A "Normal" Night

Today we were scheduled to go to Hogar (where the younger girls are) and do a kids' church, or basically an "Awana" night was how we were thinking of it.  Singing, teaching, games and candy.  Unfortunately the director of Hogar said that he wanted to the girls to study tonight rather than do kids' church.  At first we were bummed, because we were really looking forward to this.  But then we realized we could have a "normal" night.  That is, we could eat dinner at a regular hour, rather than coming home after riding the metro for 90 min. tired but happy and unsure of what to make for dinner.  Greg and I had a pisco sour out on the deck of the apartment.  The clouds were lifting, so you could start to see the mountains with their new, fresh layer of snow these past few days.

Since we were home a little longer than usual in the evening, we decided to make something other than pasta or pizza (those are the only two meals we've had so far, over and over).  Greg and the boys found some local fish at the grocery store.  We made some rice and mixed in some bananas and kiwi (the boys didn't like the kiwi so we left that out).  Add some salsa and it was really good.  Since this was new food Greg needed an English/Spanish translation to figure out how to make it.

I tell you what, we Americans don't realize how "cush" our lives really are.  The biggest adjustment we've had being in Santiago is not having a car.  We never realized how much stuff a car enables you to do.  For example, when we go to the grocery store we can only bring home as much as we can carry.  We eat as much food as we can carry home each day, so we need to walk to the grocery store EVERY day.  At first this didn't seem annoying, but some days we just don't feel like going to the grocery store.  Another adjustment is that stuff in another country works differently than you're used to.  You can see all kinds of white splotches in Greg's t-shirt above.  We brought a couple loads of laundry soap to get us started.  But US laundry soap doesn't dissolve well in the water here, so there are these stains on his shirt.  The washer doesn't get stinky things clean either, so we wash those things by hand.  We have a washer, but no dryer - so we hang clothes up all over the apartment each day.  There is no dishwasher.  Etc.

I don't write these things to whine about them, but we've just been surprised at how much time each day we spend sort of just "surviving" - riding the subway to get places (~3 hours/day), washing dishes (~1 hour/day), doing laundry by hand (30 min./day), going to the grocery store (~1 hour/day).  Something about this simplistic way of life is interesting and appealing (as we get more used to it).  For one thing, it's hard to be in a hurry.  You just know it takes awhile to get stuff done, so you just kind of move along at a regular pace.  A funny thing though - all kinds of car dealerships are in the area we live in.  So when we walk anywhere (to the subway, grocery store, whatever) we walk by car dealerships.  We both realized we sometimes walk by them and have car envy as we pass.  :)

We got to eat dinner by candlelight tonight, kind of like we do at home in the winter.  This was fun.

"Now is the appointed time; now is the time of salvation." (2 Cor 6)  Now is our appointed time!  Living like this is changing us in ways that we don't quite understand, and that are harder still to articulate.  I'll never look at someone standing in the rain or snow at a bus stop the same again, that's for sure!

Sopapias When it Rains

Today Greg and the boys went in to Casa Esperanza (where the older girls live) while I worked.  It was cloudy when they left, but started to rain shortly after that.  I felt concerned that they didn't have their rain gear.

"He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy."  (Acts 14:17)  This is the rainy season in Chile, and while we have been praying that it will be a "dry" June/July rain is a good thing.

When Greg and the boys arrived late morning they were welcomed like royalty.  Patti brought out a plate full of cookies and chips, and the boys devoured them as if they hadn't eaten for days.  Since it was raining and most of the girls were away at school, a couple of the girls that were there thought the boys should play on the Wii.  That didn't require much arm twisting!

Greg helped Willie put some drywall up today in the guest house.  Willie is mostly building the guest house by himself, and Greg wondered how he did some of this heavy lifting type work on his own.  Willie's amazing.  A large truck came with some heavy furniture items.  A missionary family that has been living in Chile is now moving home.  They sold some of their things at a garage sale, but had some remaining items that they donated to Casa Esperanza.  Greg and Noah helped unload furniture and bring it inside.

