Our vacation trip to the Chiloe Islands

Dear everybody,

Last week, Dan returned from a two day pastor's retreat held three hours south of where we live, in Puerto Montt. He walked in the door and announced that he was ready to take our family on a vacation and that we should go to the Chiloe Islands. Some of you know that Dan was born in the islands, in the town of Achao. He hadn't been back to visit in 13 years. So I packed up our bags and we set off on our vacation.

The kids traveled well for us. The scenery was beautiful. The farther south we got, the greener the grass.

We traveled all the way to Dalcahue. Can you find it on the map? We took a ferry to cross over from the mainland to the Island of Chiloe.

Gospel Mission of South America has had many years of ministry in the islands. The majority of the islands were very remote and it was not uncommon to meet people who had never stepped foot onto the mainland.

Dan's folks, Terry and Carol Thompson, held evangelistic meetings using a boat to travel and carry all their equipment (tents, etc...) to and from all the different islands.

This ministry still continues today with "El Mensajero II" with its captain Misael Avendano.

Misael and Dan had some good opportunities to talk about the boat and its ministry. Unfortunately for the past year, the boat has been on shore because of motor problems.

Would you pray that a solution would be found in order for the gospel to reach people on the islands?

The Catholic Church has had a major stronghold in the islands. Hundreds of years ago, Jesuit priests came and built huge catholic churches which still stand today.

This is the catholic church in Achao, the town where Dan was born.

Come back to the blog soon to meet Rafael and his wife Paola who have been national missionaries in the islands for 17 years and to hear what else we saw and did during our trip.

Liz