Day by Day: March 23, 2020

Monday, March 23, 2020. One of my first messages this morning was a helpful one from our colleague Jenn correcting a mistake (wrong name) in my late-night blog post from Sunday. She was also excited to share that the first video of a new devotional series we will be posting to the IBGV Facebook page was online. Each day we will publish a Scripture passage to be read at home with follow up questions, and a video of one of our leadership team reading the accompanying devotional story. It is a brand-new page and we are a teeny tiny group, but our desire is to provide tools that direct people to God's Word during these troubling times.

I received on Monday a message from a young mom we care about, written with heartbreaking embarrassment to confess her family was scarce of food and had been without work for many days. A plan was quickly made for Jenn, Terri and I to make a grocery store run the next morning after picking up sterile gloves from FLORECE and homemade masks from Catalina (since none are to be found in stores anymore.) Chile's minister of health announced 746 coronovirus cases.

At 8:30 pm Chile time, we had our first four-way WhatsApp chat with our Garcia family (two phones at our house in Iquique and one each in Florida at Mateo and Raquel's house, and Mom and Dad's house since Nina and Kyle were unavailable due to his work schedule.) Dad/Grandpa shared the devotional and it was special to catch up "face to face" with our loved ones even though we write messages on our family chat most days. We were able to see the new work space being created by Mateo and Raquel in their home to continue schooling their students online, a tremendous responsibility that they will carry out wonderfully.

An unfortunate sour note on this night was a impassioned message posted publicly to our basketball club's WhatsApp group. In it a mother pointed fingers at two children for having come to see her son when all the children (according to her) were supposed to be quarantined. However, an official quarantine was not in fact in place, and the two children were our son and his friend whom we had continued to allow to ride bikes carefully in the nearby neighborhood for fresh air and sunshine. The boys had been following instructions not to go into any homes but lacked understanding that other kids might not still be allowed the same freedoms. It was a teachable moment for all us, though one we might have preferred not to experience!