More of a Schedule

We’re settling into more of a schedule since my last post. With the girls in our new house, it seems as though routine is coming a bit more easily.

Tangent – let me tell you about our new house. It’s a small, blue house, with a pointy metal fence around the yard of dirt and stones. Inside, there is a small kitchen/dining room area with pink-ish tiled floors and light blue walls. In that room is our “furnace” – a very small wood-burning stove (extremely common in Chile), a sink, and a small gas oven/stove. From the kitchen area, there are 3 rooms – a bathroom, and 2 bedrooms. Jean and Kirsten are sharing, and I have the room beside it. We all bought small mattresses for the floor, and our sleeping bags are keeping us cozy at night. Right now, we’re working on drying our house out. It’s a bit damp, which makes starting our nightly fires a long process. I should also mention that showering in Chile is a very refreshing experience. You won’t need to be in the shower long before you’re completely awake; I haven’t seen hot water yet in Chile. J

Our “normal” (we’re still working on defining that word) schedule looks something like this:

8 am: Breakfast at E & J (our coordinator and his wife)’s house (coffee/tea and bread, bread, bread)

8:30 am: Short morning study of the Book. We take turns leading.

9 – 10 am: For December, we have a teacher coming to teach us Spanish every weekday for 1 hour. She is very nice, and has been very helpful so far. Sometimes it’s difficult for one lesson to provide a good amount of challenge for each of our varying levels (for some, too much; for others, too little), but I think it’s safe to say that we’re all learning a lot, and we’ve been surprised at how quickly we are advancing. Being around a foreign language all day every day is challenging, but beneficial.

(In between Spanish and lunch, we may visit some brothers or sisters of the club [I don’t like calling it that – I need to find a better word. It sounds exclusive.], play with our neighbor kids, work on our Spanish, or help J with something around the house.)

1:30 pm: Lunch at E & J’s. Maybe soup. Maybe chicken and rice. Always bread.

The afternoon/evening: Visit some brothers or sisters of the club. We had our first experience with that this week – I’ll explain more below. This big gap of time is also filled with more of the things we do before lunch. We also enjoy playing with E & J’s kids a lot. Nacho (that’s really what they call him, and I think it’s ok that his name is here) is 14 and likes to joke a lot. He often says (in a funny and sarcastic tone, always with a smile), “No touch. Silence, please.” J (Most often when one or more of the teammates are teasing/wrestling with him). Elisa is 7, and is very kind and intelligent. She likes to do hand-clapping games with anyone who will agree, read books, and play UNO. Joshua (but in Spanish) is 4, and is a riot. E calls him his little clown. I’ll try to post a video on facebook soon of his fake, but hilarious, laugh. I like to pretend to eat his socks, or lift him like a rocket. I’m also teaching him how to count in English. Now if only I could get him to remember my name…

9:30 pm: A small dinner. Lunch has been the main meal of the day in our experience so far.

10 pm: The girls are escorted back to our house for the night.

On our first visit, Jean and Kirsten and I went with J and Elisa and Joshua to visit a sister and her son. We enjoyed conversation and the traditional maté (an herbal tea that is passed around the table to share) and bread. Funny story – the sister is about 8 months pregnant, and Jean and I had a moment of amusing false interpretation across language lines. Jean tried her best to ask, “Has it been a good pregnancy?” We know how to say, “It is good?” and she filled in the blanks by motioning across her abdomen. J tried to interpret and said something about poor digestion. I tried to help by pointing to the sister and her abdomen while I said, “It is easy? Yes?” J and the sister laughed for a very long time.

Near the end of our conversation, J asked us if we had an encouraging word for the sister. We scrambled for a moment, and Jean found a cluster of nice verses to share. We’re all excited to get to know the people of our new church and community, and are eager to know/understand more Spanish in order to communicate encouragement.

This past week we also took a trip to Concepción, the epicenter of the Chilean earthquake of 2010. Eduardo was the guest speaker at a family conference. To get there, we rode for 8 or 9 hours in his friend’s small van. Eduardo and his friend sat in front; there was a small bench seat in the back where Jeff and Clay and the friend’s 6 year-old daughter sat, and the 3 of us girls sat on a mattress that was stuffed in between. Some word pictures that describe our experience: clown car, sardines, and a litter of puppies. Look for a picture of this soon, too. It was a sight. J We explored a lot of combinations to make the best Tetris-like fit for the 12 legs and feet that were in the back. What a good opportunity to practice patience.

