Reporting Impacto and Continuing in El Campo

Impacto

Before I say anything else I want to thank every person that made it possible for me to travel to the triple border through financial support, praying for me, by sending me an e-mail to see how things are going, or simply receiving my newsletter and taking the time to read it! The trip passed by splendidly, we saw many people come to know the Lord, we were able to visit churches, evangelize in squares and on street corners, evangelize in the marketplace within the Muslim community, work with children..! I am waiting for the communications group to finish the video report so that I can send it to you, but until then I posted a few pictures for you to see!

 

Thank you again for all of your support; my goal was $800 after adding visas and lodging. I felt like Gideon when the Lord cut his army down to 300 men! I kept praying about the trip but He waited until a week before it started to tell me I was going! That way it was so apparent that He was the one doing the work, Glory to God!

El Campo

Apart from continuing to visit families and invest in our church we are about to expand our ministry!

First: to begin staying for longer periods of time. At the beginning of the year we committed to visiting El Campo every weekend and have faithful walked in that commitment since. But now we want to have a constant presence, we plan to send a team out for a week and the day after they return send a new team.

Second: begin going deeper our relationships. At the moment we share devotionals in the three homes we visit every weekend, but our desire is to challenge the people to truly go deeper in their relationship with God, to see and begin fighting the enemies they have inside, and to begin the habit of weekly mentorship.

Third: to visit many more families. We have many, many homes who would receive us if we simply knocked on the door and yet we have conformed to visit only three or four each week! It´s time to push ourselves for more!

Fourth: a new motorcycle! Our base and ministry director paid AR$4000 towards a motorcycle that costs AR$7500! In the next three months we need to come up with AR$3500 that remain! Before we had no form of transportation other than a bus that brought us to the outskirts of El Campo and then hitchhiking in. Now we´ll be able to move around without worrying about time and leave the highway to enter deeper into the countryside!

I´m so excited for these new challenges, to see the fruit to come, and to see our ministry grow!

                      

lillywebb12@gmail.com

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Quick Update

I made it! We left Mendoza Friday night in the charter bus and have come to the far north of Argentina! We’ve stopped in four cities so far (Santa Fe, Puerto Rico, Iguazu and Foz) and worked with the local churches giving workshops, services on missions and the 4/14 window, visited hospitals, old folks home, and held presentations in plazas doing dramas and performing with our fusion drum line. It’s amazing seeing how the presence of the Holy Spirit is so evident in each one of our lives! The other day the forty people in our team were spread out in a church giving different workshops, however unknowingly we all highlighted dreams and continuing in the ministries or desires that are in our heart.

Yesterday we were so blessed to be able to visit Iguazu Falls in Iguazu, Argentina (one of the three cities located on the triple border)! It was amazing! Iguazu Falls is one of the seven wonders of the world and even though I showed up without the money to enter the park the Lord once again provided! It was beautiful! I'll send pictures when as soon as I can!

Anyways, I just wanted to say Thank You! Thank you for your prayers! Everyday my health is improving! Every day the Lord surprises me with provision of finances and covering my basic needs! Thank You for your support! 

I’ve paid almost all of the $750 and am believing God for the rest of it! 

Wow, how have these three months gone by?! I’m going to summarize to the best of my ability because there is so much to tell! I’ve worked with the Gideons, (you know the Gideon bible in hotels and hospitals?? Same organization) continued working with people that live in the streets, have increased in my commitment to the El Campo (desert) ministry, and so much more! The Lord has been doing amazing things and there it’s nothing in comparison to what is coming!

 El Campo- Living in the Drylands

El Campo ministry is one of my biggest commitments, I’m not sure how much you remember about the work we do there so I’ll give you a short refresher! In the desert of Lavalle there lives a people group called Huarpe as well as other Argentineans who have over the years taken up residence. People live in small communities along the interstate that cuts through the desert or deeper into el Campo in small yet practical outposts that are quite far apart. Most people raise livestock to make a living or produce crafts and leathers to sell. People who don’t live on the interstate have limited water resources and little or no electricity. There are those who live without good housing and too many mouths to feed.

Through the past ten years we have worked on building relationship with a people who are slow to trust, in the past four months we have snowballed our commitment and begun to visit every week, begun a soccer team for teens as well as start a church. We work through relationships and time spent with the people, sharing devotionals and heavenly values with the people.

The Streets

I’ve continued working in the streets with people who work throughout the night or those without homes. We visit in the nighttime to share something warm to eat and build relationships as well as run a soup kitchen once a week. As a ministry we are being transformed from our small efforts by request from the government here in Mendoza to take part in finding solutions to the hard lives lived by those without homes and no job opportunities. Soon we’ll see what comes from this new affiliation.

Last Year´s Impacto Trip

What's Coming Next... 

In two weeks I’ll be traveling to the Triple Border with a ministry called Impacto (Impact). Impacto is a ministry that wroks with the church to mobilize, challenge and encourage people to take a real and practical commitment with Jesus.

