We got in to Buenos Aires around 2 am and I finally laid my head down to sleep and crashed for a few hours at 530 am in a crack house (literally)- that was how the week started. The city that never sleeps!!! That’s Buenos Aires for sure! Where most don’t start dinner til 11pm and our hostel gets the loudest at 4am! AHH! I have to admit that I am missing the donkeys heehawing and am prefering the noises of the animals to the loud music, smoke (everyone smokes here and in every building and taxi), smog, hussle and bustle and constant late night parties that make it difficult to sleep! But, they do have GREAT beef!! I guess I’m not much of a city girl, although I loved living San Diego…so maybe it depends on the city.
Buenos Aires was set up to be a time without any “planned” ministry, so we were in our small teams and completely on our own to seek the Lord to direct our time there. Our first day we split in 2’s to prayer walk around the city. Alissa and I ended up at a park where we spent a long time talking with Antonio and playing with his kids. Someone had given him a Bible, but he never read it because he didn’t understand it. We got to share and explain some verses to him as best as we could in Spanish and then he asked us how he could accept Christ so we were able to pray with him! It was obvious that having other adults to talk with meant a lot to him- we didn’t understand a lot of what he said, so we just listened.
A mission conference was in town while we were there, so we went and met a neat family who had been praying for help with physical labor around the church (which our team had been wanting to find to do), so we were answers to prayer for each other! We got to bless and encourage them by working in the church with lots of cleaning and other odd jobs, and they totally blessed us with meals and just being an amazing Christian family to spend time with. After only knowing them a few days, they came to the airport to give us hugs and presented us with a collage poster they’d made of our time there with them! Wow! The bond of Christ is incredible- uniting with believers around the world so closely in just a matter of days! Neat!!
LONDON- we had a 12 hr layover/long detour on the way to South Africa, so we went out exploring. Definitely my most exciting but most expensive layover! I loved the city- it is very beautiful and it was so refreshing to be in a very clean city where everyone spoke English!! The group I was with took a tour bus, so we saw a lot very quickly. Here are some fun pictures.
“Big Ben” Clock Tower
Westminister Abbey
Thames River (we took a boat ride…and got to go coast under the London Bridge)
Birmingham Palace
We made it to South Africa! Tired after 2 red eye flights back to back, and then the race day… RACE DAY in Pretoria and Johannesburg…ZEO got 3rd/last place this time…we were kinda chilling a lot of the way through, but we’re still in first place over all! 🙂 We started in the square at Pretoria, and the race included:
finding the Union bldg and the statue of a famous general
train ride to Jo’burg
learning some different facts about S.Africa
finding the “Big 5” animals at the zoo (funny side note- we asked tons of people and always got a different answer- in this culture they would rather give you any answer than no answer even if they just make something up…we got quite an array of animals)- if you’re wondering, they are the elephant, water buffalo, rhino, lion, leopard
Moyo restaurant & eating a mixed platter of meats (not sure what they all were) & getting our faces painted (very lively, fun restaurant with live tribal music)
Apatheid Museum – about the civil war that took place here
Carlton Tower- 50th floor for a look over the city
We are now staying at Alabanza- a retreat place where we are catching up on some rest, team building, and preparing for Mozambique while we wait to get our VISAs. We’ll be heading to Mozambique sooner than planned (probably tomorrow AM at 4:45…3 day bus ride!) because the needs there are so great. After the flooding about a month ago, 2 million were displaced so there is a lot of poverty, poor health and lack of resources. We’ll be working with Iris Ministries (Rolland and Heidi Baker who wrote “Always Enough” – great book if you want to check it out- about Mozambique and prior flooding and how God did amazing things during that time). Please be praying faithfully for the people of Mozambique and for us: for safety (we’ll be staying at some sort of base with armed guards), health (closest drinking water is 20 miles away & malaria is a high risk), FAITH, compassion, LOVE, unity on all the teams (my team is doing very well with this, we really enjoy each other a lot…pray this continues and we continue to grow and challenge each other), JOY of the Lord to be our strength, wisdom in how the Lord wants to use us, for resources (not sure what we even need yet), medical wisdom and insight (for Kelly and I – I’m sure we’ll get opportunities to use our medical backgrounds) and to be HIS hands and feet and heart (love and touch the “untouchables”). Thanks! I’ll keep you updated as often as I can (which likely will not be much this next month). Following this month, the plan is to head to Swaziland to help train the next group of world racers, Botswana, then back to S. Africa before heading to Asia. I won’t be able to upload many pictures for awhile because it is crazy expensive, so…use your imagination I guess! 🙂 I’ll post ’em when we get faster and cheaper connection.
