Adventure Team: check it off √

A few weeks ago I got back from travelling in the south of Chile with the IT group for two weeks. Like I mentioned previously, I sprained my ankle a week before we left, so that was an extra challenge to lead the trip with a big boot on. It did make packing a lot easier since I only needed to pack left shoes; with my big feet, that was quite the space-saver.

We worked with two churches and the group also had the opportunity to do adventure activities like climbing a volcano, white-water rafting, mountain biking and horseback riding. It was wonderful to see the IT in action. The group spends a lot of its time in class and participating in OM Chile’s ministries in Santiago, so it was great to see them putting into practice what they’ve learned and developed in the IT program.

We first went to the town of Talcahuano where we worked with a very small church of around forty members. The IT quickly learned that flexibility would be key as we went to the main plaza to do an evangelistic program only to find it closed for construction. We found ourselves instead evangelizing on a street corner downtown, passing out invitations to the church, running around acting out a clown sketch amongst the passers-by, and singing some worship songs. It was fun to watch children get drawn in to the dramas because of the clowns, but the parents were completely unaware until the children pointed it out.

The IT’s next open-air program in the town was done as the rain came down and the sound system didn’t want to play the music for their drama. We had to quickly break down the drama we were going to present and jump into the next possible one. Again, flexibility was key, but it was exciting to see that God was working even through the rain. People in the houses around the plaza where we were sharing came out and stood in their doorways observing. A man who was passing by on a bus saw that something was happening in the plaza and so he quickly got off and came over to see what was going on. I spoke with him and, when he realized I spoke Spanish, he shared with me that he’s a Chilean studying engineering in the Netherlands, and that he also tries to do ministry there but it’s a very closed country to hearing the Gospel. I shared with him what we were doing and about OM a little, mentioning that there were three dutchies with me in our group. We went and chatted with them and then gave him some contacts in OM Netherlands so that when he returns to Holland he can connect with them and the ministries they’re doing there.

praying before a program

When we travelled to the city of Valdivia to work with a church, the IT were great and rose to every challenge presented. When we split the group to go to two different locations, we understood one group would work with children and the other group with older adults. When we arrived to work with the adults, however, there were only young children present, resting from playing soccer. Having given all of our resources to the other group, we had to improvise a program on the spot. Short-handed and lacking supplies, we had to get creative but were still able to present three short dramas, give a message and share one the IT’s testimonies. The best part of the program came at the end when we prayed with each child individually then stayed to also share with them by playing a game of soccer. I was so proud of the IT guys at that moment because I had three of them with me with no program to give, but I was able to throw anything at them and they were both able and willing to do it. One guy lifted another of the guys straight up off the ground like a baby then flipped him around, doing a lot of physical comedy in one of the clown sketches because I requested them to really play it up. In the second clown sketch that we did immediately after, which needs 5 people, we had 4 of us. I pointed to one guy, said, “You’re the first clown. Go!” and he immediately ran out to grab the attention of the kids while we figured out how to split the roles between the rest of us. It was a crazy afternoon, and I was so proud of the IT.

Praying with children

As IT coordinator and leader of the art ministry, it was exciting for me to see the IT group perform dramas, share their testimonies, encourage youth, converse with onlookers, and adapt in the moment to whatever was needed. The nine-month training is intense and asks a lot of the participants, and it was wonderful to see them pushing themselves and thriving as they served the Lord in real and tangible ways in the south.

Pichidegua

Yup, that’s a real word. It’s a real place, actually, and the site of a youth camp that I attended along with about 14 other people from OM Chile and 110 Chileans around my age. It was wonderful (and exhausting (but mostly wonderful))!! Each year the Intensive Training group experiences a youth camp from a local church and this year we attended the camp of the church I’ve been attending. I really enjoy the youth of my church (and sorry, I realize I’m using the word “youth” in the Chilean understanding of its age range, somewhere between 18- early 30′s, I’d say), and it was really, really great to get to know people better and deepen friendships. My first year here in Chile I attended a different church. After a year passed, I still felt on the outskirts of the church, just a visitor. Being a preacher’s kid and growing up always involved in the heart of a church, that was really difficult for me and added to my feelings of being unrooted here. I switched churches and began attending a church where I found the services boring but had felt welcome and at-home within its youth group since I first arrived. I’m so glad I made the switch. Especially after this youth camp we went to, I really feel like I have a church family here in Santiago and good Chilean friends. Praise God!

