I know I haven’t written a blog post in a while, but I’m back! I’ve been feeling like I have a million ideas for blog posts, but I haven’t quite fleshed them out enough to write them. So I just haven’t written one. Although I think I’ve been caught up in thinking that every post I write has to be super deep or meaningful, but I realized it doesn’t. So here’s just a quick update from the field!
We’ve been in Argentina now for 3 weeks working with YWAM Mendoza. Mendoza is located on the western side of Argentina. We are in somewhat of a desert; it hasn’t rained once since getting here, which is a big change from Cuzco, where it rained literally every day, sometimes more than once. It’s a lot more developed here than it was in Peru. The downtown area almost looks like we could be in the United States! In fact, I’m chilling in a Starbucks right now writing this blog.
Our ministry this month has been quite varied. From cleaning out the pool at the YWAM base, to helping a family rebuild their burned-down house, to putting on a VBS for kids, to preaching at a church on Sunday, pretty much anything you can think of that you might be doing on a short-term mission trip, chances are we’ve done it here. Our host, Vanessa, has been amazing! She’s become a good friend of ours over the last couple weeks, and we will be sad to leave her next week.
Let me tell you a story from ministry this month: Our team got the chance to travel about an hour away to a smaller town called San Martin for a couple days. There, we stayed at an amazing church where we helped out with their youth group, played soccer with the kids, and preached and shared our testimonies in four different services on Sunday. One day, we were just worshiping in the compound, and one of the construction workers working on the church came over and sat with us. We learned that his name was Christian, and that he was a recovering drug addict. He had just recently gave his life to the Lord and was getting baptized the next day. I sang a few of the worship songs I’ve learned in Spanish, and he worshiped with us. Then we prayed for him and he shared a bit more of his story with us. The next day, we were able to go and see him get baptized, and there were 80 other people there also getting baptized! It was such a cool sight to see! Even though we weren’t directly involved with any of the people getting baptized, it was so cool to see some of the fruit of what we are here to do on the World Race, and that is to share the gospel. Then, that night, we went to a Christmas service that the church was putting on outside of town. About 20 or so people gave their lives to Jesus that night! I could just imagine the celebration in heaven that night as so many people joined the kingdom of God!
Worshiping with Christian was a cool experience for me because I realized something in that moment. When he came over and my team asked me to play some worship songs in Spanish, I was honestly a little disappointed because I don’t really enjoy playing worship songs in Spanish. I was perfectly content to keep worshiping in English. But it was so cool for Christian to hear me singing in his own language that it allowed us to have a deeper connection with him, and encouraged him to open up to us more. And after having similar experiences in Peru with singing songs in Quechua, it really showed me how much God can use me in a situation even when I don’t really want to something.
I hope God continues to challenge me in that area, and that by the end of the Race, I’ll have seen God do so many great things through moments like the one with Christian, that when I see something that I don’t really want to do, I will know that God wants to use me to accomplish something greater than I could do on my own. And the devil is just trying to lead me astray to not do the things that God wants me to do. I’m sure there will be many more stories like this to come!
Thanks for reading,
Ethan
