Luke 10 journey, Argentina! The adventure continues!

The highly awaited highly anticipated, grand Luke 10 journey. You might have heard about it, maybe you have participated in it, maybe you have met a crazy person who have been through it, or maybe you have never heard about this very unique journey!

To try to explain it as simple as possible: it is a journey you as a small group embark on for a few days. Our team did it for 7 days (6 nights). It is based on the principles in Luke 10, where Jesus sent out His disciples. He tells them not to take anything with. No bags, no sandals, no money. He sends them out like lambs amongst wolves. "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore to send out workers into his harvest field." - Luke 10:2

And thus, our journey started... My small team consists of R.P, Marelize, Eileen and myself. After praying, and believing that we are following God's direction, the team decided to go to Argentina. To a city called San Luis. These 4 crazy people headed of the following day, in the rain, out of Asuncion with no money, a pair of clothes, no phones, passports and the excitement of expecting the Lord to do amazing things this week. It will certainly be a blog that could fill pages and pages of detail, but I am going to try and sum up our intense and wonderful experiences!

 

The first day we left our 'base camp' in Asuncion was rainy and scary! Scary because I had NO idea what was laying ahead and the fact that San Luis is 1200km away didn't provide a lot of comfort! After several hours of hitch hiking in the rain, we crossed the border into Argentina by foot. I always thought that it is only criminals that try to cross borders by foot;) But that day, we legally and with the grace of God, without hassle entered Argentina! Again we hitch hiked for hours until we entered a small town called Clorinda. We didn't have place to sleep, so firstly I asked a lady of a hotel if we could sleep on the ground if we wash and clean for her, but she just said: "Impossible!!" Then we asked a friendly security guard, whether we could sleep on the ground in a building which is still under construction. In the corner of the room was old boxes. And yes... I stared at them, walked towards them in great confidence, overcame the fear of making my hands and the rest of my body dirty, and opened those treacherous boxes to make them our mattress for the night. Impossible to describe, but that night was freezing cold. In the early morning hours, we woke up, had a good laugh about the 'bad circumstances' and went back to sleep, if one can call it that. Early morning, we headed out and we passed a travel agency. The suggestion came that we ask for tickets to San Luis, after remembering a previous Luke 10 story. With confidence I went to sit at the travel agency's desk. "Can you please check flight tickets or bus tickets to San Luis?" "Do you have a reference number?" "No." "Do you know from which airport?" "Which one is the closest?" "What is the name under which it might be booked?" I provide all possible names. Nothing. "Who had to book the tickets?" "God" =) By that time we all started laughing and it opened a conversation to the man on the other side of the table. He gave us great direction on hitch hiking, and he even locked up his business, and took us to the main road to the Argentinian Metro Police. They even helped us to get lifts! From there we got a 100km lift, and then waited again for quite long. I told God, that the time is really ticking off now! After an hour and a half, a truck agreed to take us in. He is heading towards Buenos Aires. He can drop us 400km from San Luis! Perfect! So we joined our friend on his journey. Just to mention: this truck had everything!!! A bed, a 'closet', a cooler, a stove, a kettle, a legit lamp, a massive gas bottle and cutlery! You can name it! He even shared his food with us. And after going more that 24 hours without food, even the little bit was a great great blessing! He spent the night at a garage and we had to kill our time outside in the cold because he slept on his bed-a.k.a our seats. After two of the team members tried to have a broken Spanish conversation with a man in Amarok, the man miraculously returned with a map of Argentina. After a while he returned with an English friend. They invited us to the little restaurant and he blessed us with the most amaaazing supper! Rib-eye with chips, bread, crackers and coke!! He even ended it of with a Argentinian cookie for dessert! Wonderful!!

 

After spending time in the map, we decided to join our truck-driving friend to Buenos Aires and head towards the street called San Luis. We arrived in Buenos Aires late afternoon. A man blessed us with a bus card to get to the exact street. The moment was overwhelming! We are driving through the streets of the mighty, powerful, beautiful city of Buenos Aires! It was indescribable! The feeling changed a bit when we were walking up and down in San Luis street, not finding anything! Not a house someone saw in a vision, not a house number that matches up, not a church - nothing! It is getting dark, and we have no where to go. Someone remembered a church up in the big road. We walk all the way up again to this church with the big red sign: 'Jesu Christo es el Senor'! That sounds legit! Jesus is Lord! We enter and in my broken Spanish I explain to the pastor what we are doing, and that we would love to serve them. They took us in, gave us food and told us that a service will start in an hour's time. We are truly grateful! It is warm inside, they are friendly, we got food, and possibly a place to sleep for the night! Perfect!

