It all started with a Saturday when we didn’t want to go out to work on building homes but wanted to take a day of rest. However, there were some interesting guests visiting from an organization called Casas de Esperanza (Homes of Hope), and we both couldn’t help but feel the need to get up early and see what was planned for the day.
Vanessa felt that it would be a ‘day of definition’ for some reason. However, this was not in the form of getting to talk to the people from Casas de Esperanza and maybe getting more involved with the help they offered for relief efforts, as we had secretly hoped.. Instead, Tio Emilio told us we were needed to help paint, and we went out with his team as usual.
It quickly became clear why this was a ‘day of definition’.
At lunch time, because there were some extra guests visiting the building site, there was no space a the usual small table for both Ness and I. So Ness offered to go sit with the team that had come in from Santiago to do electric work. Somehow she started sharing about how we were planning to travel to Santiago in the coming week to look for a vehicle to buy for the work here, as the lack of transportation is a big limitation.
Immediately, she got an offer for us to stay at a couple’s home in Santiago, and moreover that they would help us look for a car! Whew! What a relief, because we were already skeptical about how us foreign girls would manage to get around Santiago and find a car.
On top of that, the extra guests that had come to visit offered us a free ride to Santiago on Monday.
So far, so good!
Monday we got to Santiago, settled in and got ourselves a bit oriented with the city.
On Tuesday, Rodrigo (who we were staying with) took us to visit a few used car lots. However, we only had about 2.5 million pesos to spend on a car, and that would get us all of ‘94 beat up truck, or else a small passenger car that couldn’t even get up the hills here in Pichilemu!
So our strategy quickly became to tell people of our work, and that we needed a well-functioning car, sold at-cost for no profit.
Yet the problem we hit was that even if people sympathized with our plight, a used-car salesman doesn’t exactly have a ton of money to spare and give in the form of a freebie to help us out.
So on Wednesday, we did something a little different. I had felt when praying about buying a car, that we needed to take a more crazy approach, and we would need to knock on the doors of big, fancy dealerships.
Okay, lets try it we all decided. We went to Salfa, the biggest Chevrolet dealership in Chile. In we walked, looking like 3 stragglers in the midst of squeaky clean floors, gleaming cars, and poshly dressed salesman.
One saleslady gave us a skeptical up-and-down and asked us how she could help us. When we said we wanted a car for 2.5 million pesos, she said, “No way, nothing we have come anywhere close to that price. We can‘t help you” . So we asked if we could talk to the management. His secretary said we could have 5 minutes. Haha! I have never seen Spanish leave Vanessa’s mouth quite as rapidly as it did in those 5 minutes. She explained that we were volunteers from YWAM Pichilemu, working to rebuild houses, and that we only had this much money, but if they could sell us or lend us a vehicle, or even gift us one, it would go straight to putting more roofs over the heads of the Chileno people! She said, “I feel like a crazy person walking in here asking you for this, but we are getting desperate, and need your help”.
5 minutes quickly turned into 20 minutes. Arturo, the manager, gave us a few skeptical nods and smiles, protesting that he was busy and had to take care of over 4000 cars. To which Ness responded’ “We only need 1 of those”. But in the end he did ask for our contact information and said he would check with the others in management if they could do something.
Needless to say, we all a good laugh after we walked out.
Next we visited Relsa, a big dealership that works with buying and selling cars used for rental. He was bit more friendly, but had little to offer, and after we told our story, said he would see if anything could be done.
We visited the Automotive Club, and they said we can’t offer you a car, but we can see if we can raise money for your cause.
After racing up and down the city visiting big dealerships during Rodrigo’s spare time, we lastly visited Nissan on Friday. It was 5.30pm on a Friday, and the dealership looked pretty empty. They couldn’t even find us a salesmean. As we got ready to walk away, we saw a nicely dressed man come out of an office, and beelined straight toward him. He asked us what we needed, and Rodrigo started saying we needed a salesman, and Ness cut in saying, “No, we need to talk to the manager”. He asked how he could help us, and Ness quickly to our story, at one point saying “You can give us a car”, and he responded “I think we might have something like that, don’t we?” asking his colleague.
