4 MORE DAYS 🇨🇱 🌲 🏄

¡Hola! 🦋

Wow! A lot has happened in 4 days!

This is the team before 3 more members arrived on Friday evening

On Friday, Mikayla got here. She arrived later than the rest of us because her passport was expired. She had to get an emergency one and reschedule her flight. When she got here, Joey took her to Punta de Lobos and proposed! So they are engaged! So fun! Mikayla runs Christian Surfers San Francisco.

Saturday, April 6

Some Christian Surfers from other parts of Chile, (Santiago - about 4 hours from Pichilemu, and La Serena and Coquimbo - about 8 hours from Pichilemu) had come to take advantage of our CSUS team’s time here to encourage the Pichilemu Chrisitan Surfers. They joined us for our devotional time on Saturday morning. Mitch translated the devotional into Spanish.

Mikayla and I put together a kitchen cabinet before lunch, and then I painted a second coat on the boys’ shower room after lunch. We had a barbecue for dinner on Mitch and Juliette’s patio. They have a big barbecue oven. Matias Alvarez from Christian Surfers Santiago grilled our meet with the help of his adult son. (Matias was telling us earlier that day that Joe had a prominent role in him becoming a Christian and getting involved in Christian Surfers. He did not become a Christian until after we moved back to the US in 1996. But when Joe visited in 2015 they went on a Christian Surfers, Chile campout together, and he got to share his testimony with Joe and thank him for sharing Good News of Jesus with him and planting the seed that eventually led to his conversion!)

Matias - the grillmaster - and his son, also Matias

April 6 was the 30th anniversary of the day Mitch had signed the contract to purchase the Cerro de la Cruz (Hill of the Cross) property for YWAM Pichilemu. They had a celebration dinner that night, but I didn’t find out about it until after it was over. I wish I could have gone, because we were here when Mitch bought this property, and Joe played a major role in helping Mitch find the property and navigate the purchase. It was hard for me to process my disappointment about missing the dinner.

Sunday, April 7

Sunday was our “Free Day” i.e. we didn’t have to work.

The time changed - Fall Back (the seasons are opposite the US in the southern hemisphere) - so I gained an hour of sleep. I figured that would be a good day to get up with the surfers and go to the beach (La Puntilla) at 6:30 a.m. before sunrise! I put on all  4 sweatshirts and jackets that I had brought with me and 2 pairs of pants, which kept me warm. It was lovely!

We were joined that morning on the beach by the Christian Surfers from Santiago, La Serena, and Coquimbo, so I wanted to have some time with them. Everyone (except me) surfed together, and then one of them led us in a devotional on the beach.

A mixture of some CS United States team members and some CS Chile surfers

I walked back to the YWAM base because the folks in our van went surfing again and I wanted to get back sooner. I was shedding all those extra clothes as I walked. It took about 30 minutes.

After breakfast, we all went to a church service which was meeting in a room at the Pura Vida Sports Center. A highlight of that for me was that Andres Silva preached the message. We had a big role in Andres’s spiritual development starting when he was 12 years old! Joe was like a second father to him.

After church we went out for chicken at PapaPollo Fast Food, and I had chicken and french fries (papas y pollo). 

I ate all the fries, but couldn’t finish the ¼ chicken

Later we drove out to Punta de Lobos, and the YWAM van broke down. There was no water in the radiator! Each of us emptied our water bottles in, and then we made it there and home fine!  The waves were too big at Punta de Lobos, so no one surfed.

After we got back we did our usual walk to the Empanada place for dinner. Because of the big chicken lunch I decided to do a veggie empanada (spinach, caramelized onions, pimiento, and tomato), with less cheese. I was pretty exhausted that night!

Monday, April 8

I counted the steps, and the Baile Entretenido Dance room (Entertaining Dance - like “Zumba) is only 170 steps from the room I’m staying in! After dance class, breakfast, and morning devotions, Mitch gave us a tour of the YWAM base (Youth With a Mission, or as he said “Youth Without any Money” (In Spanish it is translated Juventud Con Una Mision or JuCUM). 

This is all 16 of us - the whole team

The Discipleship Training School building and the School of Biblical Studies building

The Counseling School building

Praying together in the forest on the base property

Seeing all the growth of the ministry here (and knowing that the work we did before the Andersons moved here contributed to that growth) was overwhelming to me, especially combined with the disappointment  I was still feeling from having missed the 30th Anniversary celebration, and grieving Joe’s death, and wishing he were here with me to experience it all. I ended up emotionally overwhelmed after the tour & had to spend some time alone in my room. I called Asa (my youngest) and my friend Cecilia, and they encouraged me. Then, after lunch, I walked to town alone to go to the ATM to get some Chilean pesos and to get my glasses repaired. (One of the temples had fallen off.) Cecilia had told me to buy myself an ice cream, so I did! 

I also got to visit with and encourage the shopkeeper at Libreria Cipy who was here 35 years ago when we lived here. We used to do all our photocopying at her store.

By the time I got back to the base and changed into my work clothes, it was already 5 p.m.! But the team was working late that evening and skipping their surf session. So I worked from 5-7:30 finishing the second coat of paint in the men’s shower room of the gymnasium. Juliette invited me to visit with her that evening, as we had hardly seen each other since my arrival. So, after a therapeutic shower,  I skipped the empanada dinner that night and had tea with Juliette, which was good for both of us in many ways, and something I had been hoping we’d get to do.

Tuesday, April 9

I slept in this morning - no dance class. Regular morning routine, followed by working: painting a second coat on the women’s shower room and helping prepare the trim for all the bathrooms. 

Mikayla painting trim

Hanging the trim

After lunch, I tackled starting to paint the gym kitchen, which entailed cleaning out a paint tray with several layers of paint caked on it. It took me a long time, but came out pretty clean. I hadn’t realized that tray was dark blue originally!

Going from sky blue to bright yellow will require several coats of paint in the kitchen, but I got a first coat on 2 of the walls. I came back to my room and worked on this post, then I changed out of my work clothes and got ready to walk to dinner. Today we went back to PapaPollo for dinner. I had a Completo Italiano, a hot dog with avocado, mayonnaise, and chopped tomato. They give a lot of fries, so I pilfered some from Solveig and Fred.

EXTRAS:

We got the septic tank in the ground and hooked up. Now it’s all covered up.

We started pouring the cement for the skate park today (Tuesday)!

This dog came to inspect my work when I was painting the kitchen. 

There is no shortage of dogs running free here in Pichilemu!

This one belongs to one of the YWAM families.

I love and miss you all! 🦋 Tammy