This upcoming trip leaves Mendoza in a charter bus the 6^th of July; we’re going to stop in various cities in the north of Argentina before passing to the Triple Border (a city located on the borders of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil). This city is highly populated by Sikhs, a religion originating from India; it’s a mixture of Hindu and Islam. Our goal is to reach these people, to impact their lives and city with the word of God.

My goal is to go with them and my challenge: 700 US$. Now I know the Lord never invites us on an adventure without providing the means to go and so I’m trusting Him, that through friends, family, strangers, churches or a genuine miracle that he’ll provide. Help me pray, please! I’m expectant of the Lord’s faithfulness and seeing awesome works in this trip!

           

lillywebb12@gmail.com

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The Overview and Summary

I have recently returned to America after a year abroad on an adventure I could have never anticipated. Once I wrote, ‘Life is a puzzle and I can’t wait to see the beautiful picture Jesus is putting together piece by piece’. Never before was that statement truer, the pieces of this past year were keys to see a bit of the larger picture.

It all started with a passion to travel and the desire to see the world outside of the walls of America. I began in Argentina by signing up with a ministry called Youth with a Mission…

YOUTH WITH A MISSION

• An international and interdenominational ministry
• Goal: to know God and make Him known
• For more information: www.ywam.com

…I entered YWAM through the initial Discipleship Training School (DTS). It was then that I was challenged to look deep into what was truly in my heart; I saw the beauty from the Lord and the darkness of sin.

This school lasted five months, three in the classroom and two in the mission’s field to the desert of Argentina and to Honduras. We went to orphanages, schools, city plazas, churches,

and homes to lift up His name through drama, worship, preaching, miracles, giving, serving, and the word of our testimony.

At the finish of my DTS Jesus was faithful to give me the next puzzle piece by opening the doors to a second school in YWAM Argentina called the School of Frontier Missions (SOFM).

This school was six months long, split even between time in the classroom and time in outreach to Asia. The focus was anything and everything having to do with transcultural missions; we learned about different religions, how to start ministries, worldviews, how to act and observe when going into new places… and SO much more. But eventually we had to put our learning to the test and we were off to Asia on New Year’s night.

We landed in Hong Kong as a team of four, and from there we entered China. Our Mission: to

intercede and worship our way through China, being a light where there was none. I remember in one city on our first day there we interceded over the city and worshipped the Lord. The next day I woke up to blue sunny skies, a rare occurrence our local contacts told us. To me this was a metaphor of what we were doing throughout China, as though the smog was the suffocating spiritual oppression, and our prayers beat back the gray depression until once again the Son could be seen.

After China we met back up with our team in New Delhi, India. It was great to be with the whole group again! However, we had new challenges ahead of us; being so large of a group we had to learn to move around differently. We walked through the streets in full Indian garb, four boys and eleven women. I was dumbfounded the first time someone asked one of the boys, “So Afghani, how did you get so many wives?” They thought we were a group of rich Afghanis traveling, three-four wives per guy!

Our time in India was amazing, our mission was to make the Lord known, however with each new city that mission looked different; in some places we were doing street evangelism, some places we simply interceded, to some we brought medical help … it was always a new adventure.

We returned to Argentina for our graduation of the SOFM and soon I was on a plane to visit home. But the story doesn’t end there, I’ll be returning to Argentina on June 1^st to work as staff in YWAM for two years. To be staff is quite different from a student, it may involve working in the schools we offer, doing the chores around base, office work, translating… aside from our normal jobs there is always something that needs to be done. The one thing that will be the same as a student though is that I will still have to pay for all of my living costs, YWAM is a volunteer run organization.

The road ahead of me is one that I cannot walk alone, I need partners to help me through each step with: Prayer, Finances, and Friends.

If you’d like to partner with me in Prayer please e-mail or facebook me and I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop!

If you’d like to partner with me in Finances you can:

-Transfer money through Paypal

-Send a check to my Home in Fort Mill

-Send a check to my Tax Refundable YWAM Account

To send a tax refundable gift please, please, please do not put my name on the envelope or on the check (not even the 'memo' section); simply slip in an extra/separate piece of paper that has my full name on it. Then you can address the envelope as the following:

YWAM

PO Box 3000

Garden Valley, TX

75771-3000

E-mail: Lillywebb12@gmail.com

For Paypal Donations Please Click the Yellow 'Donations' Button in the Top Left of the Screen.

Hiii! Ni Hao.. Hola.. Namaste.. Venecome..

Haha, I haven't the slightest clue if i spelt that last one even close to correct... its in Tamil. I've been travelling Asia now for the past two months and a half but i can't talk too much in detail until i return to the west as a safety measure (things such as country names and activities-- please don't mention in comments. Thank you!)

However i have to say i'm beginning to miss home! Some tasty burgers or spinach salad. mm mm good. April, coming home in april.

These past months have been undescribably life changing, it makes me laugh to think that i wanted to get sufficient life experience going to a college; the Lord surprised me with an adventure that unfolded step by step from one corner of the world to the others. Why He chose me- is a question that makes my head spin and my logic fail, but perhaps it was simple as Isaiah put it, "But this is a people... with no one to rescue them... Which of you will listen to this or pay close attention in time to come?". Its been amazing watching how God truly does have a calling and purpose in each person, and usually its a whole lot bigger than what we think it will be! We think we're not good enough, dont have 'that gift', are too poor... what ever excuse. But i've seen so many who thought excuses just as these, based out of fear, doubt, rejection and pride- come against these barriers and seen them torn to pieces at the foot of the Cross.