Lunch was incredible.  Patti makes lunch for the girls each day.  Lunch is the main meal of the day, and often runs from 1:00-2:30 p.m. (or even 3:00 p.m.).  The girls make their own breakfast in the morning and their own supper at night with food that is in the pantry.  But lunch is big, and good!  Today Patti made chicken, rice and beats.  Even Griffy ate the chicken and rice.

Whenever it's raining Patti makes sopapias.  Whew, REAL sopapias!!  You can see Griffy is eating one of them in this picture.  Willie was going to pick his son, Jacob, up at school so Greg went with him.  When they got back they played with Jacob for awhile, but then began the journey home.  Since it was raining Willie was really kind and gave them a ride to the metro.  Here in Chile they stuff lots of people in cars, and the cars are all quite small.  Check this out...five kids in the back seat.

The guys got back to the apartment around 5:30 p.m.  Here I had been worried about them in the rain, and they loved walking home in.  Getting their jackets to dry out is another matter...

First Cloudy Day

A missionary is a "sent one" - anyone that goes out and tries to love people the way Jesus loves.  Today we met with the head of a mission organization in Chile, ProVision.  Marco is the founder of ProVision (in the late 1990s) and though he is too humble to say so himself, helped start Chile's growth in missions.  We thought that ProVision was an organization that brought missionaries to Chile, but it is actually the reverse - it is a sending organization, and sends Chilean missionaries to other countries.  Marco said that the biggest area of opportunity for missions in Chile is to get the churches more involved.  Four churches are deeply involved today, and his prayer is that this would grow to 100.  He said that one of the biggest challenges they have with missions that go from Chile to other countries is that as more people have moved into the middle class, they are more interested in having "stuff" (cars, flat screen TVs, etc.) than in going and serving in another country.

Marco was such a delight.  He invited us to his church this weekend.  The service is in Spanish, but he has other missionaries (that speak English!) that he wants to introduce us to that go to this church.  It is also just a few blocks from our apartment, so that will be neat.

We met with Marco in another downtown area of Santiago, and found this beautiful mall/square.

You can probably tell from the picture, but it was our first cloudy day and felt quite cold.  It's not that it's so cold outside, but without heat in the buildings it starts to feel cold after awhile.  We wore our rain gear because it looked like it would rain any minute.

I went back to work after this meeting, but Greg and the kids rode the subway/train around for awhile after that.  The boys LOVE all the trains.  They've also gotten used to walking a lot, back and forth to the subway stations as we go about town.

Tonight we read Psalm 139:  "You have searched me and you know me; you know when I sit down and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.  You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways."

Our prayer is that the girls we work with here in Chile know that they are NOT a mistake.  Quite the opposite - they were fearfully and wonderfully made, and are so very loved by God...and by us!  Tomorrow we go back to Hogar and Casa Esperanza to be with the girls - can't wait.

Importance of the Wall

Today is the actual holiday of Chile's 3-day weekend.  It is the holiday of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.  We are not sure what you do on this holiday, as we have not seen festivities other than some people walking down the street with a cross yesterday in Vina del Mar and singing a song we didn't recognize.  The weekend has been good to keep figuring out how to get around and what kinds of new food we can try at the grocery store.  But we are looking forward to getting to do what we came here to do:  love those girls at Casa Esperanza and Hogar, and serve their caretakers.

The earthquake in Chile last year did some damage to Casa Esperanza (ages 18-21 or so), though not much for how much shaking they felt from the earthquake.  The biggest damage was to the security wall.  As Daniel told us, "we have problems with the neighbors."  The neighbors are the people that live in and around Casa Esperanza and Hogar, where unemployment and drug use are high.  The security wall is about 12 feet high and has either pointy steel rods or barbed wire on top to keep the neighbors out.  This is how Vision for Chile got involved with Hogar and Casa Esperanza years ago in the first place.  The living conditions for girls removed from their homes was so bad that men would break in and assault these little girls on a regular basis.  Oh, just so heartbreaking it's hard to even write it.  So when the earthquake damaged the wall at Casa Esperanza last year, it was an emergency to fix it.  One of the big projects this year is to build the wall at Hogar higher and to make it more secure.  Right now the wall on one of the sides of the complex (which is probably about 1/4 - 1/2 block in area) is see through fence and not that high.  The project will make the wall concrete and higher.

