Hey everyone! I have arrive safely in Mendoza Argentina! We had a beautiful bus ride from Chile through the Andes mountains to get here. This month we are staying at a youth with a mission (YWAM) base. The base is located in the country side of Mendoza, theres not much around besides lots of wineries. That being said we don’t have wifi on base and the city is about 45 minutes to an hour away. That means wifi has been very limited this month so sorry for the shortage on blogs.
YWAM is an established ministry here in Mendoza, they have lots of opportunities to serve. I just finished out my first week of ministry here, I don’t have a set ministry schedule this month so I’ll keep you updated on what I’m doing here.
This first week of ministry was interesting to say the least. We kicked off the first day of the week doing team building, which included a high ropes course. One of the courses my team went to you had to climb up a 30ft poll at the top there was a small wooden platform and from there you had to climb the last 4ft to the top of the poll. Once you were standing on the very small top of the poll you had to make a declaration over you life, I chose being bolder in this next season of my life.
The rest of the week my team was assigned to manual labor. We began with cleaning out the biggest pool I have ever seen in my life! It was originally designed to be an irrigation system for the property but the use it as a community pool and as a ministry tool. We would spend about 5-6 hours working on it a day. The day before we were assigned to the pool a team had worked on it all day getting leaves out. When we started on it we had to finish getting the remainder of the leaves out and sweep up the dirt. There is sooo much dirt out here in Mendoza. It’s a really fine dirt, that packs onto everything! After getting the first layer of dirt out we moved on to scrubbing the caked on dirt off with our brooms. We were about to start on our third day of cleaning the pool in a row when out squad leader came up and said we had a ministry change, she said to go pack a day pack and be ready in 20 minutes. We were told we were going to be going to a soup kitchen and then do urban ministry down town. I was beyond thrilled to have this change up because I had spent the past few days fighting my flesh and trying to be a servant while sweeping that pool. Sweeping is my above all most hated chore in the whole wide world. But I had been determined to do it with a good attitude, excellence and unto the glory of God. I thought the Lord was rewarding my patience and good attitude. Little did I know my week was about to take a wild turn.
We packed out bag and had to clear out the room we were staying in. We were scrambling and just throwing random things in our day packs trying to meet the 20 minute deadline. We finished packing our bags and then found out there was a delay in our schedule. We were told to go help prepare the food for the soup kitchen. I was thinking to myself “this is great i’ve switched out sweeping for cooking!” If you know me, you know I love cooking so I was beyond happy #Bestdayever!.
We finished up cooking, grabbed our stuff and headed out for the soup kitchen. Adventure Part 1 We walk out to the car and found out we had to squish four of us in the tiny back seat of a car. Which looked like me getting in backwards into the car and sitting on top of my teammates. We arrive to the soup kitchen and were greeted by the kindest souls! The people there were so grateful and eager to get to know us. We served them their lunch then sat down to eat beside them and enjoy the fellowship. We had lots of fun conversations and laughs. Afterwards we said our goodbyes to our new friends and cleaned up.
It was now time to head to our “Urban ministry” . We began walking with one of the staff members from youth with a mission to a park where we were going to meet up with our fellow team from the race the Panda Rangers. When they arrived there was three other staff members and boxes with food items in them, such as peanuts, apples, granola bars, crackers and jam. Immediately I began to wonder what was going on. The staff members gathered in a group and talked amongst themselves for a moment. Soon after they turned to us and announced that we were doing a ministry/challenge/adventure weekend called NIKO. Little did we know this meant we would be living on the streets for the weekend. We did have a very small place where we could sleep at night (literally bodies lining the floor) We never knew where we were going to be sleeping or what time we we would get there. Our first night we arrived it our sleeping location at 1am. During the days we lived walking around completing crazy tasks. I did in fact fall asleep on the street corner at one point during that weekend.
Anyways back to the story. Our first task was to set up a government and set up rules such as safety, team participation, punctuality and disrespect and consequences for breaking the rules. Also to pick a leader for each of our teams. I unfortunately can’t give to many details of the challenges we faced over the weekend due to it being a set schedule program that is reused so if I share it on the internet it would spoil the program. What I can say though is it was one of the most challenging, stretching, hardest weekends of my life and in the end it made me miss sweeping haha! We had to face some challenges that people who live on the street have to deal with everyday. That grew my mercy and compassion in a way words cannot express. We had to find ways to communicate without words and when we could use words we were not allowed to use communication tools such as google translate. We prayed for people who we could barely communicate with. We had to find breakfast for 9 people with only $11. We were asked to get to know Mendoza about its education, safety/crime, different popular religions in the area and the culture.We didn’t have a chance to shower. Oh and remember up there where I said we threw random stuff in out bags to pack quickly? Well we had to carry it all day everywhere and we walked around 20 miles over the two in a half days.
What I can say about that weekend is it took my comfort zone and crushed it. I wasn’t allowed to provide for myself, I wasn’t allowed to be independent, I didn’t ever know where I was going or what I would have to do next, I had to face discomfort and do things I wasn’t comfortable with. I hit my walls and breaking points and honestly at one point I was about to get on a bus and go back to camp because I was done with the crazy games. But I pushed through, pushed past the discomfort and tried to see what God had to show me in this crazy thing called NIKO.
You know what? I learned something. I was still struggling with my independence. I have always been very independent and liked to provide for myself. I hate asking for anything, I like to be the one helping not the one needing help. I’ll be brutally honest with you and tell you the hardest part of coming on the world race was having to ask for financial support. It’s been a hard and long process but through me not being able to provide for myself God has had the opportunity to show his faithfulness, the beauty of the church body and it has allowed the chance for people who can’t go to all these places I’m going to the chance to be apart of serving and touching peoples lives. But here I am still struggling with my own selfishness, pride and desires. Still wanting to hold on to control of my life when God is asking me to simply let go and trust Him.
So at the end of the weekend we were given the chance to publicly renounce something we had been struggling with. I immediately knew what I was suppose to say. I went up and said I wanted to renounce my own independence, I wanted to step out of control and step into trusting God in His faithfulness.
That weekend was hard and I would probably never want to do it again but at the same time I’m grateful for it!
Also Praise report! One week after praying to stop being dependent on myself and to trust God in His faithfulness. I had someone who felt God ask them to donate the remaining 1,600 that I needed to meet my fundraising goal that was due in two days! God is good and God is faithful!
I encourage you, when everything in you if pushing for you to go back to your comfort zone, you push into God with all your might and find the breakthrough God is trying to give you!
As always please be praying for my team! We are going to be hiking 32 miles into the jungle for our ministry next month! Please be praying for health and safety for my team!
Fundraising update! My next goal it to have the remaining amount of $4712 in by the end of January! Reminder all donations are tax deductible! Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me! I am so grateful for your obedience to the Lord and for your generous hearts!!
Love and blessings!
The GIANT pool! I had to take 3 pictures to fit it! Look how tiny we look in the left corner! 
The GIANT pool! I had to take 3 pictures to fit it! 
The GIANT pool! I had to take 3 pictures to fit it!
Pool cleaning get up! the dust and dirt was unreal!
