The Works of God:

The last 4 months have been busy.  It hasn’t been the business of church activities though.  It has been the fullness of the work of God.  His work has been seen here in my life, in the life of the youth group, and in the life of the church.

The Work of Learning:

My three-pronged goal of learning the language, culture, and what it means to be a “missionary” has continued. 

Spanish

My Spanish has grown immensely.  Thanks to a group of patient friends and my knack for making every embarrassing mistake possible I have learned so much over the last 4 months.  I can converse with people and be understood, at least most of the time.  Maybe more importantly I can listen in Spanish. I understand what people are telling me.  This of course is not only important when clarifying a food order, or before major surgery, but it has been immensely important in ministering.  To have the language, even if only in part, is to have a key into their lives.  With each conversation I have the key seems to turn with more ease and opens more doors. 

Beyond this however is also the statement that you make when you try hard to learn the language.  To learn a language you must pay the prices of embarrassment, mental fatigue, and insecurity.  These prices do not go unnoticed.  Language is important to a people, and when you show that it is important to you, you gain their trust.

Argentina

Perhaps even more foreign than the language has been the culture.  My lessons have come in the form of the many conversations I have had both inside and outside the church.  The cultural details that I am now learning have less to do with food, holidays, and customs and more to do with the internals of a culture like its history, politics, psychology, and dominant religion and the interactions between these forces.  Argentina is a wounded country.  Its trust has been destroyed by decades of corrupt politics, and a Catholic church that has been closely involved.  The outcome is a cynicism and general hopelessness.  The responses can range from “eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die”, to “vanity of all vanities”.  Expressions of these two extremes are seen easily.

The Catholic Church forms another bastion of Argentine culture. Most Argentines will tell you when you ask them that they’re Catholic, but in the same breath they will tell you that they aren’t “practicing”.  Thus while they have no living religion of there own, they still see the Protestant Evangelical churches as a threat.  They have just enough knowledge to make them nominal.  Reading the Bible is for Priests, and listening and obeying (or at least sort of trying to obey) is for the public.  Appeals to the Bible may be helpful, but also seen as vulgar or sacrilege if you claim any authority of Biblical Knowledge.  Catholicism may be the biggest challenge to the gospel, but on the flipside its may also represent an entrance into a person’s life for the gospel.

The light of Argentine culture is its immense love for people.  This is expressed in both what they do and what they fear doing.  They are not a direct people.  They are uncomfortable with conflict and avoid saying, almost to the point of lying, that they don’t like something that you may have cooked or  possibly like.  This of course has its drawbacks, but it outlines the cultural value that relationships, and their preservation comes before the individual and its autonomy.  They see the individual as preserved within its relationship with others.  The norm is community, getting together, sharing experiences and a lot of time.  The rarity is the schedule too full, the work day to busy, or the body too tired to relate with others.  I haven’t eaten so much beef in my life.  I’m invited to an asado (argentine barbeque) at least once a week.  Nobody takes out their day timers to plan it, they just make it the more important thing. 

The weekly ritual when I arrive in church is the greeting.  As I near the door of our 100 year old building there is an anticipation of the warm faces and bright eyes that will beam with the light of a genuine joy to see me.  The feeling is mutual.  In Argentina you greet women with a kiss on the cheek and if you’re a man you greet men that are your close friends in the same manner.  In an average Sunday I have kissed or been kissed by at least 60 people!  This expression of innocent affection is the perfect symbol for the Argentine value for people.  They want you to feel loved, they concern themselves with your safety (emotional and physical), and they find immense joy in serving to accomplish these ends.

The culture is wide open for the gospel.  They have a slight knowledge of God but they don’t know him.  They live with the anguish of hopelessness, and the frustration of injustice and seek a solution to both.  They have a cultural inclination for community, care, and service.  I have much to learn, but my soul chomps hard at the bit when I think of the thin layer that separates these cultural elements and the God that can redeem and fulfil them.

Missions

My learning about the missionary life and ministry has taken both an academic and experiential path.  To distil everything that I’ve learned into a few paragraphs is impossible, but I will at least note a couple.  To be a missionary is not to Americanize but evangelize a people.  Your allegiance to Christ and his kingdom becomes your most important identity.  Your cultural or national allegiance, while maybe still important to you and a big part of who you are is not your goal as a missionary.  There is an initial time of romance with the culture.  Everything is new, the people exotic, and you are their novelty as well.  As the months roll by however and this veneer inevitably rubs off and what you’re left with is the realities of cultural differences. 