Daily life is not easy, but we are adjusting.  We have mass transit mostly figured out, but spend probably 3 hours a day getting to where the girls live or other places we need to go.  Not speaking the local language is very challenging, but we are learning more Spanish every day!

Here's to a good week for you wherever you are.  Thanks for reading, we love you all!

Griffy's 8!

Casa Esperanza and Hogar were still closed today for the holiday weekend.  That actually worked out well, because Griffy turned 8 years old today.  He's been really excited about going to the ocean, so this morning we left the apartment at 7:00 a.m.  It was still dark and actually quite chilly.  No wonder the Chileans say it's cold in the winter.  We saw a small puddle that had a little ice over the top of it.  Many of them do not use heat in the winter, so I can only imagine how cold their houses are in the morning.  We made our way to the metro station and our journey to the South Pacific began.

Two trains, a bus and a taxi later and we were in Vina del Mar - just before lunch.  The kids were elated!  By this time it was a lot warmer, probably around 60 degrees.  It's a holiday weekend in Chile, but the beach wasn't crowded because of the "cold."  I let one of the waves come up on my bare feet and ohhhhh, chillllly!  The water is cold because of the Humboldt current coming up from the south (which here is basically coming from almost Antarctica).

The kids put their swimsuits on and did not seem at all bothered by the cold.  They played hard for at least 2 hours before they felt the cold and asked to get dressed.  It was so cute hearing their excited voices at the beach.

These pictures were taken BEFORE the boys took their shirts off and got soaked from head to toe (including sand in the hair).

It was a great day.  We got home at about 6:00 p.m. and had dinner and cake.

"He who builds his lofty palace in the heavens and sets its foundation on the earth, who calls for the waters of the sea  and pours them out over the face of the land - the Lord is His name!"  Amos 9:6

Penguinos

Casa Esperanza and Hogar were not "open" today because it's a three day holiday weekend.  This worked out well because it's also Griffy's birthday weekend.  We decided it would be fun to take the boys to see the ocean, which here is technically the South Pacific.  We began our walk to the bus stop - it was another beautiful day here.

We took two subways to the central station of Santiago, which includes buses going to different ocean cities and mountain cities.  We chuckled as we saw a sign that looked so much like advertisements for skiing in Colorado.  It was showing the cost per person per day at a mountain resort, including lift ticket, ski rental and lodging.  We noticed a lot of people at the airport that were arriving with ski equipment.  Anyway, we found our way to the ticket line for buses to Vina del Mar, which is about 90 min. outside of Santiago on the ocean.  Unfortunately, it was a busy day for the buses, and we were not able to get on a bus until too late in the day to make it worth it to go.

Eeek, what to do.  Griffy loves penguins and we have seen a lot of signs for "Los Penguinos de Papa," or "Mr. Popper's Penguins."  We found our way to one of the malls we'd passed on the way to Casa Esperanza and saw the movie.  They were playing it in one theater in Spanish, and another in English with Spanish subtitles.  We went to the one in English.  It was a funny movie, or at least I thought so - I think I laughed harder than anyone in the theater.

We got an ice cream and headed back to the apartment, tired as usual from the logistics of public transportation.  Thank goodness Greg lived in New York all those years - he really knows how to read all the maps and figure out how to get where we want to go.

We realize how blessed we are to have not just one but two cars at home.  And a house that is about 10x bigger than the small houses and apartments so many people live in here.  These are luxuries that we have always taken for granted.  We have so much to learn from the poor.

Tomorrow we'll go to the ocean (I hope)!!

Does Anyone Have an Old License Plate?

Our day usually starts out with a trip to the grocery store.  It’s about 3 blocks away, and we go there to get water, bread and whatever dinner we have planned for the next night (which so far has been pizza one night, pasta the next).  The boys are good sports about this, and you can see Wil is holding his own by carrying one of the big water jugs home.

