas. Dozens of kids from the school came and brought their parents, the whole family of a disabled boy came and we all prayed for them, and a worship band from our Pichilemu base packed up all their gear and did sound and music for us. After the event everyone went back to the house we had stayed at; I think we packed 30 people inside of this tiny little house, and even though we needed to wake up at 6 in the morning prepare for Ecuador and clean the house that didn’t stop the band from playing traditional Chilean folk songs until midnight: “Este es el ultimo cancion, este es el ultimo” (This is the last song, This is the last one). I’m really happy with how the first week went, and I loved how I was never without healthy snacks; I took a bunch of pictures to share with you but the one photo I couldn’t capture should have been taken the night of the 25th, I tried to take a picture of the most stars I had ever seen in the sky at one time. I found myself just standing in awe in the backyard just staring up into the sky for 15 minutes trying to burn the memory into my mind, I completely clear sky entirely filled with star, some so bright they looked as if they were pulsating, I’d never seen anything like it.

Coming back from a door to door evangelism where we were inviting people to our big Saturday event one of the local fruit harvesters volunteered to give us a ride back to the house in the empty crates on top of his enormous truck.

There were definitely some old school elements about the house we stayed at, besides the cold showers, we needed to big fires for the majority of our cooking. This day I chopped wood for a fire that we let burn until we had coals that we put under a makeshift metal BBQ so we could cook the raw meat we had on top of it!

In this picture you can see me butchering the traditional Chilean dance “The Quaker”. What you can’t see in the entire student body of the school laughing at me while I do it!

All the guys on the team striking a pose at the request of the girls on our team.

The whole mural painting crew, with me and Sofia in the front.

A picture from our big football match with the staff of the first school we partnered with. It was tied 7-7 when the clock run out but the YWAMers won it in the sudden death shoot out.