A Prayer Request...

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to write a little post about a prayer request that I have. I want to start by thanking you for all your prayers for me and my team this summer. It is so encouraging to know that we are supported by a group of believers thousands of miles away! I have one specific request right now that has been laid on my heart. God has blessed me with a new friend here in Buenos Aires, a medicine student named Adrianna who we met through English Club. Taylor, one of the girls on project with me, and I have been able to form a close bond with this girl in just a few days. This past Thursday, we were able to share the Gospel with her and twice this week have been able to meet with her, for like two or three hours at a time, to answer questions that she has and share what God has done in our lives through Christ. She is so close to placing her faith in Christ, it is so exciting. It has been amazing to see God work in her heart through our friendship. She has really been going through some serious struggles lately and was just so vulnerable with us about them, to the point where she started crying in the cafeteria. Just thinking about her honesty and sweet heart makes me want to cry right now! Please pray that God would continue to work in her heart and that the Gospel would just become so real to her and really click. Even more specifically, I pray for protection for her. She told us today that after our conversation on Tuesday, she had dreams about what we talked about and even a nightmare that really genuinely scared her. Im not sure if this is spiritual warfare or not but please pray for protection for Adrianna. Pray that she would not believe lies but see the truth about God and who He is. I praise Him for her genuine seeking of Him and ask that you would pray that He would continually reveal Himself to her. I thank you so much for your prayers!!

To put a face to the name, the lovely Adrianna and me.

Love,


Melicia

A little piece of home...

Hello all!

Hope everyone is doing well! Just a little update on a wonderful blessing that the Lord provided for our team last night. Each Tuesday, the Economicas team has an hour of prayer for the campus. It's a wonderful time where we thank God for what he's done, praise Him, and present our requests for how we'd like to see Him move. So, last night the STINTers on our campus invited our little Economicas team over to their apartment to do prayer there and have dinner! We actually got to open up prayer by using Soularium cards which I thought was really cool since I had never been on the receiving end of Soularium, haha. We each picked a card that described a promise God has made to us and what that promise means to us personally. I got to share about God's promise that He is unchanging and will never leave me nor forsake me. It was a nice reminder of what God has been teaching me throughout my entire walk with Him; although people, even the ones that love me, will sometimes let me down or not be there for me, God always will be there for me and I can depend on Him. He will never change. He is our rock solid foundation! I also got to hear from two women on my project about how God's promise that He loves us and God's promise that He is sovereign has both comforted and convicted them. It was so nice to be in a cozy little apartment out of the cold discussing God's promises to us on a personal level. I felt so loved and just blessed to be sitting in an apartment in Buenos Aires, Argentina talking about the faithfulness of the one true God! He is so good. :) Another blessing: dinner! Our lovely hosts, Kurt and Morgan, prepared a feast of salad (it's ridiculous how rare it is to eat vegetables that aren't fried here), cornbread, chili, and brownies for us to eat. And SWEET TEA! Needless to say, I stuffed my face. It was a nice little taste of home for all of us. It was a wonderful time of fellowship, a little bit of practicing Spanish with Deborah the Argentine student leader on Econ, and reflection on what the Lord has done on the Economicas campus and all over Buenos Aires in the past few weeks!

As promised...

Hello all!

Well, here goes a more detailed post. We are now about halfway through summer project! It's crazy how time has flown. It simultaneously feels like we just got here and that we've been here forever. It's so weird. Since there's so much ground to cover, I won't write about everything chronologically but I'll try to hit the high points. :)

Preparing to share at Cuidad Universatario

Our basic schedule is spending five hours a day on campus, starting spiritual conversations with students with the use of Soularium (http://www.campuscrusade.com/catalog/SOULARIUM.html) and a Spanish/English Four Spiritual Laws booklet (a CRU tract that explains the gospel in four points). Also on campus, we participate in English Clubs in which we practice grammar, vocabulary, and conversation with Argentine students. On Wednesdays, we all as a movement, summer project people and nationals, go to a different campus each week and share. We also have training times, socials, outreaches, Bible studies, prayer meetings, and discipleship throughout the week.

Gospel training

Debriefing after a Wed of sharing

 Talking about spiritual things and sharing the Gospel for about 25 hours a week has been EXHAUSTING, in every sense of the word. Physically, emotionally, spiritually.. But the Lord has renewed us in such merciful ways from fun times with our teams to encouraging conversations with Argentines to allowing us to see people accept Christ into their hearts. I have learned so much about relying on the Holy Spirit to work in people's hearts. It has been so tempting to just want to try to convince them logically that the Gospel is true but it has been so freeing to stop relying on myself and just let God work. God has clearly been working the hearts of so many students here. It's insane how many people I've spoken to that are just perfectly placed and ready to hear the Gospel. Many believe in God and desire a relationship with Him but have no idea how that is accomplished. How good is God that he lets us be the ones to tell them?!? Me and some of my various SP partners have a few meetings with Argentines this week to catch up so please pray for that! Some have had the Gospel shared with them, others may hear it for the first time this week.