The service started and it was the definition of 'out of your comfort zone'! It was one of the strangest things I ever experienced! To try and sum everything up: our dirty shoes had to be anointed by the pastor, a few times one of the pastors dramatically 'ordered' us to close our eyes, the pastor chanted and chanted, the other one hit our heads against each others during prayer, Eileen almost fainted, an enormous red cloth was spread over the whole church while people press photo's of loved ones against it for blessings and peopled held up their belongings in order to receive blessings over it. Yes, this was one of the strangest things I have ever encountered. But after the service I experienced a wonderful miracle right in front of my eyes. We stayed until the end to at least thank the pastors for taking us in and giving us food. With the pastor was a girl that could speak a little bit of English. She translated a few sentences and questions from the pastor that preached (or chanted). At that stage I just came from Brazil and my Spanish were not up to standard at all, but I could understand a few things. I could hear him ask her to ask us whether we enjoyed it. She was silent and could not find the english words for that sentence!! I couldn't believe it! She stuttered and couldn't say anything. The Lord protected me from lying! It was one of the coolest things I ever experienced! I could quickly change the subject, and after one of the ladies from the church gave me a very African leopard print scarf (which was a perfect pillow for the rest of the journey) after I just complimented her, we left the church - yes, we are out in the wild again...

 

It is just after 20:00 and we have no where to go in the gigantic city of Buenos Aires! We looked and asked around for an evangelical church, and after much walking we found a beautiful old church! And no one is home! It felt like family who abandoned you. We planned to sleep in a hospital-it is safe and there would be waiting rooms. We probably almost walked 9000 km just to end up with a plan that didn't work out. At about 00:30 we made our home in a silent corner in Burger King. At about 1:30the security guard kindly asked us to evacuate our safe shelter because they are closing. With thick eyes and a silent tongue I walked out with my head hanging low. Operation: scouting for a new shelter started! We ended up in a 24 hour Mc Donald's. We made turns to sleep and we made it through the night together with other homeless people spending the night there. We had interesting stories with people actually saying sorry because they woke us up singing a Soccer world cup song in Mc Donald's. How polite! =)

The following day we went back to the evangelical church. Today someone was at home!  He didn't really welcome us and only said that the service is the following day. He gave us a pamphlet of another church that had a service on the Saturday. With the help from our miracle map book we could walk (almost another 9000km) to the church. On our way there, I had many questions! Why would God bring us here just to make us return to Paraguay with no story, with no new contacts with our brothers and sisters in another country! Is this even where the Lord wanted us? We arrived early at the big white church and the two men who was there said we can return later, there will be someone that can speak English. We went to wait out the time in another Burger King and it was a kind of stress feeling you have before a big hockey match! Is this where the Lord wants us? We waited for the time to pass, and we entered the church. Two friendly men welcomed us in. They introduced us to some English people. We were escourted into the church and seated in the front. They gave us earphones for translation, and when the first Spanish Hillsong worship started in the huge imressive church, I was overwhelmed!!! I had feelings of peace, joy and contentment. And I stood in awe of God's faithfulness! How could I have doubted in His faithfulness, in His timing! His timing is perfect!! Every message that was given that day was directly related to what was happening on this journey and showed how God directly wanted to speak to me. Messages about how God turns a situation around at an instance, like with Paul and Silas in jail. How we should live a life that shows our faith, a life that is out there and a life that we live boldly - living with faith! And how God is our Shepherd, as described in Psalm 23. It was overwhelming!! After many questions from the leadership after the first service and us staying for all three services, the youth pastor from Canada gave his service to one of the other pastors, and he met us in the foyer. He invited us to another room where there was a table ready for us! We had pizza and coke!! One of the best meals ever! The pastor was wonderful towards us. He was a missionary when he was younger and have even been to South Africa! They booked us into a cheap hotel for the night! Wow!!! And then he opened his wallet and gave us EVERYTHING inside of it! What?! We had our first shower after four days and comfortable beds in our little hotel room! It was wonderful! Breakfast was included and we feasted on croissants bread and coffee!! Crazy! On the Sunday we joined the church and actually had to stand in the slow moving line that bent around the corner to enter the church orderly. Yes, the church was PACKED! It was another beautiful service translated by an amazing guy called Nate from the USA. After church in the busy streets, we headed towards the big street where the Soccer World Cup final will be shown on a big screen. We were very excited! By a very big 'coincidence' planned by God, we bumped into Nate and his girlfriend who doesn't understand English. They suggested that we go to the street together because the plans they had were cancelled by their friends. By what chance?? So we spend one of the best days of my life with Nate and Gemina and a group of friends from the church. We watched the final on a street corner through the window of a shop because everything was too packed to enter! It was insane! Indescribable! That night after they lost, it was very emotional in the streets of Argentina! Even the subway was open for everyone to use because the workers went home! The group of new friends blessed us with Burger King, and with our newly met brothers and sister we shared a meal together, sharing about our journey, sharing crazy stories and sharing in our faith and our common denominator Jesus Christ! They prayed for us, we prayed for them and it was as if we knew each other for years! These young students and musicians pulled money together and gave it to us! It was so humbling! It was as if I had to greet old friends! Gemina and Nate offered that we stay at their apartments for the night, and so RP went with Nate, and the three girls went to sleep at Gemina's place again with a shower and place to sleep! Blessed!

