Villa Amengual and La Tapera

On the Tuesday of Yerko's visit that overlapped Andres' visit we printed up several hundred gospel tracts made custom for Villa Amengual and La Tapera. With those tracts we traveled several hours north to both of those communities. The drive was gorgeous!

We got to Amengual and it was just raining a little bit. I carried my tracts in a plastic bag so they wouldn't get wet. A lot of times when I go to a another town with gospel tracts I try to make it to every home in the village before leaving. I have a vision to evangelize every creature in our region and I believe the best way to do that is through every home. In my mind, the first phase is to take a gospel tract to every home (in a blitzing fashion where we just leave them under the door or on the gate), and then the second phase will be to slowly knock on every door in the region. Both of the phases will serve as a way to practically train Chilean men (along with academic training in a local church Bible institute) who will hopefully start churches in every concentrated population of our region (whether that is 50 or 15000 people). I say all of that, not necessarily to share my vision, but rather to say why Amengual was different. It was different because it was raining and I didn't want the papers to get wet. That isn't usually a problem because people always deliver things to homes by sticking them on the gate and then those things are collected everyday by the family (so weather is not really a concern as long as it isn't raining that specific day). So what we did in the homes of Amengual was call the people out to receive the tract. I don't remember anybody turning it down. There were probably about 100 inhabitants in the community. They also had a very nice gymnasium that seemed to be used for anything the community did. I believe it would be simple to freely use that gym for a night and have an evangelistic meeting. You could very easily promote the meeting and I actually believe that 75-100% of the town would come if not because they want to then strictly out of boredom. What an opportunity!

From Villa Amengual we headed towards La Tapera. I don't remember how long the drive was to each location. In La Tapera is a community of about 200 homes that is very isolated. You have to take dirt roads to get there and it isn't very far from the Argentinian border (nothing in Chile is for that matter). We took gospel tracts to every home while we were there. I split up with Yerko and Andres like we did in Amengual and took one side of La Tapera. While I was going door to door I met a kind old man named Lorenzo. Lorenzo is 94 years old, and he did not know what it was to be saved. His eyesight was so bad that he could not read a gospel tract. He insisted that I come inside and so we sat together and I asked him if I could explain what it meant to be saved. I spent about a half hour preaching to him the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. Here is a picture of him.

Men like Lorenzo...who will care for their soul? Imagine going somewhere in the world where you are so far isolated from everything else. That is where we are, we are in Coyhaique. In our region, Coyhaique is not isolated. On the contrary, Coyhaique is practically a metropolitan compared to the rest of our region. Now I know that 50,000 people (the population of our city) is by no means a metropolitan, but when typical communities in our region are closer to 500 or less inhabitants then Coyhaique is huge! Keep that in mind. Imagine now a man who lives in a community that is isolated from Coyhaique. That is Lorenzo. Lorenzo lives in a place that is isolated from isolation. Who will care for people like him? Did not Christ include Lorenzo when he said "preach the gospel to every creature"? You and I need to quit messing around and get the job done for love of Christ and for love of souls. I am definitely not the best example, but I am trying to do my part! Won't you join me by doing your part in your region? If you would like to read more of my thoughts on the evangelization of every creature in our generation then check out this entry on my other blog: http://goyeintoalltheworld.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-possible-command.html

Another visitor!

After the inaugural service Yerko got into town. Andres and I went down to Balmaceda where our airport is to pick him up. Our airport is there because for some reason the terrain around our city, the capital city, isn't fit for an airport (I've heard its because of wind and I've heard its because of the mountains). I don't remember if I've written on this blog before about how I know him, but if I have then you get to read it again. Yerko and I became good friends when I was in Santiago helping in the ministry God has given to missionary Jason Holt. I helped to start the Holt's third church plant, Iglesia Bautista Vida. I also had the privilege to teach several classes in the Bible institute which is where I became acquainted with Yerko who was one of my students. Yerko is a unique young man with a heart for God. His faith challenges me and I am sure that God will use Him in ways I can't imagine. Yerko's visit was a wonderful time and I truly cannot wait to see what God will do through his life.