And it's beautiful.

Last Stretch

Hey Guys!

I'm in my last little bit of my dts right now, i've returned to Argentina and tonight or tomorrow we leave for El Campo (the desert) to finish our last ten days of outreach. Then we have a few days left of school and graduation on the 12th (one month marker of being 19.. because yes, i am not nineteen. birthday was in august! i'll tell you all about it in my next blog when the school is over). Everything in Honduras was fantastic! But yes, this is just a quick note to let you guys know whats happening right now and as well i wanted to ask if you could all pray for me! I've got two weeks left and i'm still not sure what Gods plans are for me in these upcoming months. If you guys could pray i get a clear word from Jesus that would be great!! Love you all and miss you bunches!!

ps. Congrats Sam and Jess on the baby!! I didn't forget, on the contrary i was so excited about your upcoming due date that i actually dreamed about the baby a week ago! haha. Love you guys!

Guatemala

Hey Guys! The long awaited next blog. Once again ive taken a bunch of photos but i dont think i have time to download them.

Bueno. Ive been in Guatemala for the past week and its absolutely fantastic! Where ever we go we are at the mercy of our contact in that area to plan our schedule for us, whether that implies arriving and them telling you that youre preaching in 30 minutes or if that means painting all day... there are many stories of a week straight going to bed at 3 and getting up at 5.. craziness. Our first week in outreach wasnt that instense but we where in San Juan (province of Argentina) and we went nonstop preaching, ministering, talking with the people... from the early hours in the morning to the late hours of the night. It was exhausting and for the first time in my life i literally couldn{t keep myself awake.. i fell asleep in team meetings.. while praying, even once while one of my team members was preaching.. horrible no? But it was a fantastic week of learning a lot of how to function in the missionary setting and learning (the confidance) how to preach; the Lord helped me through many struggles and had many victories in my life. After our first week we travelled to Guatemala by air and once again being at the mercy of our contacts we arrived not knowing what to expect. But the Lord had a blessing waiting for us, when the church leaders prayed on what they felt God wanted for us in this time was just a blessing. So all i{ve done this week in Guatemala is eat, go to resorts, eat more, go to tourist sites, eat even more, enjoy a bit of local life, and eat a whole lot more. (they feed us A LOT). Its been amazing. And we certainly needed the week to adjust, in Argentina its winter, it was snowing right before we left, here in Guatemala its HOT and HUMID. For me and one other girl especially as we{re from the other side of the equator and just went through two consecutive winters. Adjusting is a bit difficult but this week of doing nothing has been wonderful.

I dont have time to upload pictures but the thing that sticks out the most when you arrive is how green everything is. Its amazing the deep shades of the vegetation and the amount of it. You cant be somewhere without the tropical overgrowth. And (i really hope Rae is reading this) there are fruit trees everywhere! The house we{re staying at has a variety of about 10 different tropical fruits that i absolutely can{t remember the name of.. theres tons of coconuts everywhere, our first night we were all given our very own fresh from the tree (we cut them ourselves) coconut. ¡Que Rico! Its amazing here!

In a couple days im going to Hondurus for about 2 and half weeks. Im super excited! well be working and ministering again, hopefully working off some of the pounds weve put on in our week of eating, eating, and eating. But theres someone waiting to use this computer and much limited time. So i{ll cut myself off right here. (ugh there is a horrible show on discovery chanel right now, its showing people being eaten alive by lions and sharks... i kind of want to wretch..

Bueno, love you guys sorry that once again i have to cut myself off early. And as i dont have time to email my parents i just want to tell you guys that i love you and miss you terribly! when i get to Hondurus i{ll try and buy a sim card to call you guys!

Almost There!!

Well my friends and family,



I have another blog on my computer that is supposed to come before this one, but, i left my computer at the base and won´t be able to post it for sometime. i´m quite sorry.



Life, like usual has been craziness, excitment, challenges, obstacles, and victories. I´m loving every moment of it all. By the way, i believe today marks the three month mark of when i left home for the Atlanta airport (is today the 18th?). I can´t believe it´s been only three months when so very much has changed. These past few weeks have been the ending of our lecture phase, tying all the loose ends in our teachings, preparing us for culture changes, beginning to work as families in our new teams that we´re breaking up into.. everyone is working on pulling their money together right now, and its amazing seeing the miracles God is doing in their lives. In my team there were four of us who had bought our plane tickets and three who hadn´t (the two staff and one student). Well in our first team meeting one of our staff members got a call and had to walk outside, when we heard her finish the call thirty minutes later she was screaming with excitment and told us how ten minutes earlier she hadn´t a dollar for the ticket and now her trip was paid for. Craziness eh? In our second meeting we had another staff member joining us to tell us what to expect in out outreach destination when she got a phone call, handed the phone to the student who didn´t have barely the money for the plane ticket... who as well came running inside screaming later because her plane fare was completely paid for. I dont know about you, but i´m excited to see what happens in our next team meeting. haha :D

