This page is dedicated to sharing trip photo's, testimonies, funny stories, insights, and team member profiles.The first page you see will be most current, and the further back you scroll the older the posts.

On the most current trip, Will Hughes, Jessica Mcfaul, Stephen Millheim, Audry Van Nuland, David Henson Royall, Christine Parks, and Rachel Rojas will be working in a city called Mendoza supporting a ministry called Compassion With Action. This Mission provides a soup kitchen in one of poorest neighborhoods, working primarily with youth and children. We are super excited to go back and continue investing in relationships there.

Please feel free to explore as we will be putting up pictures, video and blogging about the experience.

HOME!

Thank you all for your prayers! We were able to purchase plane tickets for $120 each for Wednesday that provided sufficient time to get out and back in through customs before the flight home. Its no seafood on the coast as planned, but at least we had passage over. Also, after some being stubborn at the bus terminal we got a full refund for the previously purchased bus tickets which helps knocks down the already miraculously inexpensive plane tickets. Bill (our missionary host) says we pass the language/cultural adaptivity test for second timers.

All of us have made it home to our final destinations and are pleased to be with family and friends. All of the luggage made it safe and sound also. God provided, and through even the little details of our final trek home made Himself evident. Thank you for covering us with prayers, they were answered! We are all looking forward to sharing stories and pictures with you.

-Will

Stuck for the time being…

Turns out that our adventure to the bus station this morning was for not. The pass is closed, and has been for several days, due to snow. Please pray that it opens for us by tomorrow morning, we have a long bus ride to make into Chile before catching the flight home on Wednesday. There are friends waiting to receive us in Chile where we hope to have some time to debrief and reflect on what God has been doing these last few months.

-Will

Beginning of the End.. Last day in Argentina

Well here it is, the last day in Argentina has arrived. We are all full of mixed emotions, we look forward to our debriefing in Chile and seeing our friends and family back at home, at the same time knowing we will miss these dusty streets, the Andes in the skyline, and the warm smiles of all our barrio friends. Tomorrow we leave for Chile, pray that the pass is open!!!!! Yesterday it was closed because of snow.

Also, an answer to prayer- Audrey has been quite ill this week, she wasn’t able to keep in any food for several days and was forced to stay bed-ridden. After many doctor visits and one trip to the hospital she is feeling much better. We are all very relieved she has gained strength and is full of lots of energy!!!

This last week started out a little slow, but things began to get packed in. Will finished up work on the sound booth for the church. The rest of the guys have been working relentlessly on constructing a brick oven for asados (i forgot the actual name of it) in the barrio. Neither one of them have had much experience in brick-laying, but are doing a fantastic job learning. The Youth Center we have spent so much time on, received its final touches this week. Hours were spent drawing and painting animals and creatures with googly eyes on the walls for the preschool that will be held there. We also spent a lot of time making cards, passing out baby clothes, and throwing an awesome party for all the kids in the barrio. We have gotten to say good-bye to a lot of friends we will miss, and have stayed up much to late chatting and eating with friends.

As we begin to wrap up our two months we find both our english and our spanish to be failing as we struggle to find the words to say good bye. God has done extraordinary things in the last two months and we look forward to what he still has in store. Today we have one more Horita Feliz, our last time seeing all the kids in the barrio. Pray for this time and for all the good-byes we still have to make. Pray for safety and protection on our trip to Chile and as we make our way home. Also, pray for our time in Chile that it would be restful and an excellent time for debriefing.

We love you all and can’t wait to see you soon!!!

-christine

Missions: a reflection from David

After getting back from the camp with the barrio kids, I wrote this email to my girlfriend. Sorry for the length, but that’s what happens when I really reflect on something. At the end is some of the encouragement she sent back.

Me:

You know how we often talk about mountaintop experiences and valley experiences? Well we did that, both literally and spiritually. Potrerillos was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in my life. We did hiking and horseback riding and just sitting with a cup of coffee in a surreal backyard encased in ice watching the mountains, waiting til night to see a different set of stars, the milky way, and all sorts of sweet stuff. (Then the full moon rose and ruined the fun.) We were without technology, stuck in the mountains with people we love and playing cards and Bibles, an easy place to want to stay forever.