Inaugural Service

February 10th was a big day for us and the history of the church we are starting. After working very hard for months to promote our opening service the day finally came. There was a total of 45 people in attendance! Precious people. It was a big day and now it is time to really get to work!

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day:

Villa Ortega and Ñirehuao

(this too was written a few weeks ago, I just had hoped to add some more cool pictures before publishing it, but I don't have them)

We needed to order more copies of the ingauration invitation and that takes about a day for them to be printed up. So in the meantime we decided to go check out somewhere that I haven't been before; Ñirehuao.  To get to Ñirehuao you drive for about 2 hours on dirt roads outside of Coyhaique. It is a small community of about 800 inhabitants (a sign at the entrance says 400, but it looked like it may have been posted about the time of Moses and the locals gave us the former number). On the way there you pass through another community called Villa Ortega.

Villa Ortega is about 45 minutes outside of Coyhaique on dirt roads. When I was here a couple of years ago I wanted to see Villa Ortega because of the need to start a church there. On my way there the first time I picked up a hitchhiker who lived there. For the 30 minute drive I had the privilege of witnessing to her and said that when we start a church in Villa Ortega she had to visit. Since we were driving through and I remembered where we dropped her off years earlier I thought that Andres and I would take advantage of the situation and visit this girl. It turned out that she no longer lived there, but had gotten married and moved up the road. Regardless of that fact her mother invited us in (yes, as complete strangers) and talked our ears off. We ended up staying there for a couple of hours and having lunch with them. People are so warm here and I love it that you can just do that. This was not my first time eating lunch with complete strangers who took me in. We witnessed to her, her husband, and their other daughter.

Our journey continued along a beautiful river. We even saw two waterfalls along the way. Unfortunately we had a longer look at one of the waterfalls than we hoped. One of my tires popped and so Andres and I tag teamed putting the spare on. If you look in the distance behind Andres in this picture you can catch a glimpse of the waterfall.

We finally pulled into Ñirehuao. There we went to about 100 homes with gospel literature. I had a very interesting experience happen in Ñirehuao that I don't think I will soon forget. As I was going house to house I went to my last house of the day that turned out to be a Museum. I walked in to give Katerin a gospel tract and noticed that she had a complex computer system set up. I asked her if it was a radio and she said yes. I asked if the whole town listened to the radio and she said yes. I asked her if she ever spoke live on the radio and she said yes. I asked her if anyone could speak on the radio and she said yes. I asked her if I could speak on the radio and she said yes! I came back about a half hour later with Andres and had my first live appearance on a radio station! I took 5-10 minutes and gave one Scripture after another presenting the plan of salvation. I was so nervous!

Overall, the trip to Ñirehuao was exciting and we were able to accomplish a lot.

Lot's more miles put on these legs

(this was written a few weeks ago)
Andres and I spent almost every day this week going door to door. We were able to get to about 1,000 homes a day with invitations and gospel CDs. He has been such a blessing and we were able to double our efforts working together. I believe that Andres will be very successful in any ministry he starts and/or will be an asset to any ministry he participates in. He was also a very big help during our inaugural service, but more to come about that soon.

Quite the adventure

Last Saturday night Andres, our visitor from Santiago, was supposed to get in at something like 9 pm. Boat arrival times are not very reliable, so it wasn't too much of a surprise that he got in at 1:30 am. I called the Chilean Navy at Puerto Chacabuco and thought it was very cool that they updated me on the progress of his ship. Since he didn't know I was on my way he almost ended up sleeping on the ship overnight because it was too late to call and wake me. Little did I know that the night was going to turn into a weird and awkward adventure. To make a very long story short: Andres met two secessionist Texans who were moving to Patagonia in search of self-sustainable land and to escape the imminent civil war and an Italian tourist. When they heard that I was picking Andres up they asked me to drive them to Coyhaique and I had the open spaces to take them. The Texans turned out to be disrespectful, opinionated, rude, and the opposite of social human beings. One of the good things about the trip was that I had the opportunity to share my testimony and witness to them. Once we got to Coyhaique it was about 3 am and I had to drive around with these people in my car searching for a place for them to stay that night. I would have let them sleep in the park before putting my wife and son in danger by offering them a place to stay at our house. After about an hour and a half of our wandering they finally got a place. I unloaded their bags and quickly took off in order to get back to my warm bed and loving wife. It was a rough start to Andres' trip, but everything improved from that point. I'm just thankful that I didn't pick up serial murderers.

