Hola from Chile

Sorry that it has been so long since I blogged. We have been pretty busy and so I just haven’t had a chance to update it. Today we were supposed to go to Putre, which is about four hours away, up 12,000 feet. There are two volcanoes there; it’s supposed to be really beautiful. But this morning when I woke up, I was feeling really nauseous and when I would stand up I would get dizzy. As a result I decided to stay back because a lot of times people who are well get sick going there due to the elevation. Therefore I decided to wouldn’t be wise to go up there already feeling really sick. So Brian and Mike went with our American friend Ehrich. I was really disappointed that I couldn’t go because it is supposed to be simply majestic, but I know that the Lord is in control and I can rest in that. When the tour people found out I didn’t go, they called Mrs. Bjur and said they heard I didn’t go because I was sick. They then told her that they have a no refund policy but since I was a student and it was a last minute cancellation they would give me half of my money back. I am really thankful for that because I wasn’t expecting to get anything back! I know that it was the Lord’s doing because there was no reason why they should have given me anything back. Anyway, I will have either Brian or Mike blog about going to Putre in the next couple of days so you can hear how awesome it is.

We are really enjoying ourselves here. It has been a real blessing getting to know the Bjur’s. There story is pretty cool, but I think one of the coolest realizations that I have come to is they are normal people doing extraordinary things for God. I feel like when we think of missionaries we always think of really extraordinary people who are so far above the normal person but this trip has shown me that it isn’t the case. The Bjur’s are really awesome people but they aren’t any different than anyone else. They just obeyed God’s command to bring His Word to a foreign land. Here is an example of how they are normal people. When they first came to Chile they didn’t know any Spanish. As a result they hired a tutor to teach them. Well after two months of trying to learn Spanish, the tutor quit saying Mr. Jim Bjur was a lost cause. To me that doesn’t sound like an extraordinary person. But that didn’t stop them; from there they learned the language on their own. They have now been here 18 years and Mrs. Melody speaks Spanish without an English accent. Mr. Jim still struggles some, but the Lord has used him to further His kingdom anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to downplay the Bjur’s, they are really awesome people. But so many times as Christians we think God only uses really awesome people who have it all together, but the truth is He will use anyone who has a willing heart. As a matter of fact He loves using people despite their deficiencies. So don’t let your “normalcy” keep you from doing great things for God.

Alright, I am done preaching at you (I am preaching at myself too) for now. I am sure you are wondering what it is we are doing here. Our average day consists of doing work around the church in the morning and early afternoon. We have sanded and repainted all the bars on the windows around the church and also we plastered the walls on stairs up to our room and also the walls of the balcony. Now that we finished plastering we will probably paint over them soon. It doesn’t feel like we have done much work around the church but the Bjur’s are really grateful because it would be really hard for Mr. Jim to do it himself. After we finish working around the house we go over to the Bjur’s for lunch, here in Chile lunch is the biggest meal of the day. After lunch we have done a number of different things, we have gone downtown to shop, a lot of times we go play basketball at the gym next door and give tracts to anyone who is there playing with us. On the Fourth of July the Bjur’s did some special stuff with us which was nice because that was one of the things I was most disappointed about missing. That morning we had pancakes with them at their house (we normally just eat breakfast by ourselves at the church) and then we went to these absolutely beautiful caves! Here are a couple of pictures of them, but I will be honest, the pictures don’t do justice to God’s beautiful creation!

The first picture is of Sea Lions! It was so cool to see them in their natural habitat! They are mostly on the left side of the picture, there was a ton of them!

The second picture is looking through one of the smaller caves.

The last picture is one of my favorites! I don't know why but I absolutely love that picture!

After the caves, we had a cookout which was really delicious! Then we had the youth meeting that night.

