This week has honestly been the best week of my life. We have all learned so much, and I know everyone hopes to get to come back to Chalchuapa soon. We have developed such close relationships with the people of Chalchuapa, and felt like we were family, even after only being there for a week. Pastor Otto and his family were so kind to us, along with everyone in the church, and it was so cool to be able to hear him preach and it sound just like Pastor Tim. His whole family is so devoted to the church, it amazed us. They have church at least once every day, and Pastor Otto is there from around 6 in the morning to around 8 at night everyday. He gave up his well-paying job at the chicken restaurant, and now works for about $400 a week as the pastor. His wife, Ely, helps with just about everything along with Sonia, Otto's mom. The 19-year old twins, Hector and Otto, help with music at the church, and their youngest son, Alberto, helps in various ways as well. The church is basically their life, and it brought about a closeness in the congregation to where we could walk in as outsiders and see the family-like relationship between everyone, and feel welcomed into that family as well. They served us in so many ways, that as much as we served them, we learned so much about service and humility in return. Sonia and Ely always looked for ways to keep costs down for us so that we wouldn't be cheated out of our money just because we were "rich Americans." Pastor Otto got up to help the waitresses serve us our food at every meal we ate, and was always the last one to sit down himself. Ely learned to drive because we were coming. She hadn't drove for a very long time because she got in a horrible wreck where her car flipped over multiple times and she was too scared to drive. But because they wanted to serve us and help us save money by not hiring drivers for the vans, she learned to drive again. They are such a neat family that has such a love for Christ and therefore a love for people, they really taught us all a lot.
We also learned about depending on God for all of our needs. In Sunday school, we were talking about God protecting the Israelites in this certain passage, and there was this one part of the lesson that really stood out to me. The teacher asked us if we felt like we had been in danger when we did the street evangelism the day before, to which we replied, "Well, no, and if we were we didn't know about it." He then proceeded to tell us that Chalchuapa was split by a lot of gangs, but because of God's grace and protection, they don't have to worry about being in danger. The church is pretty old- I'm not sure how old exactly but Sonia had said her dad was a pastor, so it has to be pretty old- but they had never had to worry about the gangs in the church because "Dios" protects them. That to me was such a powerful statement, and showed their immense trust in God. They also trusted in Him for their finances, and had to learn how to conserve everything. During construction one day, Gabe broke the handle off of a shovel or something like that, I'm not sure, and the guys started making plans to go to the store to buy another one. Instead, one of the guys from the church came over and took out his machete and carved the handle down to where it could fit back down into the shovel and work again. He actually ended up doing this two times for them. In another instance, the ladies were handing out bracelets at VBS, and we all started throwing the little mini Ziploc baggies they came in away. But then Ely came over and told us to give them to her, because they were saving them and would use them for the church another time. Just little ways to conserve like that were so cool to see, and because of God using these little efforts, they are able to keep running the church and keep the gospel being spread in Chalchuapa.
Through the trip, we got to see a lot of really cool things that showed us what life was like for the people in Chalchuapa. We got to visit the coffee plant in town and see how a majority of the people in their area make their living. The workers normally work 8 hours a day and make $1 an hour. That was really eye opening to me, and goes to show the cost of living there. We also got to see the ruins of a Mayan temple that was in town, and is a tourist attraction for them. It also helps the people to remember their heritage. The group also got to visit an orphanage ran by a Christian lady that was about 15 to 30 minutes away from Chalchuapa, and we got to deliver dresses and play with the kids there. Not all of them have lost both parents; a lot of them just are left with one parent who can't take care of them or two parents who don't want them, are alcoholics, etc. They were so much fun to play with, and we are keeping the lady's ministry in our prayers, and that God would bless her for it. Another cool experience was getting to go to the market. Luckily, we had Sonia and Ely with us, or else we wouldn't have been able to find anything, and we would have been desperately lost. The ceilings were mostly made of low-hanging tarps to keep everything dry, but that could be removed at the end of the day, and there were poor people sitting in crevices, begging for money. If you looked in their eyes, you could see their helplessness and emptiness; it really was sad to see. But our Lord is good, and the church has been able to help a lot of these people through material things, and through the most important spiritual things as well.
During our stay in Chalchuapa, the team also got the pleasure of becoming close to our translator, Edna, as well. It was really all God that she got to come instead of someone else. She had originally planned to spend her Spring Break at Disney World, but her plans fell through and her cousin, Otto, called her up and asked her to translate for a mission group from Kansas City that was coming to their church. She accepted the job and flew down from Huston, TX to El Salvador instead. We became so close that Edna even got to spend the night with Katherine and I the last two nights of the trip, and she got to come along to San Salvador with us to the beach. Edna told us the last day we were with her that she had never felt so much love from a group of strangers that she knew she would only get to see for a week, and her experience made her want to change her major in college to become a translator for mission groups. Lord willing, Edna is going to try and visit KC this summer sometime.
God kept us safe on our flight back yesterday, and I know we're all sad about the trip being over, but pray that He will help us apply the lessons that we learned on the trip throughout our lives, and in the church.
