A Sunday of service and a Maranatha Wedding

"Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding." Matt. 22:9

Sunday dawned bright and cool as usual. This had been planned as a work day, and since we had mostly finished the church project we divided into groups with many different purposes. The medical team--Leah included--went to a rural outpost to see patients, other volunteers went in search of locals who had not yet received their framed photographs, a few returned to the work site to finish the church roof and scrub the walls, a group of ladies spent the morning preparing for the wedding scheduled for 6 pm, and two van loads of Maranatha volunteers (Luke, myself, and Madelyn included) descended on the quiet little Seventh-day Adventist church of Milla Flores to help them repaint the outside of the church. The vans didn't show up quite as scheduled to ferry both us and the medical team, so we had a lesson in Chilean van-cramming.

One of Luke's favorite parts of our whole trip was the ferry ride on the way to the Milla Flores church. A bouncy, ride down a dirt road to the crystal clear, fast flowing river... honking the horn to rouse the ferry man from his house on the other side... a leisurely wait in the sunshine taking pictures with friends... a colorful ferry boat propelled only by the current... a friendly, inquisitive pack of ferry dogs... It was memorable! There are some pictures of it in the slide show below.

As we arrived at the quaint little church out in the country, the members were already hard at work scraping and washing the sides in preparation for painting. This church had applied for a Maranatha church, but the project was granted to Freire instead, so we were here to show them our love and support by helping with an exterior face lift.

(Church members already at work)

We all pitched in painting while balancing on very homemade scaffolding and ladders, enjoying the quiet beauty of the countryside with its oat fields and forests. Meanwhile the ladies of the church worked over some tiny old gas and wood stoves in the fellowship/Sabbath School building to provide us a delicious homemade meal including wonderful empanadas sopapias!! It might have been the best meal that we had on the entire trip. If you would like to donate to their local church building project see the information in the side bar.

Milla Flores Church outing.

Upon returning to the school dorm there was some last-minute flower arranging and decorating prior to getting cleaned up and heading to our newly built church for a very special Maranatha wedding.

(Leah doing one more thing that she loves.)

The bride and groom were two of the volunteers in our group, Joanna Zelaney and Andre Boruck of British Columbia, Canada. They came to Chile expecting to get married before they returned home, and they decided to share the event with their new Maranatha family. Joanna was able to find a wedding gown in Temuco, a bigger city just up the interstate, although she had quite an adventure getting there and back and finding it without speaking Spanish. Several of the ladies in the group had taken the job of purchasing lots of flowers and some other local items and decorating the church. There were far more volunteers than were needed for special music, and the wedding had the highest ratio of photographers to guests that I've ever seen.

While walking to the wedding, Luke saw some teenage girls gawking at the bride who was also on her way to the church. He managed to invite them to the wedding, and they showed up!

(The church was beautiful.)

(The groom was dashing and the bride lovely.)

(Duet: "The Prayer")

The singing was stupendous! Christina Liem (a senior voice major at Southern Adventist University) and Reuben Sanchez (a local Adventist musician) sang "The Prayer" to a spell-bound audience. Goose bumps! It almost made me want to get married again just to have them sing!

(The getaway vehicle.)

Afterwards the bride and groom were wisked back to the dorm for the reception sitting on a piano bench atop a toilet paper-festooned horse-drawn wagon. It certainly was a wedding to remember, and I'm sure it will be the talk of Freire for some time to come.