Oh and for those of you who haven´t heard the exciting news yet .. :D :D... (oh i love the suspense of not saying what the exciting news is. and dont you dare read ahead.. enjoy the suspense. breathe in the suspense. yes this news is really worth this suspense. at least for me.. i waited four months for this news.. maybe more. :D :D) ready? set.. go... i´m going to Honduras for my outreach! Yes!! oh yes! Well this thursday i´m going to travel in Argentina for the first week of my outreach, then we´re catching a flight to Santiago, Chile, staying the night there and continuing the next day to Honduras. I´ll be there for a month and return to Argentina to the dessert here and spending two weeks there. I´m absolutely ecstatic! (incase you were curious.) (my goodness, i use such weird words and sentence structures. i truly dont understand how any of my writing is understandable.. i tried proofreading this paragraph just now and even i couldn´t understand some. let me tell you, i dont plan on proof reading any more of my blog. hah. its too embarrassing. The poor spanish speakers here who try and learn their english with me... i´m teaching them all wrong. haha.)

Well Dear Friends & Family,

I truly hope that all of you forgive me for not being able to keep up with my blog and know that, I really do love you all and am not ignoring you on purpose. As I’m sure I’ve explained, I can only use the internet when I can make it to the city (which is a forty minute bus ride away) and I simply haven’t been able to make to the city at all because we keep having classes on weekends.

But none of that is important at the moment, what is important that I finally have the chance to write to you all now. And my typing has seemed to fail in the past two months, I swear this is taking me twice as long as it should because every three letters I make a typing error that I have to fix. Oh! And for all those who care my spanish has improved like I never thought possible! I absolutely love being able to understand another language and think that if I do become fluent in this language, it may become a new habit for me.. that is, to learn other languages. There are two other girls in my dts not from latin america, aka there are only two other girls whos first language isn't spanish.... and they both speak multiple languages. Its quite the inspiration.

So right now i'm at this wifi restaurant and as i'm sure at least some of you know, right now is the World Cup and Argentina lives for soccer. (Literally life stops for the world cup here. You have trouble finding taxis, the restaurants are open but the staff stops working and watches the game with the customers...the police obviously cant come in and watch with us, but they're standing outside watching the game through the windows..) Well let me tell you, we're all watching the semi-finals right now of Argentina v. Germany.. I'm happy i dont speak germany. I may even try and avoid speaking english incase someone mistakes it for german. haha. But seriously, you learn a lot about the culture watching soccer with them-- oh they scored again. now its 3-0.

Life for the past few weeks has been crazy (when do i not say life here is crazy),

and of course i have to go now. before i get a chance to finish. sorry guys. i miss you tons!

Week Four & Five?

It is still so crazy for me to think about the fact that i´m in Argentina. Sometimes i start talking with someone in english and forget that they won´t understand me :). However i have to say, my spanish has improved quite a lot. And yes, if you were wondering, there is probably a lot of pride behind that sentence (pray for me!). But really, I love learning the language and opening up that part of my mind. It´s so interesting getting to delve into the different words and try to put them all together. And of course i´ve thought of new cheesy jokes to make things easier to remember. For example... Cheap and Expensive are Bariato (ok i just learned this today and i usually need a lot of repetition.. so all of you real spanish speakers out there dont need to comment on this correcting my mistakes :P ) and Caro. Since i didn´t want to confuse them and call cheap, expensive or vice versa i made a phrase for both. Carros estan Caro. Bariato es Barbaro (Cars are Expensive. Cheap is Awesome. Anyways, it doesn´t make much sense in either language but it helps me not confuse the two.

My past few weeks have been Barbaro! (yeah, i´m not translating that.. you guys need to remember the meaning.. lets get your heads working as you read my blogs.) By the way one of my friends here said something to me that made me think yesterday and i´ve quite agreed with her statement. You see, we have these ´creative journals´or ´Cuaderno Creativo´each week and we have five questions we need to answer to let our disciplers know how we´re doing and whats going on for us in the week. Most people summarize what happened and it works out very well for them. But for me, my discipler each week kept telling me to ´go deeper´with whats going on in my heart and stuff. And i was like... the Lord is going deep in my heart, i just have trouble summarizing it all into this tiny little book... and so (entonces) (oh yeah you´d better get used to my random spanish words in spanish... they´re only translations.. not anything that you need to look up in the online spanish-english dictionary) i decided to start writing in my joural as if it really were a journal, not just summaries in the corner of the page to leave space for all the decorations and magazine clippings. By the way, the decorations and things are supposed to represent you, so people always get really intense with them. But since i never wanted to waste space with them i decided that my journal just wouldn´t represent me. But what my friends comment was, that my journal was a really good representation of me.. and i didn´t understand at first. But you see its a great representation for me because i´m always trying to say so much, going off on random bunny trails and getting side tracked with every other sentence. (which of course i do in my blog as well.. we are all very acquainted with my ranbling and bunny trails.) Anyways.. yeah, that really wasn´t as funny as i was hoping it would be. oh well.

