Seventeen hours of intense fellowship; Saying goodbye.

The church on Sunday, as we last saw it.

The sun was still below the horizon when we rose from our beds, and it was barely peeking over the roof tops when we set out on our twenty minute walk to church. It didn’t seem realistic that this was our last Sunday walk so we didn’t bother dwelling on the fact. We had a whole day ahead of us for it to sink in! With all the uni students home and it’s being Easter time, the old dining room we always meet in filled up quickly, for an eight thirty service.  We sang a lot of songs, among which was a new tune called ‘Gracias’(Thank you).  It has a pretty melody and seemed both appropriate and pertinent that weekend. Dad preached through the interpreter David about the woman who poured perfume on Jesus’ head and feet, about the disciples and Jesus. By the grace of God it was a good sermon, despite how busy the past week had been. Church merged fairly seamlessly into Escuala de Dominica, or Sunday School. Many children from the community are sent by their parents for this, and the church looks on it as an outreach opportunity. We finished at about twelve, splitting up to many and varied occupations.

like insulating...

washing chairs..

setting up a platform..

 putting siding up and being asked to pose..

cooking

in the kitchen and out of it!

table setting..

talking..

installing the lights. (those electricians were amazing!)...

and putting individual handmade objects together to make these table settings. Nothing seemed to hard for them to do!

So this is lunch, before everyone sat down. There were quite a few more people still to come in and it was much more squashy!

Oh, we made a lot of speeches, and not all of them were entirely sensible!

After lunch there were dishes to do, and after the dishes were done familia Lick was taken by Hermana Emma to her shop and home, where she gave us Chileno drinks of puffed wheat and peach juice/preserves. It was such a blessing to sit still and rest for a while! We had to say goodbye to one of our friends as he was leaving for the city, which brought the reality of farewell’s into sharp relief.

hanging out upstairs.

When we arrived back at the church we found most people had gone home to prepare for evening service; some of the youth were moving sound equipment into the new church and setting up but otherwise it was quiet. Us kids climbed to the second story floor and played around with two of the young boys until people began turning up for the evening service, which reminded us that we needed to change too. Sometime during the evening, we knew, they would ask us to do some bush dancing. Despite that knowledge we thought it was going to be a normal service other than the fact that we were meeting in the new building; but it wasn’t. We never thought it was possible to forge deep relationships with people of a different language and culture in just over twelve weeks either, but we did – and that’s partly what the service was celebrating. Our Chileno friends wanted to honour us and they wanted to honour God, they wanted to celebrate something that had become precious to them and us, and they wanted to give all the glory to God for making possible what was impossible. Having said that, they didn’t tell us what they aimed to do - I’m telling you this because that’s what they accomplished! 

The next day we tried remembering the order of that evening service, but even with seven brains combined we failed, because at the time we were such emotional wrecks. And of everything we remember I’ll tell you just a couple of events that stick out for us:

Cristian wrote a small memoire about our time in Chile, through which we learnt something we hadn’t heard before. “We were afraid before you came” he said “ because we didn’t know how it would work out, especially as we didn’t know each other’s languages. But one day I talked to Robert H. on Skype and he told me that love (God’s love) can overcome all barriers, and he expressed confidance that everything would turn out well. When I look back on the last three months”  he continued, “and remember what has happened, I think that this has been true for us! ’ 

Pastor Joel.

A slide show of conglomerated photos from all our friends was shown along with the music ‘How great is our God’. They played it in English first and then Spanish, and they couldn’t have chosen a better song, nor one that was more affecting for everyone concerned! They asked us to the front so they could give us some gifts, and we thought it was ironic that they should take so many photos when we were such messes. Not that we were ashamed of our tears. ‘We came here to build a church’ Dad said in a fifty second speech of thanks, ‘but we fell in love with the people, which was the last thing we were expecting!’ 

The whole church prayed for us before we sat down again. ‘That was one time I really wished I could understand Spanish’ someone - no names - said afterward. 

They danced their national dance for us, and we danced our bush dances. It was good, we all enjoyed the cultural exchange as the laughter would have testified. But I think their favourite part was when we messed up the Waves of Bondie, hehehe.

Afterwards we said goodbye in earnest, and there’s no describing how difficult that was. Eve and Mr Franko drove us home and stayed until after midnight,  loath to say goodbye again. When we finally walked up to bed our heads were pounding and we all looked like we felt – terrible! Mum and Dad told us we could sleep in the next day if we wanted to, small consolation.