Genuine love developed for me at this stage, or perhaps deepened.  Each person became themselves instead of one of a collection of cultural figurines.  I of course took the opportunity to make mistakes and prove to them that I too am a person who needs both the grace of God, and their mercy.  The individualism in me was challenged numerous times.  I was annoyed at times with what I perceived as “over concern” for me.  Each confrontation with who I am as an American becomes an opportunity to associate more with who they are as Argentines.  To entrench as an American and seek to make them more individualistic, or more capitalistic, or more “on time” (which as you all know is not an American value I practice well anyway) is to miss an opportunity to understand Argentines and an opportunity to present Christ as the Argentine Savoir.  But to listen to and observe their cultural identity (while not necessarily loosing yours) and to look for places to enter lifting Christ as your banner is to do the work of the missionary.

Missions is long work.  I have the privilege of working with Sam and Carita Masters, and they have already laid down the foundation and spent the long years of building the church here.  I have the easier task of ministering within an already established church.  Nevertheless missions is not a rapid thing.  Your status as a foreigner automatically makes you fairly suspicious.  The initial step of a missionary is to earn trust, and earning trust does not happen quickly.  As much as you may want to speed the process up your impatience will be your undoing.  The people want to see if you’re committed to them, that you understand them in their language and in their sentiments, and they will then believe you when you tell them that you bring the words of life.  If you scale the barriers of your foreignness carefully the fruit of trust begins to roll in.  Before you can consider yourself ministering this must take place.

The Work of Ministry:

Centro Crecer (the church)

The last couple of months saw my first entry into preaching in Spanish.  I taught twice, both on Thursday night for our devotional before the prayer meeting.  It is hard to explain how amazing it feels to be able to communicate the truth of God in another language and to watch as your simple Spanish words are being understood and used by God to help and change people.

Alto Voltage (the youth group)

The youth Leaders are now meeting once a week in my apartment.  We use this time to talk about the upcoming week, pray for the group and each other, and talk about the purpose of the group.  My role has been to help begin focusing the youth group.  It has an amazing volunteer staff of college kids, but they have had just about zero experience in youth ministry before this group.  Sometimes my input is in the form of suggestions or changes, but many times I act as simply as an available resource and guide to their existing ideas. 

Their passion has visibly increased and their vision is beginning to take off on its own.  My goal in these meetings is to help them develop a clear purpose and programs that match that purpose, and I try to steer them clear of blunders from my own experience, or help them interpret blunders that have already happened to give them a direction to continue afterwards.  We are developing these things together as a team which is giving them the skills to develop on their own, and it keeps me from introducing something that won’t work in the youth culture.  I want to assist them to discover their own gifts in ministry so that they will flourish and succeed as they plan and work with the youth ministry.

I’m discipling two kids one-on-one right now.  Dan, Sam’s son was my first discipleship because he speaks English.  We meet at least every Friday.  He usually comes over after school about 1:00 in the afternoon and we talk about everything that’s going on in his life.  We head down to the church around 3:00 in the afternoon for drum lessons (discipleship consists of more than just the Bible).  I must of course leave a progeny where ever I go. I’m also discipling a kid named Martin.  Martin’s case is fairly common in Argentina.  His parents are divorced and his Dad rarely has much to do with him.  His Mom is now a single mother with a baby girl and Martin to take care of.  They don’t have much money, and sometimes Martin doesn’t really eat very well.  Martin comes over in between school and Gym class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  We eat lunch usually and just talk.  We’ve started going through Proverbs a Chapter at a time.  We also go to McDonalds and a Movie when he doesn’t have Gym.  I know I can’t be his Dad, but I can kind be his big brother.  God has given me the ministry of hospitality, discipleship, and peace with Martin.  Consequently Martin has invited friends of his over to my house and we have started to become friends as well.  We plan on using this time to share the gospel with his friends.  Right now we are using it to have rubber band wars (apparently something I imported from the states).

The Work of the Future:

I’m sincerely amazed that it has only been 7 months.  The opportunities continue to open up, and God continues to use me. I’m working in English Institute in town.  I have one class right now and I fill in for others.  This represents two opportunities.  It is a conversational class which opens it up to pretty much any topic, including Christ, and gives me people to invite to the church.  The church is planning a family camp at the end of February.  The youth will have there own section of the camp but we will be together as a Church as well.  The Adolescents have never had a camp of there own and this will be a great opportunity for outreach, and to start something that they can continue when I leave.

Prayer

So much has happened in my life since I’ve been here.  Some of it has happened in the States in my absence.  My Grandma Stratton passed away in September from a stroke.  It was a difficult time.  It was the first time in my life when I had to grieve without my family’s arms around me, nor the ability to wrap my arms around them.  I know many of you knew about it and have been praying for me here.  What is great about prayer is that it reaches spiritually where we cannot physically.  I felt them, and am thankful.  I also know that the success in ministry here is direct result of your prayers, your prayers for me and my well being, and your prayers for the people here.  I thank you for you concern and participation in Argentina.

Un abrazo,