Today was a big day for us.  Kristin worked in the morning while Greg and the boys got food and water for the day.  Then we headed off to meet Daniel, head of Casa Esperanza and our main point of contact for this mission trip.  We knew that we could not live near where Casa Esperanza is because it is a very rough part of town - Pentana.  It is plagued with drugs and high unemployment, which is a horrible combination.  What we didn’t know was how involved it would be to get from where our apartment is, which is in a safe area of town, to where Casa Esperanza is.  It’s a 30 min. walk from our apartment to the subway.  Then we get on three different subways.  We get off the subway and take a bus.  Then we walk 3-4 blocks and we’re there.  The subway is interesting for the boys, though the walk gets long.  It takes about 90 min. one way.

We were a little confused about what the difference between Casa Esperanza was and what Hogar was.  Casa Esperanza is what Daniel is the director of.  It’s room, board and college education for girls that are too old to live in Hogar anymore.  Hogar is for girls 3-18 years old that have been removed from their homes after repeated, chronic abuse.  What Vision for Chile found, the sponsor organization, is that when girls would turn 18 years old they would often end up out on the street involved in prostitution.  So Casa Esperanza provides education and a safe place to live.  Daniel picked us up at the subway station and drove us to Casa Esperanza first.

This place was incredible!  They have 7 girls right now, and they are really something.  We met one young woman who is studying to be an English teacher and another who is studying to be a nurse.  Very cool!  They made lunch, spaghetti, and showed us around.  What a beautiful and amazing place they have built with their own hands.

There is a husband and wife couple who live at Casa Esperanza and run day to day operations, Willie and Patti.  They were absolutely incredible!  When we asked the boys at dinner how they felt at Casa Esperanza, they summed it up:  “We felt loved!”  Does anyone have an old license plate you could send us?  Willie collects them on a special wall in his home.

Greg will help build a guest house at Casa Esperanza, which is ironically where we can stay the next time we come here.  There is a high wall with barbed wire around the property, so the boys were able to play soccer and chase lizards with a lot more space than we have near our apartment.

Then Daniel took us to Hogar.  Hogar is run by the government, and is at first glance a sad place.  There are 74 girls that live there, and they are not allowed to go home to their parents.  They have no home, really, because they have been physically and sexually abused so many times that the state has removed them.  It is not as clean or nice looking at Hogar, but as we were there longer we saw some incredible things.  Daniel used to be the director of Hogar, but has recently moved to Casa Esperanza as director.

As we walked around, we began to experience the love and joy that any child innately has in them no matter what horrible things have happened to them (I'm convinced it's the love of Jesus).  Girls started coming outside to see what we were doing there.  The 74 girls are divided up into 10 “casas.”  Each casa has a “tia,” or auntie, that is the caretaker.  Girls sleep four to each room.  There is a big kitchen and cook, but the tias go get the food and bring them back to each individual casa, where 7-10 girls live, eat and do life together.  Anyway, several girls came out and gave us a kiss on our left cheek as is customary here in Chile.  We introduced ourselves in Spanish, and they introduced themselves in English.  The boys wanted to play tag on this nice playground that had been donated last year.  So we played tag.  The girls ran up and were saying something in excited voices.  We realized they wanted to play too, so we say “si!” and they joined right in.

It was getting to be 4:30 p.m. and we knew we should get home before it was dark.  What an amazing day.  From what we discussed with Daniel today, we will be at Casa Esperanza during the week and helping out with construction and moving rocks.  On Thursday late afternoons we will do kids’ church at Hogar.  On the weekends we will go to Hogar and just play with the girls, hang out with them and love them as much as we can.

The trip back to the apartment felt long, but we were all so blessed by the things we had experienced.  It was an intense, and incredible, day!  Here is Wil being questioned by a police officer, and then WIl and Dylan sleeping on the train.

Now we begin Griffy’s birthday weekend.  Tomorrow we are going to find the subway station that has buses that go to the ocean, which Griff chose over a trip up into the mountains.  Should be a blast!  Thanks for your support - love to you all.

No Peanut Butter, No Problem

Chile is a beautiful country!  It has 2,700 miles of coast land and is 109 miles wide.  The Pacific Ocean borders Chile on the west and the Andes mountain range on the aast.  It has some extreme climate zones, including the driest desert in the world (Atacama) and a rainy climate in the Patagonian region/south.  Greg took these pictures out the airport window as we were landing, and here is the view from our apartment.

