I have really had a great weekend and past couple of days. At the weekend I went with Jona to downtown, and we had a great time. We always take the metro if we want to go there, but we decided to walk and I realised actually how close it is! It is such a shame that we hardly ever go there! But yeah.. we had some great chats, and I really really enjoyed myself. Jona I know you will read this, but yeah you're amazing and I love our conversations. When we were there I bought myself some art supplies because we have been doing some art recently in a couple of classes and I have been loving it. Back home I used to do a little, and I have missed it here, it is great to have a hobbie being here.

Yesterday we went to the hogar and I had so much fun. God really blessed me whilst we were there, and although the boys were a little crazy for some of the time, God really helped me to communicate with them and to control them. I had a great time talking with one boy Jonathan, and another who does not usually say much more than hi to me, a boy called Byron. I think back to our time when we first got here and how I just used to want to leave as soon as possible because I would get so tired and stressed being there, but now I hate to leave. It's great how much they trust us and how they know us so much more now. It's such a shame we only have 2 months left before we have to leave them, like so many people have done in their lives. It's really going to be difficult to say goodbye!

Today I was pretty tired, and was getting frustrated with a few things throughout the day. We had the homeless ministry this evening, which I find really difficult and tiring still, the atmosphere is so heavy it really does take a lot out of you, but yeah.. so I really didn't feel like going for various reasons, but Tom from the team, and also Karin prayed for me, and I really felt so much more full of energy, and so much more enthusiastic again. God really cares for us, God wants us to enjoy ourselves and to not be down in the dumps. I felt God saying that when I go I will have a good night and that he will help me with what I need. I also prayed that there might be some children to play with near the beginning of the night, just to cheer me up, and because there Spanish is no barrier, and, as faithfully as always, God provided. As soon as we got out of the metro we met some of the people we usually meet further along the route, and there was a family with them with two of the most gorgeous children. Sherry and I had a lot of fun actually just playing with rubbish.. with a cardboard box and many bottle lids.

But I do have a big prayer request for the homeless people, tonight just as we were about to pray a big fight broke out over territory and we had to leave straight away. It was a wise decision because of our safety, but it is such a shame we could not pray with them, and also I would love to know that everybody is safe. Please pray for the violence there, I know that fights like this break out all the time, but to see it made it much more vivid in my mind. There are people who begin to fight and beat people with metal rods simply because they are frustrated with life. There are people so needing the love of Jesus and the hope that it brings, it really breaks my heart.

Anyway, I'm not sure this is really making much sense, I am very tired and should go to bed.

Thank-you all for reading my blog, and I pray that God will bless you in this coming week.

Love Emma xx

So for those who do not know, we did get the chance to head slightly to the south to a place called Pichilemu where we were going to work with Youth With A Mission, YWAM (JuCUM in Chile) and do some relief work for those effected by the earthquake. We were there from Monday 8th- Tuesday 16th of this month. On the first couple of days we went to one house where we could help some builders to rebuild an old families house. There was pretty much nothing left of this house, but we had to break down a few remaining walls and then we layed the foundations and made some walls. It was a really good time, and felt very productive, but then one of the men from the family got very upset because one of the rooms had been designed wrong and there was a mistake with where the doors were. At first I was kind of upset to see him like this, here we were rebuilding his house for him, for free, trying to get his life back on track and he was in fits of anger and tears at the first mistake. But God really was teaching me a lot through this time. How our motivation to do these things should be for him, and not for the appreciation or the gratitude of others. Like it says in Matthew 25, ⁴⁰"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' Whatever I do in my life, I do for Jesus. I may not always receive a positive reaction, but God will always see what I do, and he will always see my heart and he is all the appreciation I should need.

Whilst we were at Pichilemu, you might have heard, or maybe not, but we were in another pretty strong after shock. It measured 6.9, but felt like a 7.2 because it was very close to the surface and we were around 20km from the epicentre. At the time many of us were in one of the YWAM buildings where we were preparing a meal in the second story. The building we were in was not a stable building and we were told that it moved a lot even just in the wind. I found it a much worse experience that the first one because with the other one I was barely awake and did not really have the time to think about it afterwards as I just wanted to get back to my bed! but with this one it was in the middle of the day, and we had so so soooo many more strong aftershocks after that. It was also much more disconcerting as we were outside for many of them, and then you can tell that it is not just the building moving, but it is the earth. When your knees buckle because the earth jerks away from under you, I cannot explain the feeling. God was the only thing that I could cling onto in this time. He has been so present in this whole time. I have heard people telling me that I seem very strong despite these things happening, well.. I am not.. the only reason I do not fear is because I know God is with me, and he is in control even when we can do nothing but brace ourselves for the impact of the earth going crazy. In the words of our Bible teacher 'if I'll be a pancake, It's time for me to be a pancake!'.

Isaiah 54:10 (New International Version)

¹⁰ Though the mountains be shaken
and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
nor my covenant of peace be removed,"
says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

But enough talk about earthquakes.. life this week carried on as usual. We went to the hogar on Monday, and shared the last programme about the armour of God. Today we were talking about the helmet of Salvation. It was not too bad... but it was not great. There are many restless and frightened boys in that hogar, they are still not able to live in most of the building and so they are all squashed up in one half of it. I can also feel there is a spiritual battle there as we had a great time with the boys before we started, and afterwards we played and really had fun, but as soon as Lise began to speak it was as if they really could not stay focused. There was always something happening. We shared a prayer of salvation with them, and they repeated it. I am just praying that at least one boy said that prayer and really understood the message, and one boy knows that he is saved. Please pray for them and that the message will stay on their minds so they continue to think about Gods amazing grace, and come to accept him to their lives.

