Begun in Faith

Our life recently has felt like a chaos smoothie with some transition and culture shock thrown in for good measure. Our “parent couple” recently had to go back to the states, and we’ve struggled to get a replacement family down to Argentina. We had some substitute leaders for a while, and the pastors have been living with us for the past three weeks. The pastors are excellent leaders, but we’ve definitely felt short-handed with a job that already felt too big. We are now coming through to the other side a little worse for wear, and praying fervently for help as we face the transition of new leadership and changing job responsibilities with the official inauguration of our church. Through all the feelings of loss, stress, and frustration, God has been working miracle after miracle in front of our eyes, just as we would have prayed for Him to do in the best of circumstances. Here’s one: Two Saturdays ago, we performed an evangelistic skit in the main plaza of Cordoba. It was our...

The focus of our work right now is making contacts. Contacts are people in the city who we know. In order to “know” them, we need to know their name and how to contact them. In order for them to be a “contact” they can’t be a Christian who attends a different church. We have to be able to get to know them better, and we can’t steal them from another Christian church. We work to make new contacts and build our relationships with the contacts we already have. The magnet I designed for the event. I think it has a bit of a Steve Thomas feel to it. The verse is John 4:13-14. While the short term team was here, we had several events that focused on making new contacts. One day, we passed out magnets with the church’s information to people in a plaza. It worked really well, but we talked to everyone in the plaza in the first half hour of a two hour event. One of the contacts I met was a man named Fausto who was with his two small children playing at the playground. Juan and I chatte...

A few weeks ago, I got to visit Austin while he was on a short term mission trip a few hours away. He brought some of my things from the States-favorite movies, piano music, clothes, and a note from my mom. She wrote that I am very brave to be doing this work. I don’t feel brave. I feel brave when I kill spiders and walk through a dark house. I don’t feel brave leaving my life in the States and moving to Argentina. That’s not scary-it’s God’s desire for my life. This is what He wants me to do, and He’s with me in every moment that I’m here. I praise God for the life and job experience that I’m able to bring to my work here. I feel more confident because of the failings and mistakes I’ve made and struggled through. If I had come here right after college, I would have still thought I had to do everything perfectly. I am so grateful that I have learned time and again that God continues to work after failure. I was talking with God specifically about one class of students I had who ...