Oh and the food here has improved slightly! At least they´ve served a bit more veggies lately and i´ve been really quite happy about that. However they´ve also had the attack of the salt container as well. I swear i´ve seriously contemplated rinsing my salad of numerous times and not caring about the lack of dressing... it would probably still have salt residue after giving it a ´thurough´rinising. (i just realized how i completely dont know how to spell ´thorough´or is it ´thurough´or neither? i have no idea!)

This is really random but someonthing i´ve become more acquainted with as i become closer to the people in my school (because the closer you get the more you feel you can really say whats on your mind..) is that americans are a good bit more intense than people here. At least i am.. i have heard the word ´tranquil´so many times this past weeks. (its like saying to someone to calm down). but not just with random hyper spouts or like being upset about something.. its just in my normal day, talking with people or soemthing... all of a sudden people are telling me to calm down.

Oh and even though i have failed to take pictures for you i am now able to take them. A friend of mine has the same camera and i can borrow her battery. So hopefully two weeks from now (as next weekend i dont think i´ll be able to make it to town) i´ll have some pictures to post for you. :D exciting eh?

Even more exciting is the package my mom is sending me! i can´t wait. there´s almond butter in it! and dried mango! and real chocolate! and so much more! how do i always come back to food... i swear i need to ask Jesus if food has become an idol in my life. So much of my day circulates around meal times and snack times.

Theres so much more to say and a billion e-mails to reply to but i fear (hah! i can´t believe i said that! ´i fear´) i have to leave before i miss the bus... like i did two weeks ago... Miss you guys so much! I hope this was interesting!

Week Two & Week Three

Hey guys! Sorry i didn´t get a chance to blog last week, i ran out of time quickly. Life in these past three weeks has been a worldwind of challenges, spanish, pain, and much much excitment. Life here is much different from life in the states (obviously..) I´ve been learning a bunch about the culture and i love it; Things like (i´ve noticed this is generally among women) everything is done in groups, for example: if you need lunch you wait, no matter how hungry you are you wait until people arrive to join you. Life is much more relaxed, they´re never in a hurry to go anywhere. I´ve had to learn Much patience whenever it comes to walking anywhere because Argentinians walk SO slow, and if you know me then you know I get annoyed with the speed southerners walk at... think of how much slower that makes argentinans. In the city there are no places to buy food and take it with you, the only fast food is mcdonalds and subway. Everything else is a sit down resturaunt. And the concept of walk and eat is completely foreign. If you don´t have time to eat something right now, then take it with you and eat when you get there. Heh. And there are dogs Everywhere! I was walking down the street today and it was the middle of the day so all the dogs were sprawled out on the side of the streets baking in the sun. Their fur was all mangles and dirty and they were laying in ways that i didn´t know their sad pathetic bodies could stretch to.. i swear it looked like a dog massacre, all that was missing was blood. Speaking of the sun, if anyone has looked at the weather and seen it say ´70´or ´60´and thought it wasn´t so bad here and that i shouldn´t have complained about giong back into winter... let me tell you something. It lies. Ok not technically. But the sun is the only thing that supplies warmth here and the heat here is Very intense in mid day. But only in midday. Basically what i´m try to say is that when you wake up its in the 40s and makes it to the 50s by noon. Then finally from about 3-5 it makes it to the high for the day. heh, i usually end up changing my clothes for the afternoon. But cloudy days ... oh let me tell you, i´m not such a happy person.

Oh and by the way, i´m not sure if i told all of you about this yet or not so bare with me. (i bet that was the wrong ´bare´i can never decide if its supposed to be ´bear´or ´bare´). But anyways, the Argentinian eating style consists of large quantities of these four items: meat, bread, sugar, and salt. (carne, pan, azucar, y sal). Those four things are mixed together in many ways but are always 70 percent of the meal. On the base, for breakfast (desayuno) at eight we have either oatmeal (avena), sweet bread with these pretend dried fruit bits in it... they´re really just gummies (pan dulce), or cookies (cashetas... and that word is definitely spelt wrong). I´m not joking by the way, we really do have cookies for breakfast. Every so often we get apples with breakfast, and twice there was raisins with the oatmeal. And for the people who don´t like oatmeal, on mornings that its served they just drink milk with sugar. There always always sugar bowls out! One day we were served this meat and potato mixture and people were putting cinnamon-sugar on it. Anyways, we have a ´break´around 10:30 which is usually that same sweet bread or cookies. Sometimes they surprise us with random things like crackers with dulce de leche (its like a caramel spread). Then Lunch is at 1 and we normally eat rice or potatos with some form of crisco covered veggies or meat which people bury in salt. And of course there are always baskets of bread out. Always always bread. Merienda (or tea time, as i´ve dubed it) is at 5 and we have sweet bread or cookies again ( i hope you guys are seeing the trend here..). Then dinner is at the ungodly hour of... well actually i can´t remember exactly. I believe either 9 or 9:30. Maybe its at 9:15, i dont know. But this is early for Argentina, some people eat their dinner at midnight and i´ve heard rumors of eating at 1 or 2 in the morning. Dinner is as well their biggest meal, meat, potatos, crisco with veggies, rice, bread, salt... a good mixture of it all. and usually salad dressed in oil and salt. Heh, let me tell you, it is going to be a miracle if i make it out of this country without gaining weight. For the past three weeks i´ve bought raw veggies and fruit to eat in place of or with the meals we have here. But eating healthy is quite expensive here, i´m just beginning to learn my way around kiosks since they´re cheaper. But my spanish will have to improve before i can really learn where to go.

