My Adventure in Valles Calchaquies!

For the month of July we went to the Northwestern part of Argentina to the Calchaquies valley. This is a very remote and impoverished part of Argentina. These people have been left behind and Cru here has decided to reach out to these people and bring donations, but more importantly to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them. This area it is not surprising to hear stories that make you shudder or just want to cry. I went for my first week to a small village called Colalao del Valles. We reached out to the community in many different ways over the week. We played with the children of the village and shared the gospel. It was awesome to see the children so excited when we came and for us to spend time with them. We also showed the Jesus film, which was awesome to be a part of.

In the second and third week I was in the town of Santa Maria. Over the 2 weeks we spent there we spent time playing with the children and giving them clothing they needed very much. It was awesome to see how Christ was working in our time there. We also brought in some people to give talks to the people. The community really gathered around us in this time and many people came to Christ. Over the period of three weeks Vida Estudiantil here in Argentina shared the gospel over 6,000 and over 1,600 people receive Christ as their personal savior.

Now with September right around the corner we will be starting a new semester with the students please keep us in your prayers and that we would continue to see students come to know Jesus Christ as their personal savior.

The Valles Calchaquies!

In the coming weeks I will be saying goodbye to modern convinces to help the less fortunate here in Argentina. I will be going to northwestern part of Argentina to the providence called Salta. The climate there seems to be similar to New Mexico or Arizona. We will be helping the impoverished people of the area by doing anything and everything. We will be building homes and churches or giving out the donations we have collected for these people. These things are important but they are not the most important thing we are giving them; the most important thing we are giving is the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope to show his love for these people and show them how they can experience this love as well. All the stories I hear about this place tell of how life changing it is and how much they have seen the Lord work. I am very excited about all the things I will be seeing in the coming weeks on Proyecto Valles Calchaquies!

Little taste of life as of recent

So life gets a little hectic and the first thing to go is my blog. I have been really encouraged recently with all of the things that have been happening since summer project got here. It has been pretty awesome to see all the things we can do with the extra man power the Lord has provided us. We have seen around 20 people come to Christ and we had 25 new people come to a Vida Estudiantil meeting which was awesome. I have really started to settle in to the culture and am happy to be back in Buenos Aires after 4 days home for my big brothers wedding. It was awesome to get to see friends and family and really encouraged me in all I keep doing. It has been pretty awesome to see with summer project here how much the Lord has taught me through this year. The most obvious is when I translate Spanish for people; this blows my mind sometimes whne I think back to about 8 months ago when everything had to be translated for me. Another thing I have seen in the past month is my love for being a shepherd for people. The students on summer project where totally helpless their first few days and I really enjoyed just being there to help and be their guide. It has been awesome to see them just take chances and not be afraid to fail to share the gospel with the students of Buenos Aires. They have been a breath of life into this extrovert's spirits. I am really excited to continue to watch the fruits of their work over the next 2 years.

Poverty and what can we do

"Don't look away", thats what I keep telling myself living here in Buenos Aires. When we drive by the shanty towns or I see the women in the subway begging for anything she can get with a crying baby in her arms. In America we like to think that person's own decisions put them into the place they are at; but here I lose the ability to do that when I see children living in house's that are falling apart. In David Platt's book radical he brings up the fact that 3 billion people today almost half of the world we live in live off less than $2 American dollars. This has been a stat that has greatly bothered me since I heard it in one of my first classes in college. Every time I catch stats like these it makes my heart hurt for the people living like this and the children that die on a daily basis. The other day while looking at Per Capita GDP for different country that was tagged onto an ESPN article I kept coming across African countries that my 2 week paycheck easily surpass what a person gets in that country in a year. If I was some hot shot million I might feel more detached from these numbers but I am lowly intern for a Christian Non-profit how can my income be so much greater than these people. This is one of the many things that has pointed towards the idea of working with people in need. Many times these people just need a helping hand from someone who really cares. The answer is not going to be throw more money at it. The answer is going to come from people that are living with these people and see their needs on a daily basis. I hope that myself along with others are willing to take up the idea of either getting someone to these people or being that person. I feel that if we stop for a second and look at how much we have been blessed with maybe we would reconsider what we are doing right now with the money and time we have. I hope to at some point be on the ground with these people and trying to help them to have better lives.