Santiago is the capital city of Chile, which is where we are living.  To us it feels a lot like Denver, with a population of about 3 million people.  They list the total metro population as 7 million people, but that must include outlying cities – like in Denver there is Boulder, etc.  It is winter in Santiago, and to the Chileans it feels very cold, and most of them walk around wearing winter coats and hats.  To us, it feels quite nice – around 60 degrees Fahrenheit during the day on average.  It’s sunny today, so that helps.  This is their rainy season, and on average they get 2.8 inches of rain in June and 3.8 inches in July.  We brought rain gear and are wearing water proof shoes for those days it does rain.

One of the big questions we had about being in Chile was how the boys would handle not having peanut butter.  From what we have heard, and from what I have seen traveling, there is very little peanut butter in Latin America.  We did find some peanut butter last night at the grocery store around the corner, but it was very small and very expensive.  Today Greg and the boys went for another grocery store run while I worked, and they found a substitute.  It’s called maujar, and it’s kind of like jelly but instead of having fruit in it it’s like caramel.  The boys said, “We love it, even more than peanut butter!”  Well that’s an answer to prayer!  Here’s a picture of Noah eating it.

 Life has been a lot easier today than it was yesterday.  For one thing, it’s amazing what a good night’s sleep does.  None of us slept much on the red eye between Toronto and Santiago, so we were quite tired yesterday.  Last night starting at about 9:00 p.m. everything quieted down outside – the buses weren’t running as much, the car alarms stopped going off and horns stopped honking. The apartment building is also very quiet.  You don’t even really hear people coming and going.  The boys slept from about 8:00 p.m. to almost 9:00 a.m. this morning, and I got a good 11 hours of sleep.  So we’re all feeling really good today.

This afternoon we are going to go check out the metro, which is their mass transportation (subway, buses, trains).  We meet with Daniel (the director of the girls' homes, Casa Esperanza and Hogar) tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 p.m., so we want to figure out how to get there before we actually have to get there.  They have a transit card you can get and then not have to have the right change every time you get on a train or bus.  Should be neat.

We're so grateful to be here.  We have been praying about being in Chile for a long time, and here we are - in Chile!  Here are more pictures of our travel to Santiago and the apartment we're staying in.

Thanks for reading, it helps keep us company and feel less alone.  Hope all is well with you.

We're Here!

Our flight from Toronto to Santiago last night and into this morning was a bit delayed because something was wrong with the emergency floor lights of the plane.  Apparently the problem was like finding the light that’s causing the problem when a string of Christmas lights isn’t working – you have to search and search for the small part that isn’t working.

The boys started getting antsy as we waited at the gate for this problem to be fixed.  Griffy started dancing around the aisle, explaining that he was pretending he was playing a giant piano.  Wil and Griffy started chasing each other around the outside of the gate, laughing and pulling at its other’s shirts as they ran past each other.  Griffy piped, “Hey!  I wonder if they have carrots in Chile – maybe they don’t, that would be great!  Maybe they don’t have any vegetables at all!”  People watched and smiled.  We’ve heard that Chileans really like kids and are family oriented, and this was obvious to us even just sitting at the gate with them in Toronto.

The 6 of us wore our Chile soccer jerseys, one of two shirts that we each brought along on the trip (you have to pack light with 6 people!).  Some of the people on the plane said, “Nice shirt guys.”  When we arrived in Santiago just a little bit after noon today (two hours late), the men especially liked seeing us in our jerseys.  They taught us the team cheer:  “Chi-chi-chi (e.g., chee-chee-chee), le-le-le (e.g., lay-lay-lay), vivo Chile, vivo Chile, vivo Chile!”  We felt like royalty.

We got to the apartment, and the building manager was kind enough to help us get all our suitcases and backpacks onto the elevator.  Our unit is on the 16^th floor, which is the top floor of the building.  We were thinking the unit was probably about 1,000 square feet, but it was a little shocking to find out it is more like about 500 square feet.  Greg said it first, “Well, it’s…ummm…tight.”  The apartment has two very small bedrooms, just big enough to fit queen size beds.  It has a kitchen that is about 3 feet wide (you can’t squeeze behind another person that is in there).  The living room has a small table to eat around and a futon.   It was cold in the apartment, probably 55-60 degrees F.  We turned on the heater, but it didn’t warm things up much.

