Intro summary

4 days in, 3 days of work, 40 hours of work, and it’s not exactly like my day off was any walk in the park. It’s been a crazy start here. I walked off the plane Friday morning and went straight to a construction site with a youth mission team from California. I’ve been working with them, and will continue to work with them through the rest of this week as I try and get my feet on the ground here. Their activities are a lot like two-week mission trips that I’ve been on. High energy, every second planned... it’s a sprint. Don’t get me wrong, I think its great and it’s a blast. But I’m definitely not here for a sprint. But on top of the sprint, I’ve been lucky to even do some extra curriculars. For instance, yesterday I did construction from 9:30-6, youth stuff from 6-8, which was when the team was able to finally stop, and then I got pulled to go help serve at ‘la plaza de armas’, which is a plaza in downtown Santiago where the church has a ministry to serve food to the homeless. This was interesting in every sense of the word, but I was exhausted because we didn’t get done until close to midnight. I finally forced myself to get up early this morning so I could actually take my quiet time to read the Bible as well as do my required journaling for my internship credit. But anyways, in a nutshell, here’s what I’m doing thus far: Construction on a church called Farfana in a rough neighborhood, ministry in said neighborhood, which includes puppet shows and walking around the neighborhood inviting people to come, and constantly being driven around to different places to see different parts of the church organization. My home church is technically a church called Oriente, but I’ve only been there for a few brief moments, including church on Sunday, soccer for several hours, and a few random meetings. My Spanish is surviving and I’m sure its improving, but its definitely difficult. I love my host family, I have two brothers and a sister: Robert (24), who comes with my to most of the things that I do which is great, Daniel (12) who is a super nice kid and loves talking with me, and Sofia (10 months), who is adorable. Those are the basics, but if I get into more detail, I’ll be late for work. Hopefully I can write about specifics soon. Time to go live the dream!