Yup, that’s a real word. It’s a real place, actually, and the site of a youth camp that I attended along with about 14 other people from OM Chile and 110 Chileans around my age. It was wonderful (and exhausting (but mostly wonderful))!! Each year the Intensive Training group experiences a youth camp from a local church and this year we attended the camp of the church I’ve been attending. I really enjoy the youth of my church (and sorry, I realize I’m using the word “youth” in the Chilean understanding of its age range, somewhere between 18- early 30′s, I’d say), and it was really, really great to get to know people better and deepen friendships. My first year here in Chile I attended a different church. After a year passed, I still felt on the outskirts of the church, just a visitor. Being a preacher’s kid and growing up always involved in the heart of a church, that was really difficult for me and added to my feelings of being unrooted here. I switched churches and began attending a church where I found the services boring but had felt welcome and at-home within its youth group since I first arrived. I’m so glad I made the switch. Especially after this youth camp we went to, I really feel like I have a church family here in Santiago and good Chilean friends. Praise God!

 

Anyway, back to the youth camp experience. What I really enjoyed about the experience is that I felt involved within a church again. One afternoon I taught about evangelism to the entire group (in Spanish for over an hour, whew!). In one evening session I from up front translated to English the message of the visiting pastor, and for the majority of the other sessions translated from my chair for the IT participants who needed it. At the end of the 10-day youth camp we planned to do two days of evangelism in the little town near the camp, so the IT and I prepared ahead of time so that they would be ready to do some clown dramas for the little children and more serious dramas for the adults. As the days of evangelism grew closer, I went with a group to go talk to the manager of the biggest (and only) supermarket in town. She, as well as the owner of the store, are Christians and they offered us the use of their parking lot and sidewalk outside to host our evangelistic activities that we did, like free massages, free blood pressure checks, free haircuts, free hugs, prayer, songs and games for the children, face painting, balloon animals, as well as our OM dramas accompanied by a short evangelistic message. It was a huge blessing to have that site. What came about because of that meeting, though, is that some of the group also wanted to do a flash mob within the store in order to draw attention to what we would be doing outside. Since I have the most experience in organizing flash mobs (having done a grand total of….. one…..), I suddenly became in charge of that, too (though with a lot of help).

 

The flash mob went well, with the store letting us use their sound system to play a song, use  extra uniforms to stage some of our people as workers, and hide some of our people in their upstairs offices. Those five guys came out and stood on a balcony overlooking the store, and when the music started they grabbed the attention of the shoppers by singing at the top of their lungs. As they made their way down the stairs, more males joined in singing from all over the store. At the chorus all of the girls started singing from their different places in the store. We all moved together into the center of the supermarket and sang together, worshipping God. With over 100 people participating and in four-part harmony, it was a pretty cool experience. We then called to the shoppers around us to come outside and participate in what we were doing.

 

I want to speak more of this camp and I’m also going to post a bunch of photographs (because now that I have my professional camera with me, I got some wonderful shots), but that will be in another post because I need to head out for the day. God bless you!

Chau.

Original Song – IT ’10

This is a video made about the Intensive Training group of last year and the original song they created, music, lyrics, everything. It was a very cool experience to see the song come to life. It’s nothing professional, but still wonderful. Enjoy.

 

Lyrics:

Verse 1
They say God is a Father
They say God has a heart
Then who’s the dad of these children
With tears in their eyes, deeply hurt

Chorus 1:
You’re Abba, Father, the I Am who I Am
Alpha, Omega, the Lion and the Lamb
King of all nations, the Holy 3-in-1
Divine Creator, Father, Spirit, Son

Verse 2
I was the lonely and broken
Ashamed but priceless to You
Each day You showed how You love me
And because of how, now I know

Chorus 2:
Father’s only Son, came to the Earth, went through the pain
The One who chose to take our place and carry all our pain
The loneliness is gone, the tears are dried, now I can say
The brokenness is healed, my heart is filled, He leads my way

Bridge:
I was the kid, living on the street
Not knowing where to sleep
Not knowing what to eat
I know it’s not easy
That life can be hard
But still God was there for me,
Right from the start.
Dying on the cross for me,
taking all my blame
So all I want to do from now on is bless His name

Chorus 1 / Chorus 2

Verse 3
If only you could trust Him
In spite of all the pain
He longs to be your Healer
Let Him be Yahweh

Chorus 1 / Chorus 2

Chorus 1

It worked! It worked, it worked, it worked!

I’m excited. The idea I’ve been holding onto for a couple of months now has come to fruition and is awesome. There’s something so satisfying about having an idea, thinking of how best to make it happen, consider what’s needed, what might go wrong, what logistically needs to happen, and then go to it! A few months ago I was looking around online for inspiration for OM Chile’s art ministry, which I was taking over this training year, and I came across the idea to do lenticulars on fences. Lenticu-whats? Basically putting a painting or photograph on the sides of a fence so that when you’re walking past you see the picture at the perfect angle.

