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.