Weather report

So, it was a big mistake in my last entry to talk about how sunny and hot it was, as the weather swiftly took a nose dive and we have shivered our way through the week! The wet and cold certainly intensifies the experience of living in community - in our room there are eight of us constantly tripping over each other. I have got so used to having no personal space whatsoever that I don´t know what I would do now with a quiet room to myself. I also seem to becoming more Latino by the day and seem quite unable to spend any amount of time on my own before having to sniff out where the crowd are!

The exciting news is that we now know our 6 possible outreach locations. They are: England (!!), South Africa, India, Chile, Bariloche (Argentina) and Cordoba (Argentina). We had to pray and fast a couple of weeks ago about where in the world we thought God wanted us to go before the Outreach locations were decided on. We are now continuing to pray and then will tell our leaders tomorrow morning... there will be about 12 people on each team, so watch out, I may be back sooner than you thought!!

I´m getting zoned out of my time here once again and have tried once again to post photos but it´s not working!

Love hearing from you all and sorry again for the lack of time to send personal emails.

Ciao!

Update!

Time here is flying by and it is harder than I think to find time to get online and send emails! My last time online I had planned to post up lots more photos but it takes ages so only one made it onto the blog!

Am still having a great time out here, learning heaps, coping with the dogs, eating lots of dulce de leche, and enjoying the sunshine!

George Verwer, head of a missionary sending organisation called Operation Mobilisation, came to speak to us last week - or the week before... It was not a planned visit and was a huge privilege to have him speak to us... he was awesome -- very inspiring and challenging and had so much energy for his age!

Then last week we mainly had teaching on worldview and culture. At the beginning of the week we did an exercise where the Latinos had to write down three things that came to their mind when they thought of Westerners and vice versa. The Latins all had comments like -- cold, structured, not good dancers, closed, don´t share, while we´d put down that they were all warm, open, friendly and good dancers!! It actually caused quite a lot of offence at first but has resulted in much more unity and it was very eye-opening to see how we are perceived!!!

This week has been a fairly intense week of teaching on Deliverance/Liberation. It´s quite hard to summarise and put into words what we´ve learnt and seen - but let´s say it has been extremely eye-opening!

We still don´t know about Outreach locations yet (due to go in two months time) but will hopefully be hearing about that soon. The weather is getting hotter and hotter as we enter summer, and those amongst us used to colder cultures are visibly starting to wilt! I think it won´t be long till we are jumping into the small pool here every break time to cool off.

Generally feeling very happy, at home and settled here! Will do my best to update a big more regularly and to email too!

Photos! - Host family

My lovely host family in Week 1 of my stay in Buenos Aires (we stayed with the Ale and Laura for a week to get a feel for Argentinian life before heading to the YWAM base).

Quarter of a century

I´ve had such a cool birthday!! The day started with everyone on the base here singing happy birthday (the Spanish version is very funky, makes our version sound super-naff) and praying for me, and then throughout the day people have been so sweet and given me chocolate (yes, my reputation as a chocolate freak has already spread).
I have been feeling very joyful the whole day, even while cleaning the loos in the afternoon (which were flooded with water and mud - nice!) :) Then in the afternoon meeting they presented me with a big hand-made signed card and sang again and prayed again!! Have also never had so many hugs in one day! Feels very strange to feel at home and surrounded by friends even when I´ve only known people for 2 weeks.
The good news too is that I´ve now adapted to the snoring and light in the room, though I am still flying into a mild panic every time a dog barks (actually they growl here!!) A bunch of us went out for a run in our afternoon break today, slightly pacier than our last run, so I feel a bit more justified in eating the vast amounts of chocolate.
Thanks for all your birthday greetings, miss you all very much!

First 2 weeks

Yay! I´ve finally managed to get to an internet cafe and to get on to this site!

Well, the first two weeks in Buenos Aires have flown by. My induction week with my host family was fantastic. The couple me and another girl stayed with are pastors of a church, and were very outgoing and crazy! They couldn´t have been more welcoming or done more to make us feel at home. We had a couple of days recovering from jet lag and just relaxing in the house while they were at work, and a couple of days out in the city centre. One day (the celebrations for the first day of Spring) we followed around a very cool young group of breakdancing and hip hop dancers called the Jesus Warriors, who performed in 3 big public parks in Buenos Aires. I can now do one simple breakdancing balance and thought I was quite impressive until I saw a picture someone took of me doing it!! Maybe I won´t be posting that on this blog!!

We spent the weekend with the girl who lives with our host family. She spends her weekend ministring to and feeding the homeless who live in the train station, and visiting transvetites in their homes on a Saturday. She works so hard during the week and then basically totally gives up her weekend to serve other people. It was amazing to see the way that she and her friends show God´s love to these people.

The first week at the ´Discipleship Training School´ in Ituzaingo has been pretty busy. To be honest, I didn´t enjoy it very much because I, possibly the lightest sleeper in the world, have found myself in a room with possibly the loudest snorer in the world. Combine that with having a heavy cold and light streaming in from the window onto my face, dogs barking outside, and bunk beds that creak very loudly, and you might say the environment is not exactly sleep-inducive! For the first two nights I literally watched the clock, and felt too exhausted and cold during the day to take anything in... but I´m learning to adjust and relying on the power of prayer and earplugs!!

The nice thing is that I´m the youngest person in my room. Given that since my quarter of a century birthday is approaching in 2 days´time, I´ve been feeling quite old as there are a quite a few 18-20 year olds here. So being the youngest in my room counter-acts that a bit! We are the smallest room too, with 8 of us in there. It´s pretty cramped but i´m getting used to dancing around other people! Apart from a Swiss and an American, the rest are South American, so it forces us to speak Spanish.

The lingo is coming on gradually, though I did unwittingly suggest that a couple who had just met each other get engaged yesterday, when in fact I was trying to suggest they reach a compromise about what they were discussing!!!

A typical day involves studying in the morning, and then service duties (cleaning the base etc) in the afternoon. A couple evenings a week max are free, the rest of the time there are evening workshops or language classes etc. We will also be doing practical things in the community (such as helping at an orphanage down the road) some evenings, but we kind of take it all as it comes and don´t get much warning about what we´ll be doing or when!

The workshops sound like great fun. I have chosen to do tango and folklore, and a Bible studies class. Our usual days off in the week are Sunday and Monday, though there will be weekends where we´ll be doing outreaches.

All the people here are really lovely and it´s great meeting people from all over the world.

I´m still terrified of the dogs, but at least it amuses other people when I jump a mile every time one barks. Mate I have now developed a taste for, and even like it without sugar, which most Argentians don´t find palatable.

Thankfully there are lots of fitness freaks around to keep me company ... we´ve been on one jog so far, and have an ex-military guy from Chile to lead us in our press ups and sit ups as we try to work off the huge portions of pasta!!

That´s all for now. Hopefully I´ll get the chance to update once every week or once every couple of weeks!

Hasta luego.