El camino

We made it to Argentina.
 I really expected to actually feel like I was on another continent and half way across the world. I'm not exactly sure what feeling I expected but it really didn't feel that weird when we arrived. Buenos Aires is a massive city that keeps on sprawling. I'm having a hard time picturing the city because there's no one place where you can get a good view of it.
The food is different. The Argentine food pyramid has three levels: cheese, meat, and bread. And maybe fruit for breakfast. People drive really crazy here. The lanes are just suggestions and mopeds and motorcycles swerve between cars instead of staying in their lanes. Lots of honking all the time.
I know a tiny bit of Spanish (they call their dialect Castellano) but definitely not as much as I thought. I really wish I knew it better. I have had lots of chances to practice. Yesterday I talked with an Argentine from Vida Estudiantil (the Campus Crusade for Christ of Argentina) for like 45 minutes in Spanish although he was talking very slow.
The people here are awesome. Everyone is friendly, the personal bubble is way smaller, and people share everything. One of my teammates and I were talking to a student we had met maybe 5 minutes earlier and he offered us to drink from his half finished Sprite bottle. Instead of shaking hands when you meet someone, you beso. It means kiss and you go right cheek to right cheek with them. You beso your friends and all of their friends who are there, too. Even guy to guy... haha.

Ministry:
   Our team of 36 is split on to 6 campuses of the University of Buenos Aires. I'm on the Economics campus which is about an 8 block walk from our hotel. We have been going there and doing surveys called Soularium which is a great way to start spiritual conversations with students. After the survey, if they are interested we share the Gospel. Our team has the goal of sharing the Gospel 1500 times during our six weeks here. Thats a lot. And the language can be a big barrier. It can be discouraging walking up to student after student and getting a ''no'' to the question of if they speak English over and over. But when we do find english speakers, the conversations have been really good. Argentines love to meet new people, share their opinions about life and God and they love to hear what other people think, too. Here's some cool stories about ministry so far. On Monday, me and another student, Steven, were talking to a guy who didn't really agree with much of what we said. He had a class coming up and he said, "I really like talking about this stuff with you all, can we meet again on Thursday?" And then on yesterday, Erica and I talked to a guy who had never heard the Gospel before and he was really interested and asked a lot of questions. We gave him a gospel tract. Later I was in the cafeteria with someother guys from Summer Project and I saw him across the room reading the booklet. As he was leaving I waved at him and he came over and said " this is very interesting, I'm reading this again." Awesome. Just those two conversations were really encouraging.


This is all I have time for tonight. I'm having a lot of fun too, and exploring the city as much as possible. Thank you to everyone who supported me to help me get here! 

Preparations

Its almost here. May 16th is only hours away. In 24 hours our team will all be in Miami. In 36 hours we'll be flying somewhere over Brazil. And in 36 hours and 50 minutes we will finally be on the ground in Buenos Aires.

     It has been a long time coming. I first thought I might want to go on a Summer Project last spring (2010). Last summer I went on a stateside Summer Project in Vail, Colorado (here's the blog from that:  http://vailsp2010.blogspot.com/). It was amazing and I definitely wanted to do something like it again. I talked to several people who had been on International Summer Projects. It sounded a lot different but, if it's possible, even better than stateside project. The focus in International Summer Projects is a lot more about evangelism which wasn't a huge focus last year (it was definitely part of it but personal growth was emphasized). I finally decided for sure that I wanted to go in January after the Encounter conference. Then I had to figure out where to go. My first thought was East Asia but I couldn't think of a lot of good reasons to go there except for just wanting to. I was encouraged to go Argentina because it is the University of Louisville's partner location and they depend on us to send summer project-ers there. I ended up choosing Argentina and I'm glad I did.
     Then there was support raising. It's called Summer Project but a lot of the time it felt like a Spring project too. Raising the money was a lot more work than I thought it would be and it stressed me out. I was seriously worried I wouldn't get enough money in and then I would have to (ashamedly) return the money that people had sent to me. But the Lord provides. In one way or another, all the money came in!
Classes have been over for two weeks now and May 16th has slowly crept closer. And now its here.

     I'll use this blog to keep you updated on how God is working, how he is bringing the Way, and the Truth, and the Life to Buenos Aires. We aren't going to have a lot of internet access there so I probably will only be able to post like once every week at the most. And pictures won't be up here or on Facebook until I get back.
Please pray for me, our team, our travel, and all the Argentines we'll be meeting in the next six weeks. Thanks