One of the beautiful things that I am experiencing here is the teamwork aspect of the work I am doing here in Argentina. I really love how this collection of people work off each and bring different things to the table. It reminds me that not every person is made in the same way but all in the likeness of Christ. That we are of one body, the church, and that we will continue to work together for what is good for the whole body. One of my strengths is my love of details and power of observation in my day to day life. A few of my team mates here in Buenos Aires have commented on this and the fact that they themselves are big picture people and do not notice all the little details that fill our lives. On the same note my team quickly noticed one of my weakness in the fact that I myself am not a neat or tidy person; but that I make small mistakes and leave things not as tidy as they should be. This weakness I hope they will continue to help correct and look to help me with to make sure I accomplish as much as I possibly can.

Another small battle I have taken on thanks to some advice I have been given is to fight and to maximize my abilities and to use my ADD as a gift and not as a deficit to what I do. I made my team quickly aware of this situation and have encouraged them to keep me from chasing rabbits and getting off the main point I want to make. This has started to help me to continue to grow in what I can do and I feel has helped me to communicate better with people. Also I hope that they will continue to help me with other parts of my life that I feel need improvement so that I can better serve my team and thus be more efficient in the work I do here for Christ.

I also hope that I can do the same for them and help them to become better laborers for Christ and that I would be able to encourage them and point them toward Christ as much as possible. I would like to continue to encourage you to take people in your church, friends, and family and to encourage them in areas that they are weak and to help them to become better people and servants of Christ so that they may glorify Him more in everything. Also work for the team that is striving for more people to know Christ as their personal savior. I hope the more you put into people's lives the more they are willing to put back into yours and help you to become more like Christ which is the real goal that we as Christians strive for.

Relying upon God, why do it only when its your only option?

A revelation I have had in the past month is how much I do not rely upon the Lord or live every moment to serve him. One amazing thing about going somewhere that I do not speaks the common language makes me dependent on other people to do simple tasks. Then I realize that I am even more helpless in the eyes of God. God has revealed this to me time and time again here how I prefer to be independent and rely upon myself instead of him. It drives me crazy to have to be the one person at a meeting that someone has to stop and translate for and without that translator I hardly know what is going on at all. Another time where my reliance has been shown is ordering food, sometimes I pull this off well while other times little questions such as, "How would you like your steak cooked?" leaving me utterly helpless and reliant upon someone else.

These things have humbled me and make me aware of how much I try to do with out God. In college most of the time I just let the gifts God gave me do the work for me and never really felt like I needed any help. This is the opposite of what God wants from us. He does not want us to do things own our own, this idea makes the sacrifice of Jesus Christ worthless, it is like saying no I don't need Christ I can do it own my own. This idea sounds crazy when we say out loud or read it in a book; but we continually do this and do not let God have control over our lives. Many times I feel that people decided they would rather keep what they have and continue with what they do daily than to try for more and receive the gifts that God wants for them. I myself after a month am starting to run out of my own strength to do things, which I hope the Lord uses for me to search his will out and to go to him for all I need. Never forget that we are dead without Christ.

My challenge would be that even in your comfort zone to try to do more and ask God to give you the strength to do it. Also I think that many times we are willing to settle for the plans we have for ourselves cause we feel like we can control them and not have to continue to be stretched which is painful but allows us to reach out and do so much more than we could before. I hope that I continue to be broken and stretched by the Lord to accomplish more for his kingdom while I am here.

A few things about Argentina/big city life that I love so far. The way the food works down here is totally different they don't eat hardly any meat for breakfast; instead they eat tons of pastries. The most popular are called medialunas which look like small croissants and are covered in sugar and honey quite tasty. Another difference is the times that they eat the biggest difference is that they eat dinner starting around 9 pm at night which totally throws me off with my eating habits. I currently cannot complain about the food considering I eat quite well for cheap. A very nice meal runs less than $12 American down here and since I still do not have a fridge it seems to be quite a regular occurrence for me to be eating out.

Another big difference is the ministry down here in Argentina. The movement has the same goals as it does in the states of launching movements on every campus and to turn lost students into Christ centered laborers. The difference comes with how student life looks down here in Buenos Aires; the students mostly live at home with their families and commute to school so the students do not live close to the university or have close families. So instead of being a movement of mainly younger students we reach out to an older college student crowd and young professionals. This totally changed my status as the oldest kid in the room that I got used to at ECU and now as staff I'm about the same age or younger than many of the people in Vida Estudaintal(Crusade's name here in Argentina).

One of the major changes that I am still getting used to down here is that I live in such a huge city. I feel like every day I see something that I have never seen before and it is amazing because I have been here all most a month and still feel like I have barely seen any of the city. Being the capital of Argentina politics is always in play and it is fairly normal to see a protest taking up a major city street at least once or twice a week. Another amazing things is the architecture of the city in some places continues to blow my mind with how beautiful it is. Buenos Aires, Argentina in the early 20th century was a very wealthy so there is great architecture from that time period.

I promise that more pictures and details about this great city are still to come!

Ben Anderson

Shmando