a r g e n t i n a
hi everyone – we made it to outside of mendoza safely. we do not have wifi this month unless we come into the city (about 1 hour away) on our off days so updates and communication will likely be less frequent. but i am excited to share with you some details about what we are up to here! it’s ALL SQUAD MONTH so the entire squad is here doing ministry together.
location: in the mendoza province, about 1 hour away from the city center. we are staying at a YWAM base here. argentina is the 5th largest wine producer in the world and mendoza produces about 60% of argentina’s wine!
language: spanish, but this month we do have multiple people at YWAM who also speak english which makes things easier.
ministry partner: YWAM – youth with a mission. we are staying at one of their many bases. they are a really great organization that trains people to be disciples and are very Holy Spirit led – they also do a lot of community outreach. this base is focused on middle eastern studies and sports. they have a lot of sports camps and a big ropes course and they host camps for kids and families around the area all the time. they are very dedicated to the community and an amazing and very hard working group of people who have embraced us with hospitality and open arms.
lodging: dorm style bunkbeds here at the base – my room has 27 girls in it. it’s more like a camp – so we do have toilets and showers but they are a little rougher than in calama, but we are still very grateful for them! it’s a little more humid and woodsy and there are a lot of bugs – lots of mosquiotes and flies and they definitely did kill a tarantula our first day so there’s that. having the entire squad here has been good, but also it is a lot of people and i am still getting used to it. meals are provided to us by YWAM and they are AMAZING and each of our teams has a day where we help out in the kitchen. we are also basically drinking sink / hose water but it’s pretty good.
what are we doing? that’s a good question. BEING FLEXIBLE. we don’t know – it’s kind of a day to day thing. we are doing many different activities – last week our team was working on one of the cabins on base where students and staff stay – we sanded the entire outside and inside and then painted with varnish and helped paint the inside as well. so we will be doing a mix of things like manual labor, evangelism (in the city and in surrounding indigenous communities), helping with church services, helping out in nearby schools and maybe helping fix them up as well like painting, and helping out with the many camps and events they hold at the base like sports ministry and working with kids etc… basically whatever and whenever they need us, we go!
some pictures of the base, “eno village” where people set up their hammocks, our dorm, the andes mountains which we drove through on a bus to get here, mate and cookies traditional to argentina and that time where i was sanding and got a giant splinter that went under the skin and basically all the way down the top of my finger (totally cool, pulled it out, continued forward).
we spent a lot of time working on this house, sanding, varnishing, cleaning, and painting. i really enjoyed it, this is probably more of my favorite kind of ministry and work and i hope we get to do more of this. one of my teammates also reminded us that it is ministry and that we should remember that people will stay and live in this place so we should do our best for them – it’s kind of neat to help improve someone’s home. also beautiful sunsets during our team time together.
pretty much how i expect to look most of the month. shout out to my squadmate vivi for the hat. i lost my hat during our debrief and was actually really upset about it – it had no emotional value but i have been using my hat almost every day to protect my face from the sun and when we got here i wasn’t sure when / if i would have the chance to get another one. vivi graciously and selflessly gave me her hat (initially to borrow but it has now been made officially mine) – it has been hard for me to depend on others and God to provide, but they always do – the condition however is that i am now a die hard michigan wolverine fan for life.
looking forward to sharing more with you about what God is doing and how things are going here soon!
FUNDRAISING UPDATE:
once it updates i will be at about 15,298! which is incredible! which means ONLY $2,719 until i am fully funded! i am in AWE and could not comprehend how we would ever make it this far – you are all so generous and God is so good – if you have it on your heart to donate please consider it so i can complete this 11 months! THANK YOU! <3