 

The next morning we were invited to have breakfast with Maria Ines - one of the most interesting and greatest woman of faith I have ever met! She blessed us with stories, testimonies and a wonderful breakfast! She suggested that we don't hitch hike the 1500km back to Asuncion, but that we just go and ask for a ticket! Because God's children should ask! To make a very long story short: Nate left us with Maria, Maria took us to the bus station, stopped in her tracks and said that God told her to leave us here. With shared tears between Maria and I, we said goodbye to the powerful soldier of God! Hours and hours of time will be summarised in these few sentences: we asked for tickets for four people, with money that is (on special price) just enough for two people. The word 'impossible' was spoken more regularly than any other word! We were very positive and after a suggestion from a ticket selling man, we reached out towards the South African embassy who then wanted to call our parents who didn't know we were in Argentina and then made copies of our passport. We returned to the enormous bus station and tried again. Like an angel appearing in a movie, Nate walked towards us! "How on earth did you find us??" "The Lord told me to come here." After a good Spanish explanation of Nate, the people from various different bus ticket booths who witnessed this spectacle of 4 young people who wanted to catch a bus with half of the money, started to contribute money towards these crazy people! We were stunned!! After everything that Nate already did for us, he contributed the rest! We had 15min to get onto the bus! We ran downstairs, sang a song with Nate to raise money to give back to him. We threw the money in his bag, ran through the security check-in, and onto the bus! Just in time! Luckily we didn't have luggage! =) We thoroughly enjoyed the overnight bus with water and cooldrink and an occational coffee! We arrived back in Asuncion safely, and with a whole bag of stories to tell to our fellow team mates who also returned safely by the protection of our Father!

 

This was one of the most crazy, wildest, challenging adventures I experienced with my Father and Friend! My fellow team mates were wonderful! It was such a privilege to embark on and experience this journey with them! RP, Marelize and Eileen, you are legends!

The Lord has specifically taught me what it means to be brave, strong and courageous! To trust in Him! To step out in faith! To trust in His specific timing! To be excited about the adventures He has planned for us! And the picture of what I have in my head of how things should turn out, is not always the coolest and best way that it should happen! God knows what He wants, and we can just trust Him!! After all, He is the One who created everything!

And yes, after I doubted it terribly at one stage, it turned out that there was more than one christian in Buenos Aires! A whole heap of them - passionately burning for our Lord Jesus! May I also forever be part of this burning flame of the church across the world, standing up for my fellow brothers and sisters, welcoming and taking them in, having fellowship in the powerful name of Jesus! Participating in a faith that may sometimes seem crazy! But I am part of the adventure He has for us, and I want to live in it - passionately, crazy and in tune with my powerful Father who still has great adventures planned for me!