Week One

Well, to all of you wondering if i had made it alive, i did. I´ve spent the past five days in Argentina and love it! The rest of my plane ride went well, i met an elderly ´Mendozina´or someone from Mendoza who was also waiting for the same flight as myself. She spoke no english and i spoke no espanol but we ended up hanging out for two hours anyways. By the end of our time together we had breakfast together, she bought me a coffee, she tried to get the airport people to let me sit in first class with her, and she tried inviting me to visit her in my time in Argentina. She was sweet.



After leaving the plane customs was simple and I easily found the people waiting for me (Simon, one of our teachers and Martine, the base director). The first thing i noticed about Mendoza was the poverty. I mean, this isn´t a third world country but they are most certainly lacking. When i made it to the base it was a tiny bit different from what i expected, but not too much. It was once a farm and still has pigs, horses, goats, a donkey.. and similar animals. (and that was an incomplete sentence.) There are many trees and in the early morning with fog it looks very pretty. However one thing i was not expected is when they pulled up to this.... brick tower and told me it was where i would be staying. hahahaha. when you go in to this scary looking building, there is a cement floor, old table, a bed, a huge wooden dresser, a bathroom and stairs to the upstairs which is simply an open room with a bed and shelving unit. hehe, i´ll have to get a picture and post it because you can´t understand how ridiculous it looks. i really thought Simon was joking when he told me thats where i would be staying. Luckily enough though, it was only temporary and last night i moved out to a really nice cabin. I´m staying with three other girls in my bedroom and the other room is for Vive and her son. Then we have a living room and kitchen and nice big patio. Its really nice.



On the base there is another dts (Futbol dts) staff members and other random people involved with the base whom i have only begun to meet. In the Futbol dts (by the way.. i know how to spell football.. futbol is soccer) there are many people who speak english and even a handfull of americans. They´re all very sweet people, but they´re leaving for their outreach to South America in less than two weeks. Of the staff at least half of them speak spanish or can at least communicate. In my dts there are no americans, everyone speaks spanish but only two people speak english. haha. and neither are in my cabin. However, once again i´m giong to look at this, which would commonly be called inconvenient.. a good thing. in the past few days my spanish has increased significantly and i know that wouldn´t be possible without my inability to use english. Its quite wonderful, i have to say.

The schedule we have takes up just about every hour in our day except for our precious three free hours which are used by taking showers and doing homework. The weekends are open and are the only time we can go to the city, which is where i get internet. Basically what i´m attempting to imply is that i can only blog on weekends. And i´ve completely run out of time and theres so much more i want to tell you. But there is no time so it will wait until next week.

ps. i left the battery to my camera in america so im going to have to figure out a way to take pictures. i´ll get them up eventually.

...All liquids, gels and creams must be in 3 oz bottles. All 3 oz. bottles must be placed...

And so the travels have begun! :D (incase i haven't already bombarded my blog with smileys, most likely in an effort not to scare people off in the first few blogs, i'd like to make a disclaimer right now. I have a horrible habit of inserting smiley's at every possible opportunity, sometimes multiple times a sentence [ and when joint with my run-on sentences... that can be a lot of smileys :D :D ] Just thought i'd warn you before hand). Anyways, back to traveling..

Charlotte-ATL-MIA

Yesterday around four my parents and I jumped in my car and drove from our home to Atlanta, which should have taken only four hours, but with my dads love of circling in parking lots, my mom's indecision, and my stubborness over the issue of eating dinner at 7- mid trip instead of at 9- when we should have arrived in Atlanta... we ended up arriving at 11:00. After finding a hotel, making some last minute calls to my airline (hopefully my last for a long while) and rearranging my bags.. i finally made it to bed by 12:30.

At four the wake up call came and two hours later i was saying good-bye to my parents at the security check point. I'm going to miss them a bunch :( :/ (I love you two!). Since then I flew from ATL to MIA, where i am now waiting for my next flight. So far the lay-over is going fast, i've only got five more hours to go then i'm on my way to Bogota, Columbia. By the way, they play the same automated messages over the loud speaker over and over again. i may have them memorized before the day is out.

I'll keep you guys updated :D :D

Ps. I'M GOING TO ARGENTINA :D :D :D !!!

Pps. To all of you who would not believe me when i said that Mendoza is about as far from the equator as Charlotte, Mendoza is -32 degree and Charlotte is 35 degrees.