A lot of life

Although its only been a little longer than a week since I last updated it feels like I am so behind on blogging! Today Annie said, "Was it just last night that we were at the grocery store? We've lived a lot of life since then." Things have been very crazy, but wonderful. I will do my best to update thoroughly and in order.

It has been brought to my attention

It has been brought to my attention that the commenting process on my blog made it very difficult for some people to comment. So I have made a few changes to commenting. It will take a little more effort from me (moderating) and I will probably get a bunch of spam (because anonymous can comment now), but hopefully it'll make it easier for people that want to leave comments. Besides, I enjoy the interaction!

A busy week ahead

I was hoping to have the building ready to go before Sunday (tomorrow) so that I could have all week to pass out invitations to our inaugural service. We have gone to about 10,000 homes so far, but our city has a total of about 20,000, so there is still a lot more homes that I would have liked to have gotten to before February 10th. I think that with Andres' help we can get to about 800-1,000 homes a day. In 6 days that gives us a potential 6,000 more homes with invitations. That is a lot of work and a lot of sore muscles! I just want to get the word out as much as we can. We have been asking folks in our church to invite friends, family, and neighbors. I put fliers up in the windows of the building (this may not sound like much, but people here really look at papers in windows!). I have been carrying fliers in my shirt pocket handing them out everywhere. Also, check out this picture for another way I decided to use.

This is a newspaper ad that I took out. In our city people really listen to the radio, watch news on t.v., and read the newspaper. There are two local papers: El Divisadero and El Diario Aysén. They each print 3,000 copies of their paper a day except for Sundays they don't print a paper (very different from the U.S., I know). As a general people don't buy both papers so I decided to take out this ad in both papers. The days when most people buy the paper are on Mondays and Thursdays, so I took out ads in both papers for two Thursdays and one Monday before the inauguration. That is an extra 18,000 copies of invitations that are getting put out there!

I am hoping to see 150 people at our inaugural service. That would mean that it would be crowded standing room only. I know that it is high hopes. I have passed out thousands of fliers for things in the past and not seen one person show up...so I realize that these are high hopes. I truly believe though that it is not a difficult thing for God to bring that many people to the first service. However, even if only 5 people show up I will be so thankful for those 5 and they will get the royal treatment! I am bubbling over with anticipation!

8 days till our inauguration

After months of remodeling and work the building is starting to shape up. We have our opening service in just about a week now! Life is going to get crazy and I can't wait! Here are some pictures to show some progress.

This is the view from in front, since I snapped this picture the weeds have been cleaned out and the outside was painted. 

This is a picture of the chairs we bought this week all set up.

I built this pulpit from Oregon Pine and a local beech wood native to our region called Lenga.

An anticipated visit

Tonight I will be picking up a young man name Andres Huenulaf who is visiting us from Santiago. He is on a 30 hour boat trip from Quellón (a city on the island of Chiloé), and he will be getting in to Puerto Chacabuco. I think that is about an hour and a half drive. I am really excited that he is going to be staying with us. He'll be here until February 14th I think so he will be around to help for our first service. The purpose of his visit is to get to know the region because he has an interest in someday starting a church here. I am so happy that I may have a small part in God bringing him to this needy region. His trip will overlap with  that of Yerko Aravena. Yerko is a young man that I had the honor to work with in Santiago. He is my friend and he is interested in coming to work with us. These are exciting days as I see God work to send more laborers to the harvest in southern Chile.