Tuesday night we met as a team and spent a lot of time really wrestling with how to plan for the retreat we'll be putting on in Argentina for 40 church planting/pastoring couples. It's a unique opportunity. These are 40 leadership couples living an "all chips in" intense faith walk on the frontiers of missions. Many of them are in their mid-20s, who just a few years ago were lost in darkness and are now running in faith with the life of Christ and little else. How do we minister to them? What's their greatest need(s) and how do we drip the right volume of truth balm within the time frame we've got to work with?
Take Adrian. He's 26 and leads a church plant in the ranchlands. To provide for his family he bakes bread in an outside oven, delivering the bread personally because it presents an opportunity to share the love and truth of Christ. For a voluntary job he goes downtown each day to the government office buildings and washes the cars of the officials to demonstrate the "free gift" of Jesus. He also works in a bicycle shop where he home-delivers repaired bicycles, again so he can share the illustration of how Jesus can repair broken lives in the course of doing a "job." For Adrian, his 3 jobs in addition to pastoring a small church are all part of the same ministry fabric. A job is a ministry opportunity. He does all of this in a town that is terribly resistant to the truth of the Gospel - a crowd that when outreach conferences have special music many of the people will refuse to even clap or sing along and just stare in cold-heartedness. He continues in joy. Wow.
We're thinking about a combination of planned renewal time, teaching on Life in Christ as a framework for ministry, keys to maintaining spiritual health as leaders and some ministering as a couple topics. What a privilege to pour into these great warriors of the faith!
We're also hoping to raise some funds and find some donated items to give some encouraging gifts to each of them. Perhaps some cosmetics/toiletry items for the wives they don't normally spend money on, and maybe Bible covers or some practical gifts for the men. Tokens that Americans take for granted but that can truly bless the heart of field workers for the Kingdom.
Tonight we're in the throws of a marathon. We're watching all 6 hours of the Love & Respect Video Conference at once. From a translation perspective this helps our team anticipate some of the idioms that will need cultural and linguistic preparation and also for us to focus on distilling which key nuggets of truth are truly needed in Argentina. Due to time needed for translation and breaks, we somehow have to boil a 6 hour English conference into about 2 hours of net English speaking in Argentina...that's tough!
Exciting times. Worthwhile wrestling. Thanks for partnering in this great endeavor! Sol gloria Dei!
Update on Funds: praise God, we're nearing the 1/2 way mark - and have received $2,500 of the $5,600 needed!
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Tonight the team is meeting at our house to go debrief on time spent with David and Patricia Ibarra recently and to review the schedule for our trip. It's now looking like Mike will get to use a church building for the youth rally while the rest of the team does the introductory Love & Respect launch at a large school auditorium in Santa Fe. We're also hoping to map out the individual and group discipleship times during the trip (what materials, key points, etc.). Good stuff. Our team had a chance to have dinner with David and Patricia Ibarra from Argentina and map out some of the finer details of our upcoming venture. Wow! Everyone was sensing the same awe as it become evident that not only was this trip really happening, but that God was continuing to broaden the scope of work He has planned to accomplish through us. |
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This is our blog to keep you posted about developments, progress, surprises and God-workings pertaining to our Argentina Mission Trip (08). Check back to see the latest! Archives
November 2008
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