Bogota, Colombia

After meeting some very friendly people in the MIA-BOG gate my eight hour layover finally ended and I boarded my plane. (I wasn’t exaggerating when I said there would be many run on sentences… I warned you..) We waited at the gate for what seemed like ages, but it was all worth it! As the plane took flight I felt a rush like I’ve never had in an airplane, feeling the finality of my leaving America, in that very moment when we took to the air. (or perhaps the rush was because the plane lifted in quite an intense angle, one I’m really not used. It felt like the tail would bottom out before we got high enough.) But either way it was a wonderful moment and all the waiting I’ve been doing was completely worth it. On the plane I sat in front of a decidedly New Yorker. He not only was wearing a N1-H1?… what ever… mask (to keep from getting those Hispanic diseases, eh? Hahahaha) and his first comment to the guy who sat next to him was ‘Are you and English speaker? Or am I the only one?’ Haha, the man did in fact speak English, Australian to be exact. The lady who sat next to me was Hispanic and spoke no English, but was still a very sweet lady. And she didn’t monopolize the arm rest like the man sitting next to me on my ATL-MIA flight. I was quite thankful for someone who would share.

Ever since entering the BOG (Colombia) gate I’ve felt welcomed, even a sense of family. As tired as I am I’m really enjoying this trip. Plus, my layover in Colombia is only Two and a half hours and the flight is about the same. I’m almost three quarters of the way there :D (seventy percent to be exact.) Soon I’ll be in Argentina. Soon I’ll be at ywam. Soon I’ll be with the people I’m going to spend a good chunk of my life with.

Many times in the past few days I’ve wondered if this was really where the Lord is leading me. I kept doubting myself and the plan He has for me. Well right now I’m going to come in agreement with the Lord, He put this desire in my heart and I can’t see myself following any path besides this one. The Lord is so good and I love going on the adventures He plans for each and everyone of us. This is going to be great!!

Just a side note, my wisdom teeth have been bothering me for the past two years, but nothing serious enough to get them removed just yet. Except for occasional grinding of my teeth while I was sleeping I didn’t even know they were there.. Considering they are all four impacted. Well in the past day of traveling I’ve felt my teeth shift and now my bit is crooked. I’m trying hard to not grind my teeth during the day, but it happens whenever I’m not consciously thinking of it and my mouth is quite sore because of that. I know the Lord has the strength to fix my mouth without me having to go to a dentist by myself in a country where they don’t speak English. I have no intention of going that route and instead intend to pray my mouth back to normal. If you guys could join me in this I would more than grateful! Thank you so much!

Santiago, Chile

Well guys, i haven't run into any problems yet. We had a delay on the last plane but luckily i had a five hour lay-over scheduled. It is certainly a grace to have long lay-overs when your traveling with many connections, in airports you have never been to and where there is a language barrier. As obnoxious as thy can be... i think i'll save myself from some gray hairs because of them.

Well there's not much to report from this airport, its simply six in the morning and in the past two days i've totaled about 6 hours of sleep. Hence, i need something to do with myself so i dont fall asleep at the gate leaving my luggage as fair game to anyone who wants it. Basically what all of that equates to though... is that everything i'm about to write is completely worthless and will probably make no sense. I'll ramble about every which thing that catches my attention and follow every odd brain pattern my easily distracted mind can follow. So really, I'd suggest you to not read any further on this blog, there will be no finality in the end of it, my pronouns will all be switched around, i may use a random large word here or there to make myself feel like i'm actually writing something worth reading. hahaha. You know, now that i look around this gate (which isn't even my gate, mine is blocked off right now) there are many people sleeping all by themselves. Oh well, i still won't participate.

Oh i think the hallway to my gate finally opened, oh good. And yet, i'm too lazy to get up. (nothings changed, right? or as my mom would put it 'What's new?') .....so i'm really not sure how long i'm aloud to make these posts. If they tell me after i've typed it all out that its too long, i'm going to be... well... i guess i wont be mad, so i dont know why i said anything about it at all. Oh, and another random thought for all those Ted Dekker fans... when i was waiting in the atlanta airport there was a trailer for his new book on the tv at the gates. Random, eh?

So another random thought, hiking packs filled with (mostly) clothes, some books, and other random none breakable essentials make great back rests for when your sitting on the floor. Except you still have nothing to cushion under you and that is quite a downfall. I could just wait in the seating area like i was five minutes ago. However, five minutes ago there was a crowd of people waiting by the glass sliding doors the lead to my gate, i had my back to them because i was sitting in the chairs. When i turned around they were all gone so i assumed the doors were opened. Now when i look through the doors ( every few gates are sectioned off by sliding glass doors down this [extremely] long hallway.) Now when i went to try the doors they were locked.. but there is now a crowd of people, not in the section right next to me but the next section down. They werent there when i arrived an hour ago. I'm quite confused. ....hehe, i should be laughing about this but someone is locked in on the other side of the doors.. i really shouldn't be laughing. but considering my extreme lack of sleep and the hour that it is, i'm going to have some grace for myself. Besides, i dont think she's by herself.... Anyways (i use that word a lot) I'm not going to worry about it just yet, I've still got an hour and fifteen minutes till boarding and im just down the hallway.

