A Week of Encouragement...

As many of you were celebrating Halloween, I was able to get together with one of my friends Sonia to celebrate her birthday. Of course the get-together started at 1:30 in the morning and lasted until about 4:00. Sonia is a girl that I met at the Vegetable stand around the corner from my house. We have gotten together on an irregular basis for the past couple months and talk all the time when I shop for veggies. For the past two months she has been telling me to set aside this day to celebrate with her. Of course, when the day came I was exhausted and didn’t have much desire to go out, but God is good and gave me the strength I needed to go. I ended up having a lot of fun, spending time with her and couple of her friends. It meant a lot to her that I was willing to go, especially since her friends that she has known for years didn’t even show up. I am sure that God is going to continue to use this friendship to make an impact on the life of Sonia. Please pray that God gives me the right words to share with her. Pray that God would open her heart so she may find healing in Him.

Last week was a week of encouragement for me. It started out with a visit from leadership from the Baptist General Conference. Mike and the Doggett’s arrived on Monday and stayed through Catamarca. It was fun getting to know them and here about some of their stories from around the world. I was also able to get together on a more individual basis with them and share about my struggles here in Argentina and the highlights. We ended with a time of prayer and them sharing how thrilled they are with my work here in Catamarca and the discipleship among the youth.

Thursday was also very encouraging to me. There are two guys (Jorge and Andres) that are currently living in the church in order to do full-time discipleship and evangelism. I offered to lead a class on missions (Perspectives) with them and the quickly agreed. A few others heard about the class and asked if they could join. We started the class two weeks ago with a group of 4 guys and me. I explained to them what the class format was going to be like and I gave them the homework assignment. I was not only pleasantly surprised that each of them came to class with their homework completed (which is rather amazing here)… but I was encouraged to see the passion they had for all that they had learned through the study and our discussion time. I have no doubt that God is going to use these guys mightily to impact Catamarca and other parts of the World. Please pray that God will continue to build up these guys in him and supply their every need. They are living in the church but don’t have much money for food and what not. A lot of their time is spent in Biblical studies and evangelizing the neighborhood. If you would like to contribute financially to what they are doing please let me know.

Another thing that was very encouraging to me was a conversation I had with Matias on the way home from the mission’s class. He is about 17 and 5 months ago he was an atheist. I met him about 2 months ago at a party I went to the Day of the Friends when he was completely wasted. At the party as we dance, he had a drink in his hand yet at the same time he was telling me, “You have to help me quit drinking”. I don’t enjoy dancing much and rarely go to these types of parties, but I was invited by Sole’s classmates whom I have been trying to reach out to. There are people here who criticize me for some of my decisions, such as going to a party, etc, but I keep going back to the scriptures in which Jesus went to the house of sinners and how they criticized him also. Anyways, a week after this party Matias accepted Christ and completely turned his life around. I have always admired him and had a special place in my heart for him. He is such a humble guy, willing to ask forgiveness when he offends someone, willing to help clean up the house when everyone comes over. I am just now getting to know him better as we spend more time talking one on one and through these times he has shared how much I had an impact on his life. I don’t often hear about how I am influencing people or see much of the fruit of my labor. It is much easier to see ones’ failures and what still needs to be done. I was shocked to hear that part of the reason that he accepted Christ, is because this night at the party he noticed I was different from everyone else, that I had hope and didn’t need to drink to have a good time. He was ashamed of his actions and wanted what I had. Let me tell you I was near tears as he was sharing this with me. Wow! What an encouragement and challenge to keep ones life pure at all times because you never know who is watching you. I have no doubt that God is going to do great things in the life of Matias, as his desire is to be a missionary. He told me he wants to be like me one day, my response was, my desire is to be like Christ so in the end you’ll end up being like Him. J Pray for Matias as he is strengthened in the Lord. He has a passion for studying the Bible and growing. Pray that as he studies the Word that he will understand it and apply it in his life.