Yesterday we taught English to a couple of girls, which was pretty interesting, I felt like a failure but they said they learned some stuff. Hopefully we will do that a couple more times because a lot of the people here want to learn some English. One of the girls we taught yesterday wants to go to Bob Jones University but to do so she has to pass an English literacy test. So pray that she will learn enough English to be able to do that. We have also been hanging out with the youth a lot, which has been a lot of fun! On Wednesday nights we have a Bible Study that is similar to the ones in the States. Friday nights there is “Bible Club” which is for the younger kids; it’s always a lot of fun attending that. Saturday nights is the youth meeting, last week I presented the devotion, and I think it went pretty well, although it was shorter than I had planned. On Sunday there is church of course. They do it a lot differently here than at home though. The morning service is Sunday School and then the evening service is a typical service. For Sunday School everyone meets in the sanctuary where they sing a few songs then they dismiss each class and then after the Sunday School classes are over they gather back together and sing a couple more songs, and then they split up in groups of 3 and pray together. Then they sing a couple more songs before dismissing. The evening service is a lot like services are at home. It starts out with some singing, and then they ask if anyone has any praises, then more singing, then they ask for prayer requests, then they pray, then the sermon, and then a couple more songs. Mr. Jim gives us a copy of his sermon in English for us to follow along with. That is a big blessing because without it we wouldn’t have a clue of what he is talking about.

We are so grateful for all of your prayers! It means so much to us to know that we are being prayed for daily! We love and miss all of you!

The First Few Days

The picture on the bottom is of Arica from right outside our room in the evening.
The picture on the top is a popular drink in Chile. It is made up of a dried apricot and barley.
They take the dried apricot and put water in it which makes up the juice. Mike and I tried it
but Brian was acted like a scared little girl and wouldn't try it. The best way I can describe the
way it tastes is it tasted like rotten grapes. I have no idea why people like it so much.

We have now been in Chile for a little less than a week. We are absolutely loving it here. The weather is amazing, always warm during the day and cool at night. The people here are a lot of fun. Most of them don't speak very much English but we are learning to communicate. There are some people who speak decent English and they help us translate with those who don't.

So far we have done a couple of small work projects, we sanded off the rust and painted the bars on the windows at the church with anti-rust paint. We also put together a closet for the Bjur's oldest daughter Becky. The work is rather easy but the Bjur's are just glad they don't have to do it. We have also been doing a lot of relational stuff with the youth here. On Friday nights there is a Bible Club with 2 age groups. This last week Brian helped out with the younger group and Mike and I helped out with the older ones. On Saturday's they have their youth meeting. In Chile "youth" means anyone from high school until you get married. So the "youth" here includes some people as old as 25. It was a joy to fellowship with them and we look forward to getting to know them all better. They asked me to do the devotion next week so that should be interesting.

Yesterday was the Lord's Day and it was a joy to worship with God's people in Arica, Chile. They do things a little bit differently here. For instance, the 11 o'clock service is Sunday School and the evening service, which is at 7:30, is more of a typical service. Yesterday in between services we had a fellowship time with the youth and had lunch at the church. We had a blast spending time with all the youth and playing games with them and such.

The picture on the bottom is of Mike and Brian working hard, putting together the Closet.

The picture on the top is of the Bjur's living room. On the left is the Bjur's youngest two children, Josh and Debbie. They also have another son, Jeremy.

It is hard to get time to blog on here often but I will do my best to keep everyone informed. As always we appreciate everyones prayers. So far we are doing very well and none of us have gotten sick at all, praise the Lord! We trust everyone is doing well back home and we miss you all!

Arica, Chile

We have arrived safe and sound! Thank you all for your prayers! We arrived here in Arica around 3 yesterday afternoon. Our plane landed in Tacna, Peru around noon but it took a couple of hours to go across the border and arrive at the Bjur's house. We went to their Wednesday night service last night. What a blessing it is to be able to worship our Lord in a foreign land!
There is much more to tell but I will save that for later as we are about to eat lunch.
Thanks again for all your prayers, it means more than you can know!

Does anything ever really go according to plans?

This afternoon we left American soil, it was sad but we are excited to see what God has in store for us in Chile. We are just beginning to wonder if we will ever make it there...

Our flight out of Ft Lauderdale was about 30-45 minutes late, but we made it to Lima, Peru without any problems. The problems started once we arrived here. The good news is we made it through customs without any issues. Unfortunately, the good news just about ends there.

After going through customs we went to check our bags for our flight to Tacna, Peru with LAN Airlines. We were able to check all our bags without being charged any extra fees which was a blessing! The problem was we (and the missionaries meeting us in Tacna) were under the impression that our flight would be leaving Lima at 4:40am and arriving in Tacna at 6:25am but our boarding passes said our flight leaves at 9:10am. As you can imagine this was disheartening news for a number of reasons, (a) because we had no way of letting the Bjur's know that they had the wrong flight information, and (b) it meant a 10 hour layover instead of a 5 hour layover.

