A week of fun and evangelism

¡Hola chicos! ¿que tal? My spanish is improving more and more and I've had several great opportunities to use it this week!

First, some stats. As a group we have had spiritual conversations with 106 people and presented the gospel (testimony, 4 spritiual laws, leading someone to a point of decision) 66 times, and had 2 people pray to receive Christ, as well as countless others wishing to think about it and pray the prayer themseleve! So many seeds have been planted these last 2 weeks. God is truly doing amazing things here in La Plata.

Now for my week....

Sunday
Sunday was our day trip to colonia, Uruguay. That was so much fun! I ended up not renting a moped but a golf cart instead with my friend Samantha...that was a blast! We drove along the road by the beach and all throughtout town. At lunch we met a missionaryfrom Alabama and then found 2 people from Minnesota. That was so funny...it's weird to hear English speakers here.

There was a BEAUTIFUL sunset behind the lighthouse in colonia. Words cannot even describe it!!!

On the ferry ride back ( and let me just say their ferry looks like a cruise liner inside with the arcade and all) we got in trouble! Haha. First we went to the roof and did a mock hurricane cast but that led to the idea of playing tag on the roof. Well, apparently the running sounded like a herd of elephants below and caused the lights to flicker...people were looking around scared and panicing
like Jesus was coming!

Great day overall...so exhausting though! Not to mention more swine flu screening! Especially where buenos aires has an outbreak.




Monday
Today was team time and English club. It was also a girl on our teams birthday so we went to dinner then bought a cake at a local bakery to celebrate.


Tuesday
Tuesday was our first day on the hummanities campus. This campus is the biggest at UNLP but is housed in a single building. The building also has a terrible history, seeing as it was a prision during the dirty wars. The building itself just cried our for the lord.

The first conversation I and one of our leaders got in was o
Interesting....the girls claimed to speak English but...they didn't. So, I found myself in a translating position because mitch spoke no spanish. It was cool though to just talk to these girls and how patient they were with my bad grammar. Also, that was totally God speaking through me because my Spanish is not that great.

The next girl we talked to just showed the eagerness of these people to hear the gospel. After one solarium question she told us how last week her friend was murdered. She was just so receptive as we shares the word with her and she was really close to accepting Christ. Please pray for her. Her name is rocìa.

Tuesday night for girls night we went to a salsa dancing class that was entertaining. At the end we got to dance with some more experienced argentine guys and the one I danced with said I was good for my first day! Haha




Wednesday
Wednesday morning cindy and I had discipleship where we talked about my testimony and then right after got the chance to use it

When I got to campus I was originally just going to stay at the table and help out the STiNT team but I saw these 4 girls just sitting there so I felt really called to go share with them. None of my team was around so I went with tamara, one of the girls from vida who translated for me on friday. Well to make a long story short I am terrified of sharing on my own but I did it anyways and how fruitful it was! The girls spoke no English so tamara had to translate everything I said but it was cool because I got to share my testimony. And I Totally accidently said Jesus forgives us of our fish instead of sins, which was entertaining (pescado vs pecado) one of the girls, Sophía, wanted to think about it and pray that night to receieve Christ...her enthusaism for wanting to know more about the Lord was just such a testament to Him.

Dinner that night was fun and interesting...Samantha, Abby, and I went to a place called pizza libre which is like all you can eat pizza but they bring it to your table buffet style. Some of the pizza is crazy too! First, argentine pizza has a creamy mozerrella sort of topping with little sauce. Then some of their pizza was like cheese with ketchup and French fry topping. That was really interesting tasting to say the least!


Thursday
Thursday was pretty quiet on campus... Matt, Christen, and I shared with these two girls who I guessed assumed I spoke Spanish because I ask them to take a survey in Spanish so they asked me everytime they needed a translation. Then matt and I attempted to do solarium completely in Spansih, which didn't work out so well. Haha. The rest of the day was free...we did a little praise and worship over at the sede which was cool


Friday
Friday morning I sent out postcards to all my supporters and a few other friends and family who had requested them. I used an online service since mail here is really expensive, takes 2 or 3 weeks, and may or may not ever get there. Plus I got to upload some pictures of myself here for everyone to see. People should get those sometime next week

Friday night was English club which my ministry team led. We did music and I made a cool wordsearch for it. The argentines seemed to really enjoy the lessons.

Then we did prayer during vida because the first Friday of every month they do 24 hours of prayer. We got to hear prayer requests from students in humanities for how to reach the students there. We ended up leaving early though because we were going to buenos aires in the morning.


Saturday
Saturday we took a day trip to Buenos Aires. That started off verry interesting. First of all, we were supposed to be going to a fútbol game in BA but the game was actually Argentina vs Columbia, so it was impossible to get tickets. So, we ended up just exploring the city.

First, we took the train in since we had traveled by plane, bus, car, and boat. Well.... Outside of BA the train broke down so we had to walk the track back to the closest station and climb the platform before another train that was coming down the tracks hit us. There were literally hundreds of people walking. It looked like something out of a movie!

Once we made it to BA went ate at burger king where we got Mitch a pink panther crown for his birthday. Well some dude at the table beside us randomly pulls out a trumpet and plays happy birthday for us...that made me laugh hysterically!

In BA after cramming 10 people in the entryway of a bus several times and shoving in in the matter of seconds before the bus pulled off, we visited places like Boca (the colorful place you see on most postcards) and Ritornello ( where Evitas grave is _which we didn't see_ and a huggge hippie fair). In boca I definitely got my picture taken with a tango dancer! For dinner, we went to a pub to watch the game (Argentina won)



I can't believe this trip is half over! Only 2 1/2 weeks left in la plata, the we travel to igazú (the waterfalls in the north) foe debriefing! Time sure flies when you are having fun! I hope all is well in the US!

¡chao!