We nearly expected to walk out with a car that very day! But instead he asked us to leave our details and that he would get back to us on Monday.
Now, let me explain a bit of background info before finishing this story. Ness and I came to Santiago to buy a car that we could use, to transport people, materials etc. but also so that we could go around doing interviews with locals, so that we could post their information on a the web, with the concept of getting people to ‘Adopt-a-Family’. Tio Emilio on the other hand, wanted to buy a truck, and we knew that that truck would not be used by us whatsoever. By the end of the week, we had given up on looking for something for ourselves, feeling happy and blessed if our efforts would by some miracle of God deliver several good 4x4 vehicles to Tio Emilio and the other teams, even if we personally could not use the vehicles.
So after visiting Nissan, we headed back to Rodrigo and Magdalena’s house. On the way however, Vanessa yells, “Stop!”. Rodrigo quickly steps on the breaks, and we step out to look a Peugeot Partner standing for sale at the side of the road. Ness had seen it the morning, and thought, ‘if we randomly pass it again, I’ll ask him to stop’. It was the most well-kept used vehicle we had seen in all our frantic searching around the city, with low mileage, diesel engine and 5 passenger seating. But, the price was double what had, and then guy selling was not budging even when he heard our cause. So we all step back in the car, slightly bummed. Rodrigo then mentions quietly, “I have an idea, but I have to run in by Magdalena first”. Okay…
Then a little while later, we get home, and he sits us down saying, “Listen. We have the same exact Peugeot Partner, and if you want, we could let you use it. We don’t need an extra car.” We were thinking, “Where has this car been?” “Unfortunately, we have a small problem”, says Rodrigo. “We got in an accident a while back, and we are still in a court case to get the settlement from the lady who crashed into us. This could take at least another 6 months before its settled, and in the meantime we haven’t had the money to pay off the rest of the repairs on the car, so its been sitting in the shop. Magdalena has gone back to work to pay it off. Since we know you really need a car, we could offer you the option of forwarding the payment of the rest of the repairs, and getting the car for you to use within a week. Then as soon as we get the money, we’ll pay you back. Meanwhile the car is yours for a least the next 6 months.”
We were thinking, “Why hadn’t you told us this at the BEGINNING of the week?”. Haha. But obviously, we saw that there were several reasons for this. One being that we would never have gone out like crazy people asking for big dealerships to give us a car. Two, after a week with Rodrigo and Magdalena, we could tell they were truly lovely people who would never use us to pay off a debt on their car or anything like that. You see, they opened up their home while they have literally, nothing. They live in a tiny row-house on the outskirts of town, both working full-days while their son is taken care of by the neighbor. They had no food in their fridge when we arrived, and we could tell that was normal for them. As the week went on, we could tell they counted every penny to pay for food, electricity, gas for hot showers, and petrol in the car. Yet they did everything to shower us with their generosity, making us take the only bedroom the house, treating us to little extras, taking us to over to friends and driving us around. That Rodrigo mentioned their car in shop at the end of the week, as a last resort for us before we were going to head home the next day, said something about their integrity.
To add to everything, that very same Friday we checked our emails and got an email saying that a church that had CLOSED in Australia for lack of a building, had taken up an offering and was giving us 9,000US to buy a truck!
We knew immediately that was an answer to prayer for a truck for Tio Emilio.
So what is going on now? Well we came back with no car or truck to Pichilemu, but we have high hopes. Ness and I should have a vehicle to drive around to the villages by the end of the week, and Tio Emilio will surely have a truck of his own soon, and perhaps we’ll have even more for the other teams given as gifts from the one of the dealerships we visited!
We saw much fruit from our week in Santiago, and it has greatly renewed our faith. All things happen in the perfect time, and we are trusting GOD!
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