Isaiah 42:4 "...the isles shall wait for his law."

The trip to the islands was amazing! I want to take some time to talk about how the trip was.

On Sunday afternoon we got in to Puerto Montt and were welcomed by our friends, and Micah’s adopted grandparents Louis and Kathy Long. That evening I preached in the church they started and we sang a couple of songs too. It was special to meet the folks in the church because this is the church where our beloved Eduardo comes from. Annie and Micah stayed with our friends all week.

Early Monday morning I met up with a group of about 50 folks who were going to be going on this medical mission. The group was composed of the following: 7 Drs (two dentists, an optometrist, an ER Dr, and 3 Physicians), a Physician’s Assistant, 17 nurses, 10 translators, 10 Chileans for evangelism, and more. The team was extremely qualified and organized. I was very impressed. One of the highlights of the trip was getting to spend a lot of time with one of my best friends, Dustin Reinhardt.

  

Our group drove down to the dock to get onto a Chilean naval vessel. I was impressed with how professional the sailors were. Many of them knew English, and the captain was very hospitable. I expressed to him my gratitude for his service to our country (yes, that possessive pronoun was applied to Chile). The trip to the island was about 4 hours. The ship couldn’t get too close to the island so we boarded a small zodiac to get to the island (I’m such a nerd, I felt like a navy seal…I just needed a little camouflage on my face 2 Timothy 2:3). Once landing on one side of the island we had to walk to the other side. The folks on the island eat a lot of seafood, as can be imagined. Check out my next post about seaweed if you would like to read a good learning point for a missionary.

The island we landed on, that would end up being our home base for the trip, was called Isla Butachauques. We woke up early the next morning on Tuesday to organize, set up, and execute their mobile medical clinic. It was impressive to see the thousands of pills, hundreds of eye glasses, dental equipment, etc. That day we saw over 100 people from that island. Before we started seeing patients they had a meeting with the translators and said, “Is anybody squeamish?” The folks who were we assigned to places where they wouldn’t see anything difficult for a light stomach to handle. Then they said, “The Dentists are generally the ones who see the most blood, are there any translators who would like to volunteer to work with them?” I raised my hand along with another guy about my age. They weren’t joking when they said that we would see a lot of blood!

We closed up our clinic and completely packed for day two. We had to pack because early in the morning we would be loading up to take a speed boat to Isla Tac for our second clinic. On Wednesday we saw about 100 more patients on that island. One of the strangest things that happened was there was a large group of Chilean boy scouts from Santiago who had gone to the island for camp. We ended up seeing about a dozen of them in the dental room and they all had beautiful teeth and had obvious signs of expensive dental work. Some people think of Chile as a third world country, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Much of Chile has top of the line medical care, capable universities, they own laptops, tablets, touch screens, and iphones. There was a point where under communism Chile almost became a third world country, but in the last few decades the country has flourished under a free market. Last week I heard from a missionary who has been in Chile for about 30 years that, “Chile is one of the most expensive places to live in the world.”

 

It was Thursday when we did our third clinic on Isla Mechuque. This island was special for me because I had the opportunity to lead two people to Christ. One man was named Lorenzo Chacón. Lorenzo was probably about 60 years old and he told me had never left that island before.

Just imagine the multitude of circumstances surrounding that man’s conversion. It took a punk kid in southern California getting saved by God’s glorious grace and then being sent and supported by the Lord’s churches to the mission field. Countless brushstrokes of God’s sovereignty worked together to paint a beautiful picture involving that surrendered vessel arriving to an island of the uttermost just so that someone God loves could hear of Christ’s work of redemption. Writing about it brings tears to my eyes. This is what life is about. Praying, giving, and going to the uttermost in order to obey God and see people saved. That is why I pray for missionaries and give so that others can go to other places in the world; I get to have a part in people being saved on other continents apart from South America all the while being faithful to do the great commission here. God’s plan for world evangelism works. My greatest desire in the world is to see Chileans saved, discipled, and both reaching folks here in this region and being sent to the regions beyond us.

Our final morning to wake on Butachaques was Friday morning. Once again we boarded the zodiacs to board another Navy ship. This one was considerably larger and so the trip back to Puerto Montt was more like 6 hours. On the trip back folks began saying their goodbyes to me as they knew that I wouldn’t be joining them back to the United States. It’s incredible how your heart can connect with people that you only spend 5 days with! It was a great group of believers. I remember on our way home Pastor Dave Reinhardt, veteran missionary in Chile, rubbed my shoulder and said, “I want you to know, I am very proud of you.” That was a special moment for me because I truly admire that man. Something else noteworthy that happened on the boat ride home was that the wife of one of the dentists got to lead one of the translators to Christ! I couldn’t believe it, but I was so happy to hear! He was the brother to one of the gals from Santiago who came on the trip. He was invited, not because he was a member of the church in Santiago, but because he was an English teacher and would definitely be a good translator. Who would have thought that a man who came on a medical mission to translate would be translated himself?! (Colossians 1:13)

On the trip we saw about 330 patients and 97 people made professions of faith in Jesus Christ. The trip was a wonderful opportunity, and it was a great introduction to the islands of this region.