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Outreach – Bariloche Day 4

Today we climb a mountain. The idea was to reach the top, but after a late night last night, and with a very late start to the day, our chances were diminishing rapidly. Add to this a very large group of people, and you start moving quite slowly, according to the abilities of the weaker members. This is not a problem, it is just that with the time we had available to us, getting to the top was now looking very unlikely.

Our outreach team on the mountain

Our outreach team (LtoR: Tabita, Guillermina, Gabriela, Karley, Leonor, Miguel, me)

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Outreach – Bariloche Day 3

Today I wake with one eye stuck closed. After washing it with water and heading to the doctors I am informed that it is conjunctivitis, a common ailment here often contracted through dust entering the eye. Unfortunately, all of the pharmacies are too far away to get the needed eye drops, so I continue the day without them, washing my eye in cold tea as a home remedy to help for a while.

Our day, upon reaching the church, is to help prepare lots of food for what will be a church party to celebrate the end of 2009 and the beginning of a new year. Three of our team head out with the pastor to a neighbouring city of Bariloche, called Dina Huapi, to visit with families related to the church, while the other four remain in the kitchen to help with the food preparation for what is expected to be a very big party tonight.

Reaching Dina Huapi

The pastor with his son, me in the middle, and Miguel and Gabriela on the right.

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Outreach – Bariloche Day 2

Our second day is quite different, and we spend the morning building brick walls, cooking bread and gnocchi for lunch. All of us get to do something that we have not done before, and have fun doing it too. After lunch we then put on multiple layers of jackets for the cold and the rain that has arrived, and head out to go to a distant neighbourhood to share with the people about Jesus.

Once we have knocked on every door, or actually clapped loudly at every yard entrance (you can’t enter normally because of the fierce dogs kept in the yards), we then arrive at the house of believers where they hold a church service every week. It is here that we do a couple of skits for them, before Karley (Canada) and Tabita (Romania) lead worship. I share a reflection on who God really is, based on Revelation chapter 4 and we then bid our friends good bye and return for dinner in the church.

Building brick walls

Building a brick wall to separate the kitchen from the dining area.

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Outreach – Bariloche Day 1

On the 26th of December, Boxing Day, we gathered our team together and heading off on an 18 hour bus journey from Puerto Madryn to Bariloche. Upon arriving in Bariloche, we head out to the church with which we will be working for the next week. Our outreaches tend to be organised per week more than anything. Our goal is to help, serve, teach, and be an asset wherever and whenever we can during this time.

This first day was filled with getting to know different people, being introduced to the church and its members, and being allocated our home for the week. Miguel and I stay with Luis, in his small home, while the girls head out on the bus to a much larger house. After settling in, we all return to the church for the last service of 2009.

Sleeping on the bus

Taking advantage of the bus ride to catch up on some sleep after the Christmas celebrations.

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Life in Bariloche

In early March I returned from Peru to arrive back in my home base of Puerto Madryn. Late to mid March I was on the move again, to spend two months in Bariloche, a beautiful city nestled right in amongst the Andes mountain ranges and alongside a huge blue lake. It is also home to a LOT of chocolate. It is here that a new YWAM base has started its first Discipleship Training School, and I am here to help them in the school and to also help build, buy, fix, or sort out whatever they need in the base building area. Of course, it seems that wherever I go, there is something also related to websites involved. But that is par for the course these days.

It has been almost one month here now. So how has it been?

I am enjoying Bariloche, and although I was supposed to be here for only 2 months I am now here for 3 months, until the DTS school ends, which is actually great in a lot of ways because now I will get to finish my first DTS school as staff since being in YWAM. It always worked out that somewhere along the way my other activities would pull me out of the school early. So this is a good thing.

Bariloche is now getting cold. We had our first snow fall on the mountain tops two nights ago and most of it has now melted away. It is truly magnificent to see this amazing sights, things that I have never seen in my life before and I am really truly enjoying it, even if I have to sleep with a jumper and socks so early before winter. It has been a really windy month here and the wind blows so strongly through the night that it rattles our roof and wakes me up. Every time that I wake up I wonder if the roof is going to get blown off. It hasn’t yet, and the wind has now died down so that has to be a good thing.

Us guys are now living upstairs in the room above the kitchen. It has a wooden floor and by nature of being above everything one would think that it would be really warm. But all of the windows are wooden and really bent out of shape. I have had to get the grinder out to get some of them to actually shut. Even closed, the wind whistles through the gaps and so our room ends up being the coldest place in the house. Just today I was up there at the balcony doors putting foam sealing strips and pumping silicone into all of the gaps in the frames. There is still a slight breeze coming from somewhere but now the curtains do not move around in the breeze. Hopefully tonight will be a little warmer now.

The DTS school is going really well. My role has been translating during all of the classes. I am also brushing up on my guitar skills and leading the worship times which has been a challenge yet worked out really well every time. There are three ladies and two guys in the school, so I am discipling the guys and because one of the girls is from Canada and only speaks English I also help the others communicate with her, and her with the others. She shared with everyone today about some of her frustrations of not being able to communicate and took advantage of the moment to also share some of the things that she had been wanting to say. The others had felt her frustration and sympathised with her, also sharing with her their frustrations of not being able to chat with her too.

Although the prices of everything here are much higher there are many more things here too. The city here is a little bigger than Puerto Madryn, with about 130,000 people here and about 50,000 people in Madryn. The best part of it all (for now) would have to be all of the different chocolate factories and being able to stop in their coffee shops and enjoy a rich hot pure chocolate drink every visit to town. A little indulgent I know, but ooooh so wonderful, and besides I hardly head into town, only once or twice a week.

So that is life here in Bariloche. All of my stuff is still over in Puerto Madryn, and even though I brought over two really loaded suitcases it seems as though I hardly have enough stuff for the cold. It is really really cold even now, probably because of the high levels of humidity, and some of my warmest stuff is not feeling so warm any more. Will have to start layering up the clothes soon. But I am really enjoying this place.

It has been great to come here for this time.

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Back in Madryn – But Going Again

I guess it has been a while since writing something here. Life in missions seems to get really hectic at times. Even when I was travelling there seemed to be more time to write than now-a-days. At the end of every day, when I normally write something, I am exhausted and just want to sleep. Yet it is right at this moment that the people in whose house I am staying want to talk with me. So another hour or so of chatting and finally I collapse into bed, exhausted. The next day it starts all over again.

With each day like this, time for getting to the internet is limited and when I do get there, it is normally only enough to read my emails and answer just a few. The time available to write something more involved is just not there, and although a laptop would make things easier, I am yet to enjoy that luxury. So for now there will remain a 2 month gap. The events of Peru will have to remain written only in ink in my daily journal.

Now that I am back again in Puerto Madryn, there is more time to be able to write. However, in a couple of days I am on the move again. Bariloche is my destination, where a new YWAM base was opened one year ago. In Bariloche they are starting their first Discipleship Training School, which I will be helping in, and we will also be building a new room onto the house to help out with their need for more accomodation.

So here I am in Puerto Madryn, and three weeks later I’m off again. No wonder I love this life so much.