I have another month in Argentina before I head to Chile for my semester of study abroad. I will be living in the Barrio, Doce de Mayo, where the missionaries I am working with focus their ministry. I’ll be staying in the youth center that the team has been working on for the last week or so. This is the finished product. We leveled and finished the front and built the edition to the right (the black and corrugated metal thing).
Over the next month I will continue working on the inside of the center where they will soon be starting cosmetics classes along with the other Bible studies and various functions that happen there. Also there is some more work to do in La Valle, the desert north of Mendoza. Beyond this there is some more work to do in Godoy Cruz on the community center there.
Despite all of this exciting construction type stuff, the thing I am most excited about is living in the Barrio, being able to share life with the guys there. The relationships I was able to start with those guys over the last six weeks are really blossoming into something cool and I pray that God would communicate through me. Although my Spanish is pretty sketchy, I know that God can show what he’s done in my life. My inability to have very deep conversations due to lack of language skills is frustrating but the joy I have in Christ is communicable without words. I just pray that God would be glorified through the way I live.
A lot of the guys in the Barrio have made decisions to follow Christ but have not really begun to practice their faith or study the word. Esteban, the really awesome missionary I get to work with, has told me a lot about these guys and their walks with God (because I have trouble understanding when they tell me themselves) and it is really exciting what God has done. But I really want to see the guys get excited about studying the Bible for themselves and become spiritual leaders of their families (a lot of them have girlfriends and children even through they are my age). Most of the guys I’m around are my age, they like me and we have a lot in common: soccer, music, playing pool, working construction when there are opportunities. They are cool guys with extremely tough circumstances and most of them only have a 7th grade education or so. But when I talk to them we are so similar, so much like my friends back home, that I know that God can open their hearts and minds to read the word and get the same joy and growth. Hosea 4 talks about how God’s people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge and I desire to see these guys grow. I just pray that as I live in the Barrio with my habit of studying the word that might spur these guys on to study it for themselves.
I think it is fairly obvious at this point in my post what I need prayer for but here are some other things:
-For open hearts, both mine and the people I am working with.
-Safety in the Barrio, physically and from all types of temptations.
-The ability to live humbly like my Lord without putting myself above the people I’m serving.
-The ability to make wise decisions with the things I have, how to best bless people with my physical resources.
-The government is talking about disallowing all public gatherings of over 10 people due to the spread of swine flu. Pray that the the missionaries would have wisdom about how to proceed in light this disruption to their plans. Pray that we would trust God.
-Whatever God leads you to pray about.
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In Christ,
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