Friend from English Club being shared with

English Club has been so fun and just a really great way to make and further relationships with Argentines. This past Friday after English Club, we ate lunch with and hung out with people for about five hours. It was so fun! I learned some new words (for example, chamuyero/a which is basically the Argentine equivalent of a flirty creeper). We all shared different aspects of our cultures and lives and it was just so fun. Please pray that God would use these relationships and work through them. That He would give us the courage to be vulnerable and go deeper with these friends and share what He has done in our lives!

We really have been having some rough times on project as well, though. We have definitely been seeing some spiritual warfare go on. Many team members have been struggling with sickness, nightmares, lies, exhaustion, and just a lot of stuff. Please be in prayer against that. :) We know it is happening because God is doing such amazing things here in Buenos Aires! What with morale being low because of that, we all definitely needed a pick me up. We've gotten the chance to do some fun touristy things which has been great! Last weekend we went to a lovely neighborhood named Boca.

Houses at Boca

Doin' the tango!

All the houses and buildings were painted different colors and there were people everywhere outside doing the tango! It was really cool to just walk around and see all the sights. As fun as that was, it was nothing compared to what we got to do yesterday! Our lovely and wonderful directors (after some hard work and financial maneuvering) organized a trip for us to go to an Argentine estancia or what we would call a country home or ranch. While there, we got to ride horses, go on a carriage ride, eat another asado, and watch some cool folk dancing. It was a really nice relaxing day, out of the city, with perfect weather and some fresh air. We also got to meet some chamuyero gauchos (cowboys). What more could you want from a trip??

Anyway, I thank all of you for your prayers and thoughts. I hope that everything is well in the States and I miss you all!


Love,


Melicia

Better late than never...

Hello all!!

Sorry about the huge gap between posts...but we have been crazy busy down here in BA! God has been doing some really exciting things. I'll keep it short because it's been so long since I blogged! I'm not sure of the exact number but at this point, over ten Argentines have given their lives to Christ! Wooo!! It has been such a blessing to see so many people walk from death to life. God is so good to let us be a part of that. I'll post some more details tomorrow but I just wanted to let everyone know that I am indeed still alive and awesome things are happening here!!

Love,

Melicia

Dios es siempre Dios. Dios es siempre bueno.

Hello everyone!

On Saturday, we had a really fun free day of getting to see the city. The STINTers organized an Amazing Race for us and sent us all around the city. We saw some really cool things! We went to the President's house which here is called La Casa Rosada (the Pink House) and the President doesn't actually even live there...We saw the widest street in the world, 9 de Julio. We saw the graveyard where Eva Peron is buried. For those of you who don't know Argentine history, she was a very famous first lady of Argentina and a musical Evita was based on her life. She was kinda like the Jackie O of Argentina. My favorite thing was the Hippie Fair. It was just a long road of street vendors selling jewelry, shoes, scarves, etc All handmade and for CHEAP. Definitely going to have to go back there and blow some pesos! It was just a really fun day of being pretty touristy!

On Sunday, we experienced some double culture shock while attending a Taiwanese church in Buenos Aires. Crazy stuff. The preacher spoke in Taiwanese and someone translated it into Spanish. At the end, I was just so exhausted from trying to understand! It was so cool though just to see people from all different nationalities praising the Lord together. The preacher made a really good point of although we may all be from different places, we are all the same in that we all need God. It was really neat to just be able to worship with them.

So, today was our first day on each of our campuses. For me, that was the Economics campus. Our team consists of five students, one staff member, and three STINTers. We went out in pairs and just tried to share the Gospel with as many people as we could! I teamed up with a girl on my team named Taylor. We were armed with bilingual KGP's, Soularium, and English Club flyers. It was somewhat of a discouraging day as we were really having some difficulty finding English speakers on campus. While I am decently able to speak some conversational Spanish, I am in no way prepared to share the Gospel in Spanish, so that was somewhat disappointing. However, after taking some time to get in the Word and really just pray through those feelings, the Lord really renewed my heart. We were able to get a lot of contacts for English Club. English Club is something that Vida Estudiantil (Argentina's CRU) has started on campus to help teach students English and help them practice their English. It's a really great way to build relationships with Argentines and then (outside of English Club so we're not pulling a bait and switch kind of maneuver, haha) share the Gospel with them. So, God really reassured me with the knowledge that He is sovereign and I have no idea, everyone of those people may come to English Club. We could build relationships with all of them and later share the Gospel with them. The Lord really opened my eyes as to how little I can see of the big picture but He knows the whole thing and has it covered. Anyway, even though our pair didn't get to share the Gospel with anyone today, we got a really good reminder of God's sovereignty.

Anyway, God is teaching me so much here in Argentina. Please pray that He would bring English speakers who are hungry for Him our way tomorrow!

