This Weird and Wonderful Life

"Our life is so weird!" The great thing about 27 years married to Pedro, including 15 years in the city of Iquique, is that I can say this to him and know he totally gets it. He gets it, and the fact that I'm not saying it to complain but rather in a combination of awe/exhaustion/humor with which he readily agrees.

This particular statement I made today in light of what our Saturday schedule turned out to be. I came downstairs to the smell of coffee this morning, only to find Pedro missing at 8:30 AM. It took me searching for him in a few different places and pondering where he might be, to remember that he'd agreed to drive a couple from church to the airport. Thus started his day! He stopped at the grocery store on his way home out of the kindness of his heart and the thoughtful desire to make my morning with fresh marraqueta and palta for breakfast.

Silas was the next one up, eager to call his cousin Kai in southern Chile and begin their practice of playing a video game online while talking to one another on WhatsApp in the meantime. He knew his time was limited because despite his lack of enthusiasm, we've committed him to a gently competitive youth soccer league which had a game scheduled at 12:40 today. The tricky thing was, yesterday Pedro received a request from a pastor in Santiago to pick up a woman from his church at the bus terminal in Iquique today at 1 PM. Which meant in order for me to accompany him, we'd need to ask our friends whose son was playing in the same game whether they could take charge of Silas in the meantime.

The plan was to pick Susana up at Iquique's main bus terminal, then drive her to the so-called "Bolivian barrio" to purchase bus tickets for the next leg of her journey into Bolivia. This area is just a few blocks from FLORECE, so we stopped there for a bathroom break and to drop off her bags in the meantime. As God would have it, Catalina who normally is at work on Saturdays happened to arrive for the afternoon. Long story short, what we thought would be the order of events changed for the better and Susana was able to quickly obtain her tickets, have lunch with Catalina, take a shower and rest briefly before continuing her journey at 5 PM.

We in the meantime had a lunch commitment at 3 PM which was to include our three sons and church planting teammates. In anticipation of the departure of Jenn to Canada, our Venezuelan partners had invited us all to try a typical meal of cheese-stuffed cachapas, fried chicharrones and a sweet lemon drink called papelón at a food stand under the semi-permanent tents across from Jumbo. Fortunately, our Venezuelan partners were the same parents who had Silas already, and Jenn kindly brought Ian and Alec along so we could make the appointed time. Lunch was an interesting and enjoyable affair of new tastes and cultures. Anthony and Elykar jokingly informed Pedro that they would  need to find a different pastor after he added spicy pebre to his cachapa (which is like a sweet cornmeal pancake folded over a thick slice of cheese for a nice sweet and salty taste.) They always tease him about messing with their national dishes!

In order to get Susana to the bus, we couldn't linger and returned a little after 4:30 to FLORECE to pick up her and her things. Surprisingly on schedule, three buses from three different companies chugged up calle Esmeralda and opened their doors for passengers. Trying not to draw too much attention since I am an obvious foreigner in that part of town, I took some pictures because the area both fascinates and repels me. Like so much of Iquique where it never rains, it is dirty but bustling with people and humming with informal commerce that is often swept away by Chilean carabineros inspecting (non-existent) permits. What repels me are things like the handwritten sign on the front of a sagging old building - "Hiring girls to work HERE" - and it doesn't take imagination to know what type of job they're offering. Nor is this the only part of town where we see such things.

We hopped in the car once again and drove back to FLORECE, this time to pick up Catalina and drive her across town for her ladies' meeting. By the time we made it home after a quick stop at the grocery store for ice cream, it was getting dark at 6 PM and felt like we had been going all day. Yet it was an enjoyable day insomuch that Pedro and I spent lots of time with one another, albeit mostly waiting or driving in the car. And we served others, together.

Which is why I said, "Our life is so weird!" But I wouldn't want to share this weird and wonderful life with anyone but him.