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.