If you were to ask me how I have grown this month, I would say that I have a greater respect for the power of prayer.
Normally, we have an assigned host, city and ministry. This month was “Ask The Lord”, aka ATL. Our ministry was to lead a life led by prayer. My team spent the last week of Swaziland fasting and praying about our time in Argentina. In Swaziland, I would spend a day fasting food, talking or electronics. I haven’t fasted anything since High School. I would only do it to get the grade in Bible class. The purpose of fasting is to adjust the posture of your heart. I enjoyed fasting and want to continue that. It’s hard to put into words the filling that you receive from fasting but I strongly encourage doing it. Multiple team members had received from the Lord to wait…so we made a group decision to not book a hostel ahead of our arrival in Argentina.
We flew into Buenos Aires on March 30th. We spent about 26 hours flying and arrived late at night. We slept in the airport that night. The next morning we had a team meeting at McDonalds. We needed to find a place to stay. My teammate, Meredith loves Hillsong. She brought up the idea that, since it was Sunday and we we didn’t know how long we could stay in the capital due to budget, we should go to a Hillsong service. The team loved that idea so much so that the plans grew. We went from the small idea of attending one service to bringing ALL of our packs, go to all three services and believe that we would find housing at the church. I’ll admit I was a little wary of the idea to set up camp at Hillsong for the day. The last church service was at 9pm so if we didn’t find a place to stay before then it would be dark and dangerous for us to be walking around town. I had to spend some time with the Lord before this big step of faith. Two hours later, I walked out of the airport with my team feeling a new sense of excitement and peace for the space we had given to God to work.
By 10:30pm, we had made new friends and found a place to stay. We stayed in a studio apartment with our new friend Priscilla and her two dogs. The first thing, we noticed when we moved into Priscilla’s apartment was the green accent wall. In Swaziland, my teammate had received the word “green” from the Lord. Seeing the green wall was an answer to prayer. Wow. God had told us to wait on booking a hostel; we did and he provided a place to stay.
Our new home
Throughout the week we met up with our friends from Hillsong. We got plugged into an on campus bible study at a local University. Most of them were study abroad students from the States. From there, we were connected to a “Mate Club”. A Mate Club is an event where people come to practice their Spanish or English. For 15 minutes you spoke only English then another 15 minutes of only Spanish. One of our friends is the president of an NGO. We helped pass out donated clothes to neighborhoods of low socioeconomic status. On Sunday we would help set up for Church as well. It was a busy week and half. We would leave the apartment around 10am and not get back until 2am.
Our new friends at the Bible Study
Helping out at our friend Juani’s NGO
About halfway into the month we learned that we had to move out of Priscilla’s apartment. We received the news about moving at 10:30am. Our first response was to pray. We had made the commitment to always start with praise. We praised God for the accommodations, friends, and ministry opportunities He had provided us with. Our new friends were going above and beyond trying to find us a new place to stay. I surprisingly had a sense of peace during the whole event. We all packed up and cleaned the house within the hour. Some of us went out for a walk, others went to the bakery for food…we kept living out the day as if it was any other day of ministry. At 12pm we got a text from our friend Janice that she had found us a place to stay. Her mother-in-law and brother-in-law wanted to invite us into their HOUSE in Buenos Aires. They had an empty room and mattresses for all six of us. Wow. The accommodations were better than we could’ve imagined. We were just hoping for a roof over our head and the Lord gave even better than we could fathom. We were super excited! By 7pm our friend Janice picked us up from the apartment to help take us to our new home.
Our friend, Janice
Our new family – Maria, Jorge, and Matias welcomed us into their home with a home cooked meal and dancing. SO fun! In Swaziland, my teammate had a vision that we would live with a family. God provided. We would wake up to sweet notes from Maria and a prepared breakfast. At night we would sometimes cook and eat together. We loved spending time with them all. We were the daughters that Maria never had. She was such a blessing.
Our new mom, Maria – My name reminded her of the power rangers 🙂
We left Buenos Aires on the 15th to pick up our teammate, Danielle at the airport in Mendoza. We took a 16 hour overnight bus to Mendoza. Again, we arrived in Mendoza with no set plan or lodging. We did try to find a place ahead of time, but nothing was in our budget so…we Asked The Lord. We stayed in the airport until 7pm. We found out that we had more money in our budget than we thought so we were able to book a place to stay. The next morning we decided to do park ministry. We made two new friends from Brazil at the hostel. They wanted to join us for ministry so we set out with signs that said “free hugs” and “free english conversation”. We made some great memories in the park.
Our friends, Louisa and Juicyela
The next day, we decided to go to another park across town with another friend we had met at the hostel. Her name is Ashley and she is from California and had been traveling for the past two years. One day of hanging out with our new friend turned into the whole week. We were able to invite all of our new friends from the hostel to our squad debrief. They came to our sessions and worshiped with us.
Our friend, Ashley
It’s amazing to think of all of the different ministry opportunities we had during our time in Argentina. If you give God the space to work, He will. One of our Squad Leaders had said that instead of asking God to reveal His will for you, you should pray for more trust. That statement couldn’t be more true. There were moments that made me nervous and anxious, but it’s because I struggle with trust. I struggle trusting people and even God. But this month, God reminded me that if I trust Him, He will show up, He will provide. Even before we stepped foot in Argentina, we had made the commitment to trust God and it was not a mistake.
I relate my experience of ATL to what life should look like off the mission field. Always leading with trust and prayer. When you trust God, you trust in His power, in His majesty. If we wholly trust in Him, we will no longer be surprised by his provisions but expectant. Our God is greater than any other. Don’t put Him in a box.