Lavalle, almost immediately afterward, was the opposite. Being a desert, it had it’s own beauty which was distinct from mountain in almost every way. Just about every plant wanted to kill you with 3 inch thorns. The sunset was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, the colors going explicitly from a deep deep orange to yellow to green to aqua to blue. With almost no electricity
for miles, the stars we saw on the mountains couldn’t even compare. It was the darkest night I’ve possibly ever seen in my life. We lived in a house (the guys at least) that the res team last time poured concrete for, us 3 dudes sleeping by a fire we built which lost its flame halfway through the night so we got really really cold eventually.  Stephen and i dug a 6’ poop
hole for someone’s soon-to-be bathroom. We made fires for homemade bread and gifted, slaughtered goats. We even had a bonfire with guitar awesome sesh.

During the day, we walked miles and miles on the roadless terrain for blisterful miles to visit families. Despite the below freezing nights, some of these families slept 15 people under a giant tarp, raising animals instead of making a living. The kids were scared for their lives from us,
and we had to convince them to take our stuffed animal gifts. The older boys and the family men would just just ride off on the family horse and pretend to do something. There was a 13 year old girl who was 9 months pregnant who was painfully and heartbreakingly ashamed and shy. We prayed for her and her family, but they didn’t seem to listen. Everyone who lives in this desert
lives there by choice, we were told, but it was hard to see those reasons. YWAM has been working, both with permanent missionaries, frequently visiting Mendocinos, and short term visiting teams from various countries, for probably a decade or two, with their ministry listed as a failure on paper. In these years they can claim only 3 changed lives for Christ. This morning in our devotional I started to tear up as i described the pain that it brings me to see all the work put into almost nothing.

The camp was something also very special. I had fears going in related to not working well with kids, not knowing how to talk to bullies (which most of them are), stuff like that. Turns out all you have to do is beat them up (futbol and rugby) and scare them and they’ll cling to you like kittens. I still suck at working with kids, don’t know how to handle people who don’t even pretend to care when important stuff comes up. But with a couple of them (prompted by discussion material), I got to know a bit of their future dreams and their fears related to them. Now I just cannot stand the fact that I’m leaving in 2 weeks, and might see them only a handful of times more, and then they’re back to not knowing who to confide in. It takes someone really investing in a relationship with them to make a difference, all this mission work, the construction, soup kitchen, vbs seems so futile in comparison (even though I know that God will use it for future
relationship building). Our camp should have been done months ago with our relationships growing from then on.

Today we dropped angeline off at the bus station for 14 hrs in bus to buenos aires and 14 hrs in plane back to the states. Now we’ve got two weeks left and we’re scrapping for projects, possibly gonna do some stuff around the church, which would be fun and good for the church, but i dunno, i wanna go back into the darkness of lavalle or getting to know these kids more,
whatever that means.

Missions is so much more complex than it seems. That’s the lesson I’ve learned. I was barfing some of this to my dad before we left for camp and he sent me a passage that encouraged me for the camp. It’s 2 Tim 1:6-12.

6 For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 7 For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. 8 So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner.But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, 9 who has saved us and calledus to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 11 And of this gospel I was appointeda herald and an apostle and a teacher. 12 That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.

The idea of suffering (in spirit) and not being ashamed is what my mind is fixating to as I think about the fruitless work in lavalle and our inability to successfully follow up with these barrio kids. I dunno, I’m pretty sure you went through similar stuff in haiti, but i’m just having my mindset changed in regards to missions. It seems so much more futile but so much
more necessary. It’s a stupid argument but that’s what’s going on in my head. Really I’m just learning to trust God instead of make stuff happen by my power, but I suck at that. Missions is so much more than the works we do, but those very works are necessary as a catalyst and as a light in the darkness; it’s weird.

Maria:

 I understand how painful that stuff is. I really do. But it is not your job to save these people. God sent you to Argentina, in 2011, for two months. I believe he wants this stuff to suck so that an uncontrollable fire will rage in your heart. So that you won’t let people or circumstances stand in between you and the souls that need to hear the message of Christ that you carry. So that your heart will forever hurt and long and fight for the kingdom of heaven, because you don’t belong here. We’re not at home here. Nobody is. We were created to worship and be in the presence of the living God, and you know that truth, and God is using you to communicate that truth whether or not you see it. The truth is, you don’t have to see these people come to Jesus and you don’t have to be the one leading them in the salvation prayer. You do have to say the words and show the love and be the incredible person God has given you the ability to be, show, and say. It’s out of your hands, and that sucks, but it would suck a lot worse if the salvation of human souls was up to you to accomplish in a few days.  I want your heart to rage for more. I want you to burnnn inside when you see injustice. I want you to not be satisfied with a comfortable life, but to chase after a life that glorifies and screams the name of Jesucristo to people that God has equipped you to minister to. These experiences are building towards something, I promise. Being not okay is a good, good thing sometimes, and i see God doing very good things inside you. 