A few weeks ago in one of the art classes I asked the Intensive Training group to brainstorm ideas for paintings we could do for the fence. They came up with wonderful ideas. The hope is that we can regularly change the painting so that it becomes a continuing ministry in the neighborhood; that people will come to know our property as the place that always does these paintings; that it would spread God’s message and give us opportunities to speak to people.

We began with a simple idea in order to test out the process and so we made a painting with “Jesus loves you” in many different languages and colors. Since we have at least seven different languages spoken by the people who work in OM Chile, it was easy to fill the painting. The IT did a wonderful job creating the painting. Since this week they’ve gone to live within Chilean families for a cultural immersion, today I and two others actually did the gluing of the strips onto the fence. For future paintings the IT will be even more involved in the entire process, but it was so exciting to see the painting coming clear with each strip we put up. We weren’t even done yet when our next-door neighbor stopped to look at it and compliment the idea, leading into a conversation about who we are, our organization, and what we do. Woohoo! I’ve been pretty pumped all day since we got it up on the fence. I’ll show you some photos as well so you can actually picture what I’ve been chattering on about. Enjoy and God bless!

 

the IT painting

Full painting before cutting it into strips

 

getting started

 

last strips

From straight on, nothing

Start to see it

 

More and more

 

 

Final Image

Nine Months

           Ten tired, nervous, excited faces walked out of Santiago’s airport into the strong sunshine of the September morning in Chile. They had traveled for a day or more to arrive to a country and culture alien to their own. After a whirlwind of sightseeing and important details, the ten young people settled into their lives for the next nine months – OM Chile’s Intensive Training Program.

            Nine months passed in the blink of an eye, and last week the group returned to their respective countries. They are a different set of people from when they arrived. Replacing the nervous, unsure faces are strong, confident people who have a good grasp of the Spanish language, who survived and thrived in a different culture, who completed every task set before them in the training, no matter how difficult or intense, who have steeped themselves in the Word of God and relied on His power in their weakness. The IT are different people from only nine months ago.

            In the span of time from September to June, the individuals of the Intensive Training read the entire Bible, had varied classes with lots of homework, memorized many Bible verses, and studied a new language. They learned to live and work successfully in a multi-cultural team. They had evangelism training and art classes; they worked with homeless and in children’s homes. They learned to skateboard, juggle, sing and act. They learned that each one of them is creative because they were created in the image of the Creator. They experienced living with Chilean families, making Chilean friends, adapting to the differences of Chilean culture. They shared about God and His love for us in creative, varied ways with children, homeless, passersby, in churches, in plazas, in camps, and on city buses. They traveled in Chile, challenging those with whom they spoke to consider God’s love for them, and challenging themselves by climbing a volcano. They experienced culture shock, conflicts, stress and high emotions. They experienced deep friendships, learning about themselves, the excitement of being outside their comfort zones, and a deepening of their personal faith. The IT learned that when they are weak, tired, and unable to continue in their own power, the Lord resides there and they can rest in Him as He uses their weakness to show His power and love.

            For the people waiting at home to receive their children/siblings/friends back from Chile, perhaps nine months didn’t seem that long for so much to happen, but oh, what the Lord can do in a short amount of time. Though the people were the same, the faces that walked through the Santiago airport last week to board their flights home were a very different set from nine months ago.

So, back in April…

            … the Intensive Training group showed up to class expecting a normal Monday. Instead they found one of their leaders waiting for them, ready to explain that the day was going to look a little different. They were told to empty their pockets, put down their bags, and move into two assigned groups. At that point the leader told them they would be walking out the door and not returning until 8PM, and they were to spend the day praying for God to guide them in how they could serve Him. They were rather surprised.

            They headed out, no money, no water, nothing, and got in their groups to pray. They weren’t to go anywhere without feeling the Lord first leading them. One group started walking, destination unknown, until they walked past a nursing home. They stopped in to ask if they could serve them in some way. They were told they could come another day. Disappointed and getting hungry, they started walking again when they looked down and saw a still-packaged cookie. One of the guys had been looking for money on the ground all day, sure God would provide that way, and instead they found a cookie. Yes, they ate it. Yes, they wrote a song about it later.

            Both groups had the epiphany that, though they should ask God how to serve, they were actually looking for God to serve them. Walking around with nothing, though, made them aware of how blessed they already are, and they should be aware to serve where they can. To spend an entire day in anticipation of God doing or showing something made them view normal experiences in a completely different way. If before they ignored or turned down people asking for money, that day it was with excitement that they saw people approach them because it was an opportunity to talk with them and pray for God to lead the conversation. How different would our approach to daily life be if we awoke each day with the expectation that God will do something amazing today?