This month in Mendoza, Argentina we are working with an organization called YWAM (Youth with a Mission), though in Spanish, it’s called JuCUM (Joventud Con Un Mision). This weekend we were told we were going to be going to an urban camp with another team on our squad. Turns out, we weren’t working with the camp, we were participating in the camp. I can’t go into full detail about this weekend as to not spoil it for anyone else that might participate with YWAM in the future (including fellow squadmates).
To be completely honest, I was not excited about this weekend because of some of the rules we had to follow, including our packing list which did not include a change of clothing.
Our first team activity Friday night was to find our own dinner, though we couldn’t use team or personal money. We started by having a team prayer to see where the Holy Spirit wanted us to go. We got several images (a coffee/ice cream shop, a thick white line with a light green trim, and a wall/fence of flowers), directions (left), and a bible verse (Psalm 23:1 – “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”).
So, we started out going left and immediately came upon a café/ice cream shop, which just affirmed that we were going the right way. After walking a bit further, we saw a very nice restaurant called “El Ceibo”, which is the name of the house we had been painting this past week. It seemed like a sign, so we introduced ourselves to the guy working, who was definitely not interested in what we were saying. We believed that instead of us getting our dinner here, it was God telling us we were continuing the right way.
As we left the restaurant we came to an intersection and across the street, at a winery, the wall was painted white with a thin light green trim. We turned right. We continued on that road for a while and at the end we saw a fruit stand. Some of my teammates approached the vendor and explained what we were doing. Before we knew it, he was putting an assortment of fruits in a plastic bag for us to take.
We kept walking. That’s where we ran into a man standing outside of a restaurant that had a fence with hanging flower pots. He directed us to some place called “Pizza Concert”. We weren’t sure if he meant an actual restaurant or a concert with free pizza. HashtagLanguageBarrier.
We continued on. Eventually, we did run into a restaurant called “Pizza Concert”! Jen and Alli spoke with the employees standing out front and were told if they came in and washed dishes they could have a couple pizzas. While they were working, the rest of us continued to visit some of the surrounding places. We ended up getting a bag of cookies, a bottle of soda water, and 20 pesos (equivalent to just over one USD). The twenty pesos bought us two rolls of candy from a mother and her young daughter who were selling them on the street. In front of all the stores we went into was a white van with a light green trim on the bottom. And each time a couple of us walked away from the group to talk to someone, the ones waiting interceded in prayer for them. We would ask that they would find the words to say and the hearts of the people they were talking to would be softened and open to what they were saying.
Around 9/9:30, Jen and Alli emerged from the pizza place with two and a half pizzas. We weren’t allowed to eat anything until we met back up with the other team at the park we’d started our adventure in earlier in the day. Once we got there we all put our spoils in the middle of our circle. The YWAM leaders with us pulled our leaders aside to give them further instructions. While we were waiting we began joking about how funny it would be if we’d put in all this work and then had to give the food away. Our leaders came back and broke the news to us. We, in fact, had to give the food, that we had just worked so hard to receive, away. While we may have been slightly disappointed that we didn’t get to enjoy the delicious pizza and cookies, we were mostly happy to give it away to someone.
We ended up finding a few families in the park and offered a few slices of pizza and the candy. While they didn’t seem in need on the outside, it was an incredible way to open up the conversation of why we were in Argentina and what we were doing. Alli talked to a woman making bracelets who was from Chile and had just arrived in Mendoza. She even gave Alli one of the bracelets she’d made.
As the night went on we gave some of our food to a group of young people hanging out in the park (they offered us beer in exchange, which we politely declined) and a couple of homeless men off a side street.
While we didn’t directly get to share the gospel with these people they definitely got to see the light of Jesus in us and felt His love as we gave away our meal for the night. Afterwards, we received a few sandwiches and peanuts to split between ten of us. Our bellies may not have been full, but our hearts were.
John 6:35 says, “Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