I like mountains…

…and Mendoza, Argentina is a good place to like them from. Although the city sits on the edge of the enormous plains of central Argentina, it is a dramatic edge indeed. The western horizon is dominated by mountains. Immediately to the west of the city lies the tallest section of the longest mountain range in the world. Stretching 4,300 miles from Venezuela to the Tierra del Fuego, the Andes are taller than any other mountain range outside of Asia. Less than 70 miles from the Mendoza city limits stands Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in Argentina, the Andes, South America, and both the southern and western hemispheres.

At almost 23,000 feet above sea level, Aconcagua is the second highest of the “Seven Summits” (the tallest mountains on each continent) and a target for mountaineers from all around the world. As the closest major city, Mendoza is the usual staging point for expeditions to the mountain. The trailhead is located on the same highway that we took during our bus ride from Santiago.

In the middle of the beautiful but inhospitable terrain between Mendoza and Aconcagua lie a lake and city called Potrerillos. They are surrounded on all sides by mountains and are a popular place for Mendocinos (citizens of Mendoza) to go to hike, ski, fish, and otherwise enjoy the beauty of the area. Recently, we had the opportunity to take a weekend off in a cabin there owned by members of the church we are working with here in Mendoza.  The cabin sits at the foot of 19,500 foot Cerro Plata (Silver Mountain) and is surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen.

We arrived on Saturday and, after looking at some surreal ice sculptures caused by the sprinklers, took a hike up a nearby hill to get a better look at the surrounding area. We saw wild horses, beautiful mountains everywhere, and three enormous Andean condors. I also added “climb Cerro Plata” to my bucket list. After we got back we ate a delicious asado that Will had prepared and then spent the afternoon relaxing in the shadow of these incredible mountains. The next day we split into two groups with some of us hiking to another nearby vantage point and some going for a horseback ride before we packed up and caught the bus back to Mendoza.

I like mountains, and it’s hard to think of another place I would have rather spent our few days off. The Andes are impressive, incredible, intimidating, and beautiful and I hope I have a chance to go explore them even more someday.

- Stephen

A Thought From Audrey

How do I put into words the things that I have experienced this week? There have been so many extremes, so many new experiences, that when I begin to reflect on them, I become lost in my thoughts. From the hiking and horse back riding in the mountains, to the miles and miles and miles of walking in the sand, to chanting nin nin, ja ja, ninja ninja, zooooombies with a multitude of small children, I have seen God in so many new places, so many new perspectives this week. In the mountains I was amazed by the beauty of his creation, overwhelmed with his awesomeness, and the feeling that he was so close. In the desert I had to look hard to see him in the lives of the people, in the desolate but beautiful landscape. I had to trust that He is moving in ways that we may not be able to see in just a couple days. And in camp I played hard, loved on kids, and listened to the testimonies of children who have stories that break my heart.

In some ways, this week feels like it has been so long, and in others it feels so short. I know that I will be processing the things that I saw, heard, and learned for a long time. But I do know that God is awesome, and that He is everywhere, in every walk of life even if we have to look hard in order to see Him.

Thank you for your prayers and thoughts we love you!

Audrey

7/26 a note from Christine

Is it possible to have so much happen in a week? It is hard for me to explain because I myself do not yet understand. To go from seeing the majesty and awesomeness of God in the Andes, to the very depths of brokenness in the desert. A place full of such extremes in temperature and beauty. At night, as you stepped out into the inky darkness, you could feel your very bones begin to freeze. As you gazed up at the  vast immensity of space it was as if heaven itself were staring back. From beauty to suffering. With the sun rise, heat and depravity was revealed. We hiked for miles through sand to visit families; homes filled with poverty and darkness, fear and lack of hope. It was terrifying to feel like the only light in such a dark place, but we were able to love these people and make their children laugh. Just as we thought we had been stretched to the limit; exhausted and dirty, we repacked our dirty clothes into our muddy backpacks to leave early the next morning for kids camp. To love and encourage the barