Great Weekend

So this weekend Katie, Greg (intern), Brent (intern), Kamilo (student), Carlos (student), Jorge (student), and I went to a little town called Iloca. The town is located about 5 hours south of Santiago…long car ride. We went to help build a house for a family in need there. Just some history about what happened and why we were needed. On Saturday February 27 of 2010 an 8.8 Earthquake rocked the country of Chile. The earthquake then triggered a tsunami at 3am which devastated several coastal towns in the south. Iloca was hit pretty hard. Houses were completely destroyed, several people died, and lives were forever changed. The people there are so terrified of the ocean now that when building houses, they refuse to put windows that face the ocean in their house. It’s so beautiful there it seems like a crime, but I would probably be terrified too. So that’s why we went. Almost two years later and you can still see and feel the effect of what happened. We arrived there Friday afternoon and after eating a delicious homemade plate of spaghetti and checking out the beach, we went to work. We took all the needed supplies to the site we were building the house at and unloaded all of the lumber. By that time the sun had set so we had to call it a day. The family we were building the house provided all of our meals for the weekend which was super sweet of them. They were very nice people! After dinner we went to our very small rental house, hung out for a bit, and went to bed. We woke up early Saturday and went to breakfast. After we ate we started the construction. They asked me take pictures all day which was ok with me; the house we were building wasn’t very big so a lot of people weren’t super needed to put the walls up. I really wanted to help though, but I think that was God humbling me a little bit. We took a break around 2 (because 2 o’clock is when Chileans eat lunch) to have lunch and after lunch we climbed a little mountain close to the family’s rental house. I was terrified because I was climbing the side of a mountain in Sperry’s (boat shoes). At one point a shoe fell off and I had to go back a little to retrieve it. I was scared the majority of the way up but I made it. The view was incredible, absolutely beautiful, completely worth the climb. Of course once we all got to the top, Katie pointed out on the other side of the mountain there were stairs. What the heck!? Oh well I enjoyed the climb. We went exploring a little at the top of the mountain and found a giant pasture with roaming cows everywhere. We eventually caught a calf that had just been born, he still had the umbilical cord attached. He was precious! After taking a few pictures with him, all the boys rolled down the hill while Katie and I walked. Dummies got cow poop all over them. It was hilarious to watch though! After that we went back and literally finished the entire framing of the house and about half the roof. We insulated it a little too but ran out o supplies, I’m sure they’ll get more in before the drywall or cement goes up. It was instant gratification seeing our work standing there. Then we watched a gorgeous sun set. After dinner we got invited to a benefit bingo raffle fun night thing that was for this baby who was really sick and has been really sick for a couple of years. It was like the whole town came out, it was pretty awesome. We played bingo for like 3 hours and someone in our group won a vacuum cleaner which we donated to the church. It was fun but I was ready for bed. Sunday we got up, had breakfast and were going to go finish the roof of the house. It was already done so they gave us the day off. We just went to the ocean and walked around for a little while. After lunch we went and cleaned up the church a little bit, and then we went to our cabin, packed up, and headed home. On the way home we stopped at this huge suspension walking bridge that looked like the San Francisco Bridge in California. Took a few pictures and jumped for a little bit and then finished the 5 hour long car ride back. It was exhausting but a really great weekend! 

the Pacific Ocean

destruction from the tsunami

view from the top of the hill

baby calf

the house

the bridge