The second part of our survey trip was spent in Concepcion, Chile which is a city of about a million (including the surrounding cities) south of Santiago along the coast. Reid told us many times that it reminded him so much of Oregon. It is a hilly area that is covered in huge, beautiful trees. The people are more European looking and speak very fast, mumbled Spanish.
While here we met with two different American missionary couples, a Chilean who works for Campus Crusades, and a local Church of Christ leader. They gave us amazing insight to the culture, the needs, and opportunities in this city. The city ranges from upper class professionals, to lower class impoverished to university students and they all need the Lord in their lives.
This is just along one of the streets in the city. It is set up with a center area where one of the campuses are and a lot of businesses. There are lots of tall buildings and a nice little walking street area with shops and restaurants. Outside of the center are places to live and other universities.
This is our team on the campus of Universidad de Concepcion. The leaves were changing for fall and it was beautiful. It was a large campus and the only campus I have ever seen in South America that resembles an USA campus. It is spread out with grassy areas, fountains, campus centers, and lots of places to walk. Many of the students are from Concepcion but a larger majority than most campus move to the city to go to school there.
One day we met with Maria Jose who works for Campus Crusades on the Universidad de Concepcion campus. She spoke wonderful English and was very passionate. She told us about her ministry and showed us around campus and let us ask her questions. This meeting really got us thinking about ideas for outreach and maybe even our own student center.
This is just one of the many neighborhoods we drove through to see what life could be like living there. We even had a realtor show us some places to live which felt very grown up. It looks pretty normal and safe doesn't it?
We took one morning and rode the bus to a small old mining town and went down into an underground mine. I was not too excited. It was really deep and part of it even went under the ocean. I seriously thought it could have caved in on us at any moment. The scariest part was when the turned the lights off and it was so dark I felt all alone. I got used to being down there after a while but not exactly my idea of fun.
