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To donate to this Family Care Foundation Project, please note Project NAME and then click here. Background on the Mapuche
The Mapuche (which means ''people of the earth'') are the natives indigenous to Chile, who have only been exposed to the 'civilized' world during the last 100 years. There are over one million Mapuche in Chile, over 75% living in the Araucania region. They manage to survive in extreme living conditions, still using horses and oxen as means of transportation, growing and harvesting what they can from the natural resources they have around them.
The Mapuche are caught in the middle of two different lifestyles - the old traditional Mapuche way and the new modern world, of which they know little. Many of the old generation still only speak the native language, Mapudungun - their youth know very little of the language and even want to leave the old cultural ways behind.
The Mapuche Indians have very difficult living conditions; they lack proper hygiene, the children receive little schooling and many of their communities can only be reached by horseback. The goal of Mapuche Quest is to provide them with basic health services, using mobile units; and to hold skills-training workshops to help them cope with the modern world, and increase their knowledge of the resources around them.
We hope to build a Mapuche Cultural Center, both to provide
an interpretive center of their cultural heritage and to provide a location
where they can exhibit and sell their handmade crafts. Also proposed
is an Operational Center, where vocational schools and experimental
farming can be held, as well as a Distribution center set up for organising
donations for distribution.
We have surveyed the needs of the communities in conjunction with the Town Halls of these areas, inquiring about their greatest needs, which include medical equipment and clinics. Presently there are just a few 1 or 2 room clinics in towns, with a few rotating medics, nurses or doctors who visit once a week, who service hundreds of people that live in extreme poverty, all scattered in the mountains.
Meet a Mapuche Family Mariella and Pedro are a couple who we've known for three years now. Shortly after we met their family, Mariella asked us to pray for her children, as they were plagued by nightmares, and she also was having trouble sleeping. Sometime later, her daughter came running over to our place and asked me to go and pray for her mother, claiming she was dying! It turned out that Mariella had a fallopian tube pregnancy and it had ruptured inside. When I arrived, Mariella a high fever and her face was white. She was surrounded by her family in a small room not much bigger than her bed. After I prayed for Mariella's healing, she immediately opened her eyes and said “I knew you would come, and you brought Jesus with you”. Almost immediately, she regained her color and her fever was down. We took her to the Hospital and the doctor himself said it was a miracle; that by all practical logic she should have died.
A year after this near tragedy, Mariella gave birth to her first son. Her second son has since arrived.
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