We also went to the homeless ministry last night, I was part of a team praying for the evening again. We are a large group and so we are able to do this each week I believe. it is something that I really enjoy a lot. God revealed so much hope for that place to us, and we were just declaring his name at four corners of the square we go to, and we were just feeling the power behind that. Although we can feel the heaviness of that area, I know that there is a lot of violence, sexual abuse, drugs and alcohol in these places, but even though we walk to these places God tells us that we do not need to be afraid. He is so much stronger than any power of hell.

At the moment the prostitutes ministry is not restarting, this is something we would love your prayer about as well. The leader of this ministry has lost her job, and many situations have changed which means that there may be difficulties when restarting the ministry. Pray that God will show where he wants it to go, what he wants us to do.

Also please pray for OM Chile who are searching for a new base for the IT and the offices. At the moment they are wasting a lot of money from travelling the IT to all the different ministries, and to the offices and to Spanish classes. Also we have three rented buildings, and this is obviously not the most cost effective way of doing it. OM would like to bring the boys house, girls house and offices closer, even in the same property. There are many people coming to work next year, which is really exciting, but at the moment there is no room for them! So prayers would really be appreciated, we have found a couple of places, but they tend to be way out of budget.

Thank-you for reading and praying for me :)

Wishing you all a great week

Emma xxx

Yesterday I got the opportunity to go and help out at a ladies house who has to move house because hers had been so badly damaged from the earthquake. When we got there, from outside it didn't look so bad, but I was still happy to help out, but when we got inside we could see the damage that it had caused. The woman's son was there who told us her amazing story of how God protected her. She was lying in Bed and about 10 minutes before the earthquake she got up out of bed and went to another room, which was very not like her. Then during the earthquake the ceiling of two stories and the roof fell down in that room, we saw pictures of a huge pile of rubble and bricks on top of the bed, if she was there, there is no chance she could have survived. She was then in another room and felt she should move because she saw the ceiling was also not very secure and she stepped out the room and a few seconds later that ceiling also fell down. Everybody in the house was okay, even though there was so much damage. If it was slightly stronger here in Santiago, I am sure that the whole thing would have fallen down.

When we were helping we were just wrapping things up and packing it away in boxes. It was not too much hard work because we were with Chileans and so their priority is to just be with eachother and have a nice time and so there were pleantly of breaks for drinks and sandwhiches! haha. But it was good because the son of the woman who lives there was living there at the moment to protect her things, and I think he was very grateful of the company. I think I would go crazy just seeing the dammage every day and being reminded how different it could have been!

Yesterday Yerko and Carlos also returned from their trip. I was not in the house when they went but the others tell me that Yerko showed a video of the area, and that it was really quite shocking. They saw broken down houses, roads with huge gaps in them that had buckeled up, a big bridge that had fallen down, and other things like this. They really want us to go down to try and help, and we will go down probably with either the salvation army or with another christian volunteer company, or maybe just as our group. We are still not sure when we can go, it may be tomorrow or it may be in a month. It is just a time where we have to be flexible. Our leaders said that this week we will try to help out as much as we can here in Santiago, and so maybe will have a strange schedual this week, with more free time in the mornings, but going to help load lorrys of supplies to send down south, or things like that in the afternoon and evenings.

It feels good to be able to help in some way. Yesterday it all became a lot more real for me, seeing somebodys house and hearing first hand what had happened to them really affected me.I am really praying this is a time where we can show the love of Christ and help out in any way we can, small or large, all for God's glory and not for our own conscience.

I have some new news, our new field leader Carlos, and our team leader Yerko are going to concepcion today and another area about 3 hours away that was very badly affected by the earthquake. They will take some food, and see if they can help the local churches, but the main point of their trip is to try to set up connections with the churches so that we might go and do some relief work. Our 'adventure trip' has been cancelled as we felt we could not go to the south and have a nice time, and sit in a restaurant when there are people half an hour away from where we would be fighting to get food for themselves and their families. We really feel God has us here for a reason, and God protected us and so we might go out and serve others. We are so grateful that we are all still in a position to give.

I am getting itchy feet wanting to do something about what's happened. The initial reaction is just to get to the epicenter and just help people in any way we can, but this is not actually the wisest, as many are without food and water, and having us there would just add to the pressure. We would be more of a hinderance.

Please pray for the trip, that they will have wisdom and will see places where we really can help in a good way. Pray that they can also share hope whilst being there.

Thank-you all so much for praying, I believe that God really can and should be lifted up in this time. Only he is constant, and I have seen so much now how we can only rely on him.

Pray for one of our OM workers here in Chile, Mario whose wife is coming back from concepcion today. We think she was there during the quake, but couldn't quite understand all he was saying in the meeting as he was clearly very upset. It would have been crazy to have been there during the quake. It was the city most affected in Chile. We think that she may have had her 2 year old son with her, but again I am not sure. Either way, pray for her safe return, and pray for the effect it would have had on her and the rest of the family. I know that Mario was extremly concerned about her.