For your sake i truly hope you're not still reading this. You must really be quite bored to be Still be interested. (sorry to offend, perhaps you're simply a truly kindhearted person who wanted to suffer through my last layover with me. hahaha, thats an exaggeration. i'm not suffering. i'm quite enjoying myself actually. except for the lack of food in this terminal. I'm really quite hungry right now but there is nothing to eat but candy and cookies. And i dont think theres food on this next plane. ugh now i'm not so content, thinking about that prospect. But oh well. i'm on my way to argentina and its not like i'm starving. i'm only hungry. hehe.. it may be interesting to see me carrying my forty lb of carry-on and dragging my two fifty (exactly fifty, i might add) lb suitcases on no sleep and little food. I'll probably trip once or twice. haha, i suppose thats what i get for not packing more food.

ok there must be another way around. i keep seeing random people waling around the hallway, but they're not going through this door. And the attendant guy told me they would open it before the flight. ugh. indecision. perhaps i'll go pester them again.. like a true american. (heh, i hope you heard the sarcasm in that. ) ...hehe, person numero dos to be stuck inside the hallway. oh but i really shouldn't laugh about her.. she genuinely looked worried and went running in the opposite direction. I hope she doesn't miss a connecting flight.

Accepted!

A few weeks ago I was routinely checking plane tickets and to my dismay prices had jumped up. Incase you've forgotten, i still hadn't received any form of acceptance into the school or even heard from them since i'd sent my application in. Immediately i was on the phone with my dad asking him for the best 'next step' in the ordeal; we decided i should call ywam Mendoza to see if i could find out what was going on. When i (finally) called them i was greeted by the same lady, Yanil whom i've been e-mailing back and forth. She was surprised to hear i hadn't received an e-mail from them and informed me she'd sent one. At the conclusion of our chat I learned that I am in fact accepted into the school and also that by applying to the dts i was also applying to the part two of the school, School of Frontier Missions. I was slightly confused and dismayed at the knowledge of our phone call not being a conclusive at all but instead opening my mind to a whole new world of decisions to make.

Being that i had already been interested in the school of frontier missions (henceforth known as sofm because the whole name is Much too long to type out) but had never truly looked into, i now had to decide what to do about plane tickets. The problem was, if i bought a non-economical (plane talk for: we will charge you for switching or canceling you return flight) flight but decided to do sofm there would be an issue. However buying an 'economical' flight is $800 more. To be quite honest after all my research i decided economical flights are a scam, most airlines still charge you anyways and the fee for buying a non-economical flight is usually less than what you pay for the economical flight without its 'smaller' fee. (just a disclaimer, this is only the truth of my situation and would not suggest someone in a different situation to do the same without first researching their options.) Anyways, all of that to say i finally bought my ticket after much deliberation and got it for a good price set for a five month trip. Incase you're curious the fee for switching my flight is only $75.

However my newest dilemma is the last leg of my travels. You see the flight i bought only flies as far as Santiago, Chile as i intended to take a bus across the border and over the mountains. However, to be accredited to my senselessness i bought the plane ticket with out thinking of how long i'd be waiting around before the bus left the station. You see, my flight lands in Chile at 9:30 pm. Most buses leave the next morning from the bus station at 7:30. I've been able to find some bus services that leave at 11 pm and even 12 pm but haven't been able to confirm that they have availability or how far away from the airport they are.

If you could pray all of this works out and that my travels are safe and easy I would be more than appreciative! And incase anyone is worried that all of my blogs will be about my dilemas- in two weeks i'll have already gone through all my flights, buses and taxis and be living on a farm in Mendoza, Argentina. Let me tell you, my blogs should be nothing less than my ecstatic joy and ramblings on how everyone should move to Argentina. ;)

Viajero Por La Fe

For all of you who aren't aware, my next few months hold many new adventures. I plan on attending a YWAM DTS in this upcoming month and shouldn't return home for five to six months. However let me back up a little for all of you who don't know what either of those acronym mean. YWAM stands for Youth With A Mission and is a ministry of thousands of youth that have covered the earth preaching the gospel and sharing the love of God. DTS stands for discipleship training school, it's the introduction course into ywam. There are three months of training then two to three months of outreach.

Anyways, I'm making this blog so that i can keep everyone updated while i'm overseas. There will be copious amounts of grammatical errors and run on sentences, you'll always know when i'm writing late at night because the errors and babbling will multiply. I cannot even promise this will be an entirely interesting blog unless you enjoy my ramblings.

As far as information goes about my particular dts, i really have none. I was communicating often with the staff at the base in Argentina for some time until my application went through and they simply stopped replying to my e-mails. This is quite a frustrating scenario and might even make a person rethink whether they want to attend such a 'disorganized school'. However, as eager as I am to read that i am accepted into the school (which starts in less than a month!) I know that Jesus called me to this dts. I trust that He'll work everything out (including that plane ticket which is pending until i find that i'm accepted into the school).

As i'm entering this new season all that i can think to ask of everyone if they would pray for me; pray that argentina returns my e-mails and calls finally, that i find a cheap plane ticket and my travels are easy and safe, and pray for anything else that God puts on your heart. I'm so excited for this trip, my heart has burned to once again be overseas and finally i'm going!