Vida Estudiantil(Campus Crusade) in BsAs

For all of you who are curious about our movement here in Buenos Aires, I am going to share a little bit about each part of our ministry.

Economics @UBA: I thought I would start with what I know best so I am going to give a brief run down of the movement I work with. The movement at the Economics campus is still less than a year old; but a ton has changed since last semester. We have started a Free English Club to help students learn and to practice speaking English. English club is always a good time spent with the students helping them learn English. I also feel like I am learning about my own language which is something you wouldn't expect living in a Spanish speaking country. Also we hold a prayer meeting once a week with a few students which has been super encouraging. After prayer we hold a small planning meeting with 2 of our student leaders. The campus is very different than what we think of in the states. It is basically one huge building in the middle of the city with a brand new extension that just opened this semester. The other day I was walking with a student as he was going to a meeting and went to a part of the building I have never gone before, I am not sure I am ever going to explore all of this huge building.

Agronomy @ UBA: This part of our movement is one of the most established and the STINT teams have been working on this campus for a few years now. Two STINTers, John Mark and Cari, work on this campus. They are joined by a ton of students that do not go to this campus but are coming along side them to share the gospel with the students of this campus. Andrez is a student leader who is always around and leads the movement of students on this campus. There has been a recent spiritual movement on this campus and in the last few weeks 3 or 4 students have came to know Christ it has been amazing. Also this campus started holding a weekly meeting for just their campus and had 8 students come which was a huge blessing.

Derecho(Law) @UBA: This is one of our newest movements, we were able last summer with the help of summer project to make some contacts on this campus and have used this to launch a movement on this campus. This campus has 2 STINTers, Garrett and Tiffany, working alongside some students and the leader of the Professional movement here, Richard Flores. They have gotten an English club started but are still getting accustomed to their campus and learning the best times and ways to share the good news of Jesus Christ with students at this camp.

FADU @UBA (College of Architecture and Design) This campus has two of my dear Argentine friends working on it Pablo and Etel. They are our cool young married couple that do not have any children yet. They have been on this campus for a year or two now and the movement has started to take off. They started a weekly meeting and now have quite a few faithful students coming and growing in Christ.

Mantanza, This is a private university that has also just started this year and is almost completely student led and it is taking off. They have seen 3 or 4 people come to know Christ just this semester and have had meetings with as many as 16 people coming which is super encouraging. It was amazing talking with these students at retreat at the beginning of March and seeing how much they have all ready done. It is so awesome to see students who are believers just rise up and desire to spread God's fame on their campus and us coming along side of them to do this.

Medicina@ UBA, This campus is across the plaza from my campus of Economics. This campus's movement got started when we partnered up with churches in an event called One World. These students came out and we did evangelism with them. We stayed in contact with them afterwards and encouraged them to start a movement on their campus. Then they decided they would like to have a bible study on their campus and they came to our summer camp to be trained in evangelism and to grow in their faith. Now my boss Charlie has switched from the Economics campus to the Medicina campus; him and his wife, Andrea, have started to disciple them and come along side them. They are now having a weekly meeting with about 8 people which has been super awesome to see the Lord work in unexpected places.

Quilmes, Quilmes is a small campus that is not in the city of Buenos Aires but we have quite a few friends in the area and made a few contacts on campus. A student named Marco Vila has stepped up and with Charlie's guidance is getting a movement started on this campus. I am really hoping that this campus can take off under student leadership like some of other campuses and that it would see tremendous growth.

Please keep all of these campuses in your prayers. I hope that this gives all of my readers a little better picture of everything that goes on with Vida Estudiantil in Buenos Aires.

One Game at a Time.

Crash Davis: It's time to work on your interviews.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: My interviews? What do I gotta do?
Crash Davis: You're gonna have to learn your clichés. You're gonna have to study them, you're gonna have to know them. They're your friends. Write this down: "We gotta play it one day at a time."

Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: Got to play... it's pretty boring.
Crash Davis: 'Course it's boring, that's the point. Write it down.

You always here the saying in sports We gotta play it one day at a time, we aren't looking past the team we play tonight. I feel that this simple cliche sentence from sports, usually just called "coach speak" really rings true in how he should live our lives. If you change game to day I feel that is how we were meant to live. Especially when we are Christians, we are told not to worry and that God will bless us more than flowers of the field or the birds of the air; but many times I feel we fall short of this in what we do. In everything we do its important to know the mission you are on but not to set your eyes to as on the end prize; but your daily goal. I see this with so many things in my life; for example going to the gym and trying to eat healthier. If

I say that I am going to get in the best shape of my life and burn my body out for a week usually I will give up because I do not see results and feel worse. When really we should pace ourselves set simple goals in front of ourselves and fight for the battle we can win. I find this extremely important when it comes to eating right. The meal you eat now is the most important meal of your diet, focus on what you are eating and trying to make a healthier choice every meal and your going to come out better than trying to count calories at the end of everyday. One part of my life I see this also ring true is in my spiritual walk with Lord. If I try to do everything right and look past my current circumstances I get discouraged and fail. I feel that it is important in every moment to keep trying to fight the sins that we face at the moment, because with that day by day practice and focus we become stronger in the Lord and more like him. Living day to day allows to do the most with the few days we have on this earth. I have been encouraged by this same idea recently with my time on campus. In this past weeks I have started to lead surveys in Spanish and occasionally venturing out on my own to do a survey by myself. God has been right there with me the whole time creating good conversation and taking my still broken Spanish. I hope to continue in my life to look to do what I can accomplish and not lose before I start.

Worship, what a refreshing thing!

Tonight I came to appreciate singing praises to my Lord and Savior more than ever before. It seems odd to me that a simple song that I have heard many times before brought me to take this oh so regular act of the Christian life to a newer and deeper understanding. In the past the act of singing Hyms or songs in general was quite easy and regular for me. Since I have been in Argentina this has not really been as possible because of the songs being in Spanish; which makes them feel much more like a language lesson than anything else. This caused something I hope to never experience again which is an empty dry feeling that slowly came over me that I was taking as normal, very similar to when you are so dehydrated you no longer seem thirsty you just accept it. I find it quite interesting that me not singing things to God left me unknowingling empty and lacking this part of my relationship with him.

Now that I have lived in Argentina for around 3 months and have been studying I am able to think a little in Spanish. The song that made me aware of my need was "Oh how he loves me", when I started to be able to digest and think of the words that I was saying I realized how much this part of my life had been lacking over the last few months. This ability to express my love to him through song had not really been possible in the past few months. A moment when I quit thinking of myself and focused soully on his love and wanting to know him more. Its not that I had been away from his word or not in prayer but the act of worhip had been missing and this privledge we are given is something I feel we pass over many times in our lives.

I have always loved to grow in my knowledge of God and how he loves us; but one very intersting thing I had never realized was that David a man after God's own heart was a man of worship and praise. Most everything we know about David points to his love of worship and how he did it with such great passion for the Lord he served. I always looked at other charateristics and not that one when I read about David in the past. I feel that many times we sing and praise with no real grasp of just how much of a privledge it is and how much joy our Father takes from it.

The other thing that really struck me was not only how refreshing worship is; but that worship is one way of being humble before God. When we worship we do not praise ourselves or speak of all the great and wonderful things we do. We speak of how Jesus loves us and how we are continously seeking after him and desiring a deeper relationship with him. By vocally proclaiming our love and admiration for God we are honoring him to a place that I feel I fall short of on a regular basis. I began to see that the humble nature that worship brings into our lives also brings us closer to Him. I hope to continue to put Christ in his rightful place in all parts of my life. I hope that being able to worship the Lord helps me to want to serve him more. I hope to always be praising him for all he has done in my life.