¡Hola mis amigos! ¡Saludos de Argentina!

         I am having such a wonderful time! I know I´ve said it 50 times and I will probably say it 50,000 more. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! If I make some kind of weird punctuation error, lo siento. I'm sorry. This Argentine keyboard is kinda crazy! There's an upside down exclamation point and a ñ key though which is pretty exciting.

            So, like I said in a previous post, I'm not much of a blogger and have never had one so not really sure what to say but here it goes. :) Bear with me. Buenos Aires is amazing! We've stuck out so bad, though. We are clearly a large group of gringos (North Americans, they're Americans too!). We embarassed ourselves today in The Coffee Shop but we made an Argentine waiter friend which is exciting. We plan on becoming regulars there. Hahah. The food here is AMAZING. Packing for the trip home may become pretty easy as I might have to chuck all my clothes that won't fit anymore! Seriously, though. The following are some pictures of just a few of the delicious foods I have tried. ¡Que rico!

         Spiritually, this trip has already been amazing. Yesterday, we went sharing at Cuidad Universatario, a university here in Buenos Aires. We used Soularium and got to meet the Argentine student leaders which was so cool. It's encouraging to see how much they do with a small amount of resources. A group of about 30-40 of us (summer project people, Argentine nationals, and STINTers, that is short term international staff, people from the States living in BA for a year or two) went out and shared the gospel on campus. About 50 people heard the gospel, many for the first time, and four students accepted Christ! Wooooo! Definitely a party going on in heaven about that. Please pray that those students would be able to have relationships with the Argentine leaders and be able to grow and be discipled into future leaders. A STINTer and I got to share with an awesome girl named Andrea and it was so encouraging. She spoke a little English, I speak some SPanish, and Morgan speaks pretty good Spanish, so we were able to have a really great bilingual conversation about the Gospel. It was really clear that the Lord has been working in Andrea's heart. She had clearly been thinking about spiritual things (which is not common for many Argentine students who are focused on their studies and live in the here and now). She was so responsive, asked questions, and really thanked us for talking with her. Just a great conversation, such a sweet girl. I'd love for her to be my friend in heaven one day, haha! We gave her a bilingual Four Spiritual Laws book which she was super excited to have, so prayerfully she will really be considering that these next few days. We got her contact information so hopefully she came to English Club today!

            Today, we went to the Vida Estudiantil (the name for CRU in Argentina) headquarters and had some briefing. Three adorable Argentine students gave us historical background about the country and different campuses and we heard about the spiritual state of things. Student leaders are badly needed here, some campuses have no staff at all and only handfuls of student volunteers to reach entire campuses for Christ. Please pray that we would have fruitful ministry and be able to both surface existing believers and win people for Christ. Also please be praying just for the state of the country in general. This country has really been through some difficult times in the past fourty to fifty years and it is still having a huge impact on the students and the people in general. Many of these events have put up huge barriers to students accepting Christ. One of the largest ones being The Dirty Wars. I'm not sure of a lot of the political details but basically what happened was a military coup and many of those who disagreed with the new government were simply kidnapped and either put into prison or killed. All in all, around (probably more) 30,000 people disappeared. These people's families and friends still have literally no idea where they are or if they are even alive or not. A huge problem for many people is that many of those high up in the Catholic church were involved in these disappearances. In a country where many people associated church with God, these people want nothing to do with Him. Please pray that we can show that although churches, governments, and our leaders can and will fail us, God never will!

         Sorry this is soooo long, haha. I am just so excited about everything that God is doing here in Buenos Aires. I'll be going tomorrow to and touring the campus that I have been placed on: Economics. I'm super excited to get out and talk with some Argentines, they are seriously so warm and friendly, and just adore talking with people. It's so encouraging! Please pray for me and my team as we go out and prepare to share the Gospel with these Argentines students!

Personal Testimony

Hey all! So, for project we were asked to write up a short little account of our testimony and I thought that would be a cool thing to share with you all as well! So here it is. :)


Before I received Christ into my life, I placed my foundation of life on things that couldn't bear that weight, specifically the idea of having a perfect family. However, my parents fought a lot  and they were human beings, there was no way that they could live up to that pressure. As a result of this, I was always anxious, scared, and insecure. I spent my life in constant worry. I remember waking up in the mornings with outrageous pain because I had ground my teeth all night because of the stress. When I was around sixteen years old, at the invitation of my two friends, I began attending a before school student ministry called First Priority. It was there that I heard and first really understood about how God sent Jesus Christ to die for my sins because He loved me that much. I accepted Christ into my life shortly after. As soon as I realized the magnitude of that event and really began to grow in Him, my life began to look drastically different. I had a new peace because my happiness was built on something solid: the fact that God loves me and has a plan for me. Philippians 4:6-7 says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." While I still worry and bad things still happen, I know that God will guide me though them and comfort me with His peace which is everlasting.