When we finally arrived in Concepción it was about 2 am, and our host and hostess were ready to serve us more coffee and bread. J Finally, at about 3 am they showed us to our beds, and we were grateful for their hospitality.

The conference was nice, and we enjoyed a lot of Spanish w-rsh-p. At the end, there was also a time of pr-y-r for the families, and Jean helped E to pr-y for a woman. Oh, and our team was asked to play 2 songs again, as well. After the conference, we enjoyed talking to a group of young people from the ch-rch. We’re eager to get to know a group of young people at a deeper level, too, and we’re hoping that can happen in our own neighborhood before too long as well.

On the way back home, we stopped at 2 very beautiful locations. Our whole trip to Concepción was a drive through the Andes as well. Those things combined left me in awe of G-d’s creation, and with a, “Wow! We’re in Chile!” feeling. Our first stop was the black sands of the Pacific Ocean. It was cold and windy, but that couldn’t squelch the beauty. The other, was about half-way through our trip home, and we were all ready for an opportunity to stretch our legs. At first, it just looked like a touristy place to visit a bathroom, but once we walked a little further, we found a beautiful waterfall. Its mist was just what we needed to refresh us for the rest of our journey home.

When we finally arrived back home, our little house had suffered from a few days of dampness, and we needed to build a fire to get things moving in the right direction. Jean knows a lot about fire-making, so we followed her lead. Our wood was damp (just like everything else in our little house), so it was a long and sometimes frustrating process. Jean and I struggled with it for about an hour, and we had had a little bit of success, but not much. She went to bed soon after that, and I wasn’t feeling very tired (plus, as my family can tell you, I love a good fire) so I decided to stay up with the fire for a while longer. During that time, I asked G-d to show me something about himself. Pretty soon I had the song, “Consuming Fire, fan into flame, a passion for your name” in my head. It made me remember that not always do I have a flaming passion for G-d’s name. By this time, the fire had died, and went through a process of big flames, little flames, no flames (repeat), as I fed it scraps of cardboard or matchsticks. After a long while (over an hour of this), I got tired. I thought, “It’s a good thing G-d never gets tired of tending my fire.” Sometimes, after a big piece of cardboard, I have big flames, but there are other times that my fire gets very small. It’s still there, but it’s just embers. I need a stream of air, or to seek more fuel. G-d is the one who blows on the embers, and his W-rd is the new kindling; both are needed. Peter’s first book, 1:23, “For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of G-d.” The Scr-pt-r-s are not cardboard, but an ever-lasting log.

Later that night, I had a dream that I was helping with some sort of Extreme Makeover Home Edition kind of project. It was time to reveal the final product, and I was so excited to show the new owners all the cool new bells and whistles. Whoever the Ty Pennington character was just showed them the tip of the iceberg (ex. “Here is the laundry room. Here is the kitchen.”), and it confused/frustrated me that he didn’t show them the secret trap doors or hidden surprises. It makes me wonder if G-d was talking to me in my dream and telling me that the best is yet to come. Whether it’s heaven, or just later in life… the best is yet to come. It reminds me of J-s-s’ first miracle when the master of ceremonies is surprised that the best wine is saved for last (John’s book, chapter 2, part 10).

Yesterday was our first ch-rch service here. It’s very small; maybe 20 – 30 people in total. The night before, Jeff and I had been invited to practice music for the service with a few others, and we enjoyed playing that morning, though we became aware of the differences in their notation of music as well. Our team was also introduced to the people at the meeting, and Clay offered an ending pr-y-r as well.

Today we’re all looking forward to a trip into town, too, to purchase a few more things for our house (clothesline, cleaning supplies, etc.). Later tonight the girls and I are excited to wash our walls and remove some of the mold in our home. We met our next-door neighbor kids for the first time this morning, too! Valentina is 2, Alison is 4, and Alex is 10. Pr-y that we are able to establish more and more relationships with the people in our community soon as well.

On the horizon – we’ve been told that each month, one of us will take turns pr--ch-ng at the ch-rch. I, as my team’s leader, will go first in January. Please pr-y that G-d will place a message on my heart, and that I will be obedient to narrate it well without letting my own thoughts get in the way.

As always, thank you for your pr-y-rs and encouragement. I am always excited to hear what is going on in your lives as well; it helps me to feel connected to the people I love. I love e-mails! It’s so nice to see a friendly message in my inbox.

Until next time, amigos!