Chipolleti

Pic 1:Me and Violeta
Pic 2 & 3: World Cup Day (Argentina won!)
Pic 4: Me and my friends from the University (Celeste is the girl next to me) drinking matte. Matte = Argentina. Everywhere you go you'll see people passing the matte. Don't worry, I'll bring some back for you all to try. :)



Sorry it's been a while since I've updated my blog. A lot has happened this past week, so I'll try to remember all the details.
We left Bariloche last Saturday and headed up north about 4 hours to Chipolleti. We went to a Saturday night service that they had there. I love how they worship...it's so full of life! We spent the week hanging out at the University, with people from the church, and por supuesto (of course), our team.
The ministry at the Univeristy was really hard at first. Like I said, there isn't a Nav ministry in that part of the country yet, so we had to be proactive and creative. We prayed a lot, which is so powerful...I'm being reminded of that daily here. As a result, the Lord began to open up doors for us. A lot of us on the team were getting extremely discouraged at the beginning of the week, but on Thursday night we all had a great time at the University. I met a girl by the name of Celeste...she invited me to drink matte with some of her friends. So I went and hung with them for a couple of hours, and later that night they invited our team to this community center to learn how to tango. A couple girls were able to share their testimonies that same night in a more tranquilo (chill) setting. We invited all our new friends to our fiesto por el partido mundial (party for the world cup game) this past Saturday. You have to understand how HUGE this game was. The country of Argentina has been gearing up for this first game for months. They go CRAZY here! Anyways, Saturday came and we had a great turn out for the game. One girl that was invited by John (a guy on my team) came and her and I really connected. She didn't speak any ingles, but we hung out that whole night. Violeta was involved with gnosticism (a really popular cult here) for a couple of years, but then gave it up. She also has a friend who is a Mormon. She said religion wasn't her thing, b-c everyone thinks their religion is the truth and someone must be wrong. So she doesn't care for any of it. I didn't know any of this until after I talked with Marisol later on that night(the argentine missionary that we're working with), b-c of the language barrier. Despite all that, I was able to tell her my testimony...the little that I was able to have translated to español. She came to church the next day which was really cool. I sat with her and found a Santa Biblia (spanish Bible) for her to use during the service. I prayed a lot as I sat next to her. It's so nice knowing that it's the Lord who changes hearts and nothing that I say or do can affect that. What a relief! I introduced her to some of the girls our age at the church who are so awesome, so hopefully God will continue to work on the seeds that were planted during our time in Pategonia.
A lot more went on, but this is getting kind of long. Today we arrived back in Buenos Aires...it feels like home! It'll be nice not having to live out of my suitcase like I have been the past couple of weeks.
Thank you so much for your continued prayers and emails! (and REAL mail...thanks Tim!)
I miss you all!

Sheryle