To make matters worse, between Brian, Mike, and I, we know about zero useful Spanish. Thankfully, after a searching for a significant amount of time, we were able to find a shop that sold calling cards and also had a person who spoke decent English. She was able to help us use the calling card and Mike was able to get through to his mom and she emailed the Bjur's so hopefully they will know not to look for us at 6:25.

All in all it has been a "fun" few hours in Peru. We are just looking forward to when we can know that we are at our final destination. Unfortunately, we still have 6 more hours of a layover at a deserted foreign airport... This post may seem depressing, and there have been obstacles to overcome today, but we are happy to proclaim that once again God has been with us. Things could have turned out a lot worse, but God has been merciful to us! There has been much hassle, but nothing more than that, and we are incredibly grateful to our Lord as He continues to protect us. We are grateful for all your prayers, it is humbling to know we have such a great support team at home coming before the Throne of Grace on our behalf! We love you all and look forward to reporting to you about how the Lord brings us safely to Chile and the Bjur's!

Sitting in Fort Lauderdale

As you can hopefully see from the picture above, our flight from Reagan International to Fort Lauderdale was one in which we had extra leg room. Our flight was uneventful, at least I assume it was since I slept through most of it. We are now sitting, rather laying at the airport in Ft Lauderdale waiting for our flight to Lima, Peru at 5:15. In case anyone is wondering what one does during a four hour layover at an airport here are some pics showing what we do...















If you can't tell, Mikey is intently playing Pokemon on the Gameboy while Brian is trying to catch 30 seconds of sleep in between texts from the homefront.

In all seriousness though, the Lord has blessed us with extremely smooth travel so far and we are trusting Him to get us all the way to the Bjurs in Chile. As always, we appreciate your prayers!

2 More Days!!

I can't believe we are leaving in less than two days! I haven't even started packing yet.
I thought it would be appropriate to post again before we left. We are all so excited to see God work in and through us while we are in Chile. Today the guys from Mexico spoke at church and it was so awesome to hear what God did while they were there! By listening to them talk about how God worked in each of their lives and to just see them completely sold out for the Gospel was so inspiring for me! As Brian, Mike, and I seek to follow Christ's call to Chile my hope is that Christ will reveal Himself to each of us in such a way that we can't help but come home from Chile changed just as the men who went to Mexico did.

I want to take just a minute to say how honored I am to have the opportunity to serve our Lord with Mike and Brian for a month in Chile. The three of us are like brothers and I couldn't pick two guys who I would rather go on this adventure for Christ with. They both have huge hearts for people and the Gospel. It is going to be awesome to see God use each of them in ways they can't even imagine!

We humbly ask for your prayers as we leave on Tuesday. We will be flying out of Reagan Airport in DC. I know in the previous post I said we were flying out of Dulles but I was mistaken. We will be flying out around 10am. We will be flying from there to Miami where we will have a 5 hour layover. From there we fly to Lima, Peru where we will arrive around 11pm. We then fly out of Lima around 5 am Wednesday morning. We will be flying from there to Tacna, Peru where we will be meeting up with the Bjur's. We will then be driving across the border into Chile and onto Arica, Chile, our final destination!

Thanks again to everyone who supported us both financially and through prayer! We wouldn't be going if it weren't for all of your gifts and prayers! We thank the Lord for each of you!

Trip Planning

Hey Everyone!

Mike, Brian, and I(Caleb) will be using this blog while we are in Chile to keep everyone informed about what we are doing in Chile. We are flying out of Dulles Airport on June 23. I am pleased to report that the donations we have received from friends and family has covered all of our costs for the trip! Praise be to God for once again providing for our needs! We wouldn't be going on this trip without all of your help and we are incredibly thankful to everyone who has given to us! While we are the ones going to Chile, through your gifts, you are also being used by God for His work there!

The whole time we are there we will be staying with the Bjur's, a Presbyterian missionary family who have dedicated their lives to serving Christ in Arica, Chile. While we are there we will be helping them conduct a week long VBS kind of camp. We will also be doing other relational types of things with them there in the community. We are very excited to meet the Bjur's and to serve Christ with them!

We humbly ask for your prayers as we continue to prepare to serve God in Chile. Also, we ask that you will keep the Bjur's in your prayers as they serve Christ in Chile. Lastly, the last we had heard they had yet to find a location to have their camp at, so please pray that the Lord will provide a place to have the camp!

Acts 20:24
"But I do not count my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I have received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God."