Literacy Exceeds Expectations

One of the things about Mexico and Chile that you just have to get used to is stray dogs. We met to pray in the park with our emerging student leaders last semester and a few joined us. Maybe they are really alien spies...

Humble Take Over

One year ago I made my first visit to Chile in late July. I joined a team of Mexican students for two weeks on campus. It was good for me to learn about Chile and create realistic expectations for leading the STINT team. As it turns out my good friend Christian decided to stay in Chile, and led the team this past semester. Having a Chilean to lead us through the first semester was a blessing, as he was able to help us navigate cultural differences that might have taken us much longer to realize and adjust to as foreigners. Christian and Blanca are great friends. It is great working along side them.

I will be leading the team for the next year as Christian focuses his efforts in developing a new strategy that will help us mobilize every student in our ministry for a lifetime laboring to help fulfill the Great Commission. Leading the team is a great challenge for me. I look forward to trusting God for this new responsibility.
While there are certain things that are expected of a team leader. I think of Jesus kneeling down to meet his disciples basic needs as a humble servant. I think of Jesus hanging there on the cross, as a humble Savior, meeting my most profound need. "If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them." "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." My hope for leading the team well is that as we live out the gospel that we will be blessed by the King and people will know we are really following King Jesus

High Water

While I was in Chile last year a big news story was the death of about 15 Chilean soldiers in the Andes. They were poorly led into a terrible winter storm doing a mountain training exercise. Heavy rains July 11-13th led to extensive flooding in the same region of the country . Approximately 28,000 peoples homes or property were severely damaged. Many lost almost everything.

Doug, Kurt and I traveled down to the disaster area to help the family of one of our Chilean staff who lost almost all their livestock and whose home was almost completely destroyed. We visited neighbors to serve them some hot coffee and bring them food and blankets. We felt quite humbled and inadequate as we realized that these poor farmers had lost everything.
We had hoped to connect with some other relief organization with whom we could partner. The only clear signs of organized relief was the delivery of water by the municipality. And the Army delivered cots and sheets of plastic. It is still unclear how we can best mobilize students to help.

Get Out!

With students busy in finals our team took the past week to work on personal stuff and vacate. Life in the city truly makes you want to get out. We also said goodbye to the summer project this week. This past weekend, Carla, Esther, Chris and I took a road trip south. We were able to visit a cool park, 7 Tazas, which has some awesome waterfalls. My good friend, Christian, who is from Santiago, talked his uncle into renting us a truck. That came in handy as we probably drove 200km on dirt roads in the Andes.
A highlight of the trip was staying with Romi's family. She is a freshman at USACH. It was great to experience hospitality from a normal Chilean family. They run a bakery near Curico. We also got to go to church with her on Sunday morning.

We also went down to Chillan, which has a sweet ski resort. Cote, one of the Chilean staff joined us for a day. It was a great time talking and getting to know everyone better. Bummer was that it rained all day instead of snowing, so no skiing. That is my second failed attempt... But we are just starting the main part of the ski season.
The next morning after getting back I met with Patrico on campus. He is one of the guys I am discipling. He was doing a presentation in his class about the truth and fiction in the "Da Vinci Code". He has a great witness with his classmates. He told me today that he was surprised that his teacher, who is an atheist, commented favorably about the subject. He gave a book by Josh McDowell to each of his classmates. I also got to share my testimony with one of the guys on the basketball team and connected with a few other students. Amazing what happens in two hours on campus during vacation. Makes me think, "get out" life is good serving the King!

29 on the 30th

Yesterday was my 29th birthday. Being twenty-nine doesn't stand out much, it seems more like "almost 30". But yesterday stands out for a couple of reasons. First of all I didn't wake up in my apartment on my birthday. Before you come up with any strange ideas, there is a good explanation... A good way to break up the regular routine of life is to do something dumb, so I locked myself out of my apartment and ended up sleeping at the hotel with the summer project. I have broken into every other place I have lived at, but this one is impenetrable. Which is good news overall.
Yesterday also stands out for how people celebrated my birthday. At our final staff meeting in the morning I was greeted with various versions of birthday songs, gifts and a cake. My good friend Christian invited me to lunch at one of the few authentic Mexican restaurants in Santiago. Christian and I lived in Mexico together for a year and a half when I came on staff with Crusade.
Later in the evening we had a party for students to close out the summer project. It was exciting to see so many students come. We rented out a whole bowling alley and overfilled the place. Later we all had dinner together and invited students to come to our winter conference. Twenty five signed up! Many of them are students that we have been getting to know all semester. Personally I was surprised that several students brought me gifts and encouraged me by their kindness. We have been praying for and loving students, and it is awesome to see that God is giving them a love for us as well. As this sense of community builds we are also beginning to see students make decisions to follow Christ. Many of the students come to Vida Estudiantil with a few friends. It is our desire that God would spark movements of evangelism among these friends and that this would expand to the rest of their classmates on campus. We dream of the day when every student will know someone who truly follows Jesus.