Noah started to cry, and to be honest this expressed how all of us were feeling at that moment.  What were we doing here?  How were we going to survive in such tight quarters?  Griffy said, “Well guys, let’s look on the bright side – it’s bigger than our camper.  And it’s warmer than that time we camped in Moab and it was below freezing.”

We had a light breakfast on the plane, but got to the apartment and had no water and it was well past lunch so everyone was starving.  We knew there was a grocery store nearby, so everybody got their shoes and coat on and off we went.  It was sunny today and probably about 60.  This is apparently typical in the winter, though it does rain quite a bit this time of year.  We found the store easily and went inside.  It was intimidating!  Everything, of course, was in Spanish.  We just wanted some water, bread, pasta, pizza and Diet Coke – and it was not easy to find.  Plus, we were pretty tired from traveling and not sleeping that great on the plane.  After probably about an hour we found mostly what we were hoping to find.  We couldn’t load ourselves up like we usually do when we go to Safeway, because we had to walk about three blocks to get back to the apartment.  But we got enough for lunch, dinner and then probably a couple of meals on Thursday.

It was an exciting day, but a little rough too.  While the apartment we are staying in seems nice, it’s a lot different than our usual comfortable life.  It’s noisy since we’re near the downtown so that we could be closer to the girls’ home and public transportation.  A car alarm goes off about every 30 min. or so.  Garbage trucks come for late pickups.  Motorcycles roar down the road.  This is a little different than quiet, cozy Golden!

But if it wasn’t different, we would be missing the point.  Now that we have some food and water, tomorrow should be easier.  Tomorrow we’ll try to figure out where Wal-Mart is.  Friday we get to meet with Daniel, who is the head of the girls’ home.  Noah put it well:  “Dad, I’m just bored – I want to start doing stuff to help the girls.”  Wil was also cute as we were walking home from the grocery store:  “Mom, I don’t know everything about Jesus, but I’m really excited to love the girls the way Jesus loves me.”

Ready or Not, Here We Come!

We're off to Santiago, Chile!  We have 6 suitcases (most of them carry-on size), 6 backpacks, 1 Pack n Play and one jar of peanut butter.  The kids are so excited that they're kind of driving us crazy.  We're trying to focus on packing and making sure we have everything we need, while the the kids are so excited they're bouncing off the wall.  It's cute though, and we're thrilled they're excited.

It's hard to tell what the kids are most excited about:  going to Chile, or getting their birthday present on the plane.  Noah, Griff and Wil have their birthdays in the summer (6/26/, 7/7 and 8/3) and decided they wanted to use Grandma and Grandpa's birthday money to get a Nintendo DS.  We told them they could have this awesome gift a little early - on the flight to Chile.  Yesterday one of the boys said, "Tomorrow we get our Nintendo DS when we fly to Chile!  I can't wait!"

Today we fly from Denver to Toronto (3 1/2 hours) and then Toronto to Santiago (12 hours).  Santiago is in the same time zone as Eastern Time, so we'll be two hours ahead of Mountain Time.  We arrive in Santiago at about 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.  Some airlines have been cancelling flights today due to the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano (see pictures here) that has been erupting since early June.  Our flight is so far not affected and we don't expect it to be.

Many of you have asked what we'll be doing while in Chile.  The short answer is, we don't really know for sure yet!  We have two main things we'll be focusing on.  One is a girls home in Santiago.  We hope to just spend time with the girls (ages 3-18) and make them feel loved and accepted.  We'd like to do some "kids' church" type time, where we play games, worship and do a hands on activity together.  We'd also like to do some cleaning and maybe even light construction type work (as you know Greg is so handy!).  We meet with the head of the girls' home on Friday of this week to figure out the details (what, how, when, etc.).

The other main thing we'll be doing has to do with Kristin's job.  She'll be meeting with clients in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru to speak at a few events and discuss things like how to use technology to get banking services to the poor.

Thanks for reading and going on this journey with us!  Let us know what questions and comments you have, and thanks again for your support.

Helloooo Santiago, ready or not - here we come!
Greg and Kristin