I’ve struggled a lot this year with how to adequately depict this adventure that is the World Race. I tend to live my everyday life through the eyes of a 7 year old, which means I geek over, take pictures of and post some pretty cool things. I don’t want that to reflect that the people that gave $16,500 have paid for a world-traveling adventure; and some people on my squad have been accused of that based on what they post. So when I have a month with no ministry host in a place like Buenos Aires, Argentina… lemme explain how my walk changed, and why it wasn’t vacation.
If you couldn’t tell by my Instagram account, I pretty much loved every second of my incredible life in Argentina. (…Ok, you can scratch the pretty much.) I’ve never been more alive. I find even writing this blog really hard because I can’t do it justice. Being able to live my life in the culture I love, speaking the language I love, with the people I love was already close to overload, but this gorgeous city with this incredible family we made… in my CHURCH?? With people that became my family?!? Shut up. How is this my life. As you heard in THIS blog, the first 24 hours were unbelievable. Our days looked like going to Bible studies and volunteering in English clubs – as a direct answer to prayer of one of the girls in the Bible study. We got to volunteer with an NGO that distributed toys and clothes to some of the poorest children in the city, provide some much-needed encouragement to some believers, get our faith encouraged by others, love on and pray for people that weren’t, and spend time loving and being love to those He led into our path. (And all those things fell on top of the blessing He poured out on us with the friendships He gave us at Hillsong Buenos Aires.)
But amidst all these incredible things, I was still preoccupied with the way I was presenting what I was up to. I felt like because I was having so much fun it would look like we weren’t doing anything – like I was just traveling and making friends and wasting time. And by “preoccupied” I mean “I struggled with this on the daily.”
So during one of my grumblings about how I didn’t want this to look like vacation, my ever grounded team leader Sequoi told me, “does this desire come from the Lord or is it just what you want your perception of ministry to look like?”
Ouch.
(But she continued…)
“Or is it what others think ministry should look like? Are you just looking for ministry because you want people here and back home to be impressed with what you’ve done?”
Zinger number 2.
So yeah. That was convicting. I looked at amazing opportunities like encouraging believers, loving on non-believers, and being filled up to keep pouring out for the next few months and invalidated it. I basically said that kind of life wasn’t good enough and those lives weren’t worth encouraging and showing love to, and WOW that’s a huge wake up call. (If that’s not ministry, what does that make daily life when I get home…?) But even a good version of that means I looked at it and said, “it photographs too well. It looks like vacation” and promptly wrote it off. When the truth is (Seeks in for the kill, round three) “If your life at home looks like an ATL month, doesn’t that mean you’re doing this thing right?” Yes, Sequoi. It does.
So now that I’m free of that, here are just SOME of the things I learned in Argentina.
1. My prayer life changed. Dramatically.
We had no other option but to trust the Father, for housing, most meals, ministry opportunities, everything. ($10 a day, remember, and this place is expensive. We stayed in a place called Palermo Soho – like… Soho NYC.) The thing was I knew I was supposed to be here so I knew God had to provide. Because I was confident in that my prayers changed – almost subconsciously – from requests to thanksgiving; thanks for what He already provided, thanks for the way I knew He was going to, and celebration of the provision I knew He already created for us – even if we hadn’t found it yet.
2. I really learned to recognize the voice of God
Remember I’m coming freshly off this fast of only talking to God in Swaziland. All I had was listening for His voice, and I found it was way more quiet than I thought – and it was already really quiet. Turns out that even in the times I thought it was quiet before He was actually shouting, so anything less than that I didn’t recognize as His voice. Well, a whole month of, “are you getting anything? Are you? Are you? No? Well, I have this little idea… wanna give it a go?” And it was always God. Always. And if it wasn’t He redeemed it so it ended up being Him anyway. Those little inklings just got a lot more credibility.
3. I catapulted in spiritual authority
And I mean catapulted. All you have is an inkling and you try it and incredible things happen? Shoot, you’re invincible. You try anything that comes to mind. You step out like crazy. Honestly I think God did more of the redeeming of things I thought were Him than actually telling me the thing because He got such a kick out of watching his baby lioness pounce around and try to catch things. Give God the space and He shows up… even if it’s only because He’s so proud of you for believing He’s able to do whatever you stepped out in faith for that He honors it. But as my hero and favorite pastor Chris Mendez always says, “otro mensaje para otro día.” (Well, that and “buen-i-si-mo.” He says that a lot too.)
4. Ministry does not have to look like what you think it does.
My first blog on the World Race was about ministry not looking anything like what I expected it to (if you missed that one way back, click HERE.) But if I would have written off everything I didn’t deem worthy and said it “wasn’t ministry” then this basically was vacation. I learned to dabble in the mindset of getting up every day and saying, “ok God, what do you want me to do today?” And with that in mind it has changed the rest of my Race. Time without ministry can now be used for, “ok God, what do you want me to do today?” Now that I’ve had a month of seeing what happens when I do that, my expectations are pretty high. (It also helps that I can kind of sort of talk to people here. Thanks Mrs. Aunt Wendy, Dr. Nufher-Halten, the country of Guatemala, and anyone else who has ever helped me with this language.)
So in summary, Argentina was a pretty great month; and not just because I was completely and fully alive with all the things I love most in life. Leaving has been really hard. I’ve definitely cried harder leaving here than I have anywhere else (actually… all other “anywhere else’s” combined. Don’t judge.) But part of why it’s so hard to leave is because God did so much in my life. We were in the country a grand total of for 26 days – including a debrief that went long because we got snowed in trying to cross the border to Chile. During those 26 days the Father used so many of our new relationships and lessons from other parts of this journey to catalyze in this country and make May one of the best months of my life. Thank you for following my journey, supporting me, encouraging me, and giving me the freedom for my journey with the Father look like whatever He wants it look like. He uses the deep, hard places for some pretty big lessons, but He uses the mountains and high places for some pretty big and beautiful ones too.
His,
Meredith
