Friday, November 14, 2008

Back Home!

My beautiful mother, relaxing on our last day in Nicaragua!

Well, it was an incredible six and a half weeks:
  • Nicaraguan internship, learning lots and experiencing wonderful fellowship with my colleagues from around Latin America
  • Joining John Knox's short-term missions group in Nicaragua, and truly experiencing their (spoken by Pastor Tom and attributed to Nicky Gumbel) philosophy of the proper order of how to do church: BELONG, BELIEVE, BEHAVE. A beautiful community of people.
  • School of evangelism in the Argentine province of Neuquen, where I got to not only lead workshops but participate in ministry after one of the plenary sessions, what a privilege!
  • Driving back to Buenos Aires with Bill and Annie and stopping overnight at their daughter's dairy farm in La Pampa. What a delightful family! Two of their youngest children came out to talk to me while I was doing my devotional, and little Guillermo said, "God is with us all the time. And when we cry, God cries."
Milking cows on the dairy farm.

While Virginia was looking for something in the freezer she pulled out a pig. Luis and Matias decided to pose with it for me. Seeing that I was amazed at a whole pig in a deep freeze, she then pulled out an entire calf...
More craziness from the deep freeze: several fowl frozen together, and a fish stuck to the back! Here showing it off are Guillermo, Paola, and Luis.

I got home on Monday night. At first I thought I was just exhausted, and slept most of the day on Tuesday. Then Wednesday. Then I realized I was sick. Sigh.

Today I'm a bit better but daunted by my to-do pile, six weeks of only partially answering e-mails, and my infant organizational system which requires maturing/work before I throw things into it. Frustrated and a bit depressed, a song was brought to mind that I looked up on YouTube: This is Your Life -- Today is all you've got now...this is your life, are you who you want to be? Today, my desk and my e-mails are my service to God. One step at a time.

Sunset and rainstorm in La Pampa