"From

the moment we stepped off the plane and saw them waving flags, I knew

that God had blessed us and we were in for something special," said

Drew Hartley, summer intern at Peachtree City UMC.

To commemorate

the South American church's anniversary celebration, the group presented

members with a celebration banner and other gifts, including 80 Bibles,

40 hymnals, children's Bibles in Spanish and a monetary donation.

The group also

painted the inside and outside of one of the church's preaching point/youth

center buildings, located in an impoverished neighborhood, and the main

church temple. Their color choice for the church was a pink with maroon

trim.

"While

(the color is) unorthodox, it looks very good," a group member said.

Although they

worked early and for quite a while every day, there was much more to the

trip than just work.

Christina Kelly,

one of Peachtree City's youth members said, "We focused not only

on the work, but also the spiritual labor."

They worshipped

with the Chileans in church services, attended their youth group (which

goes up to age 30), celebrated their anniversary, played sports, attended

a cultural ceremony, visited schools, and more importantly, they say,

spent countless hours bonding.

All agreed

that the work they performed could not come close to the importance of

the relationships that were formed.

Hartley said,

"We were total strangers going down there, but soon after we arrived,

we already felt like family."

The group said

the Chileans could not have treated them any better than they did. They

took the PTCUMC group under their wings to make them "feel comfortable."

They even built a kitchen in their temple so they would be able to cook

for them.

Every person

they met showed them the utmost kindness, the group agreed.

Alexis Ilnicki

describes the ladies that cooked for the group as "replacement mothers."

Even now, after

their return to Peachtree City, members of the group still keep in touch

through e-mail.

One may have

thought that the language barrier between English and Spanish would have

posed a problem, but one group member said it just made it that much sweeter.

They were assigned

a translator to help with communication throughout the week, but the translator

couldn't be in multiple places at one time. Luckily, many members of the

group were familiar with Spanish, including two relatively fluent speakers.

These people, and one Chilean with a great deal of education in English,

made communicating much smoother.

The group said

they gained just as much from the Chileans as they gave, however, their

reward was not in tangible objects.

Jenna Goedtke

said, "We went there to help them, but I don't think they could ever

know how much they helped and changed all of us."

Many of the

students have discussed returning to Chile, or maybe even raising money

to have them come visit the United States.

"Whatever

happens," one group member said, "the lives of people in two

countries have been blessed and changed."

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