Tonight is our final evening in Buenos Aires. As the trip comes to a close we have been reminiscing and talking about our favorite memories, funniest moments, and what we have learned from our experience here. Overall I feel as if we have each grown in our own lives and in our spiritual walks. LST is definitely a unique type of mission trip. You are not building houses or handing out foods packages to the homeless. The students we have been teaching English are well off and in need of the good news, not material things. This makes it more difficult in some ways because it is not a quick fix. Over the course of the past 6 weeks we have shared our faith, built relationships, and tried to show our beliefs through our actions as much as our words. Starting off in BA we were really excited to have the freedom of living on our own and being in a new city. Of course, though, as time went on challenges arose. Three girls living together was much easier than we expected though and there was rarely tension between us. I could not have chosen two more awesome girls to share my time here with! We are so compatible and have learned the real meaning of patience. As much as I cared for them before, I truly love them for who they are and have seen Christ working in their hearts and radiating into their lives. They have been so encouraging to me in my own spiritual journey! It has been impossible not to see God working through the situations and conversations we have found ourselves in. I love the people God has placed in our lives. We had many different types of students. Some were there because they attend the church and love to study God’s word, while others had never even opened a bible. These students were my favorite because it gave me the opportunity to explain what I believe and why I believe what I do. I had never been in this situation before; it was kind of scary but also exciting. This allowed me to examine my own views and decide my exact opinions on certain things. I was so blessed to have the opportunity with a man who was very skeptical and kind of awkward about the Bible- he was there solely to practice his English. He listened to my story with no judgment. He was just purely interested in a different view of life than his own. Also, explaining the idea of baptism to another one of my students was exciting because it is kind of a strange idea when you really think about it, but she was so receptive when she realized that God was the one inviting her into a committed relationship. The majority of our students come from a Catholic background and has very negative opinions about church. One challenge I faced was trying to overcome their presuppositions about “the church.” Through my time here, I feel that God has opened my eyes to how powerful and complex He is. He is alive all over the world and each of His children has a different story and a different purpose. But He is alive in us all! All we have to do is accept His will over our own and He will guide our feet and give us His wisdom! I have learned how weak I am without the strength of my Savior and how important it is to spend time with God every single day. One can see the world in a whole new light if you look at it through God’s eyes and not your own.
Our time in Chile was also a huge blessing in disguise. Although we were really bummed to leave this city at first, God showed us how, as his followers, we must be willing to be flexible and mold to the plans he has for us. I formed some wonderful friendships in Santiago. First of all, the Andes Mountains were staring me in the face every morning, which humbled me more than anything. They were BEAUTIFUL!! Seeing something so magnificent reminds me of how small we are and how great God is. Also, the church there was very different from the one here in BA. Several missionary families from Dallas started it, so the dynamics there created a totally different environment for us to work in. The ladies that worked at the church were so fun and had such pure hearts. Learning their stories and spending time with them was such a blessing. We again met so many interesting students with different religious backgrounds. This sparked interesting conversations with them and then even more so amongst each other. We really began diving into the word during our time here. This brought about more questions than answers, but I loved talking through some of the stories in the bible and truly examining Jesus’ life. We spent most of our free time there with our students- this was probably one of my favorite experiences. It is one thing to spend an hour a day with a person reading through a workbook, but many of them really let you into their hearts when you put time into the relationship in other activities. It can be frustrating at times because you don’t want to preach to them, but you want so badly to explain what an amazing life one can have if you give yourself to Him. That is another challenge. The fruits of your labor are not immediately visible because building one’s faith is a difficult process that takes a lot of time and a lot of God pulling at their hearts. It was difficult sometimes to not let satan get to us and let us think we were not making a difference here. Although we weren’t doing physical work to help someone, I know we touched many of their lives. A lot of people here think it is so strange that we would want to give up our time off in the summers to come down here just to help someone. But these types of conversations are what make it all worth it! Jesus served; therefore, we serve.
This trip has allowed us to grow and deepen our faith, but most importantly it has given us the opportunity to share with others the one who has saved us and given us new life in him! For the first time in my life I have this deep desire to know more and more about the character of God. I have so many questions and there are so many things I just do not understand and probably never will. But I know and recognize that God’s story is a journey for each of us. He reveals Himself to us in different ways and at different times and all we have to do is open our heart to His love. He has given us people all around us to love! He has given us the task of sharing His love- and there will always be work to do! I feel so blessed to have partaken in this mission experience and hope and pray that our time here has planted seeds in the hearts of our students so that they may also come to know and love Jesus, for they are already loved by him in return! We hoping to keep in touch with many of our students, which I know already will be a blessing for all of us! Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us and for supporting us in our time away! I know that prayer is so powerful and effective if we but believe! Our time in Chile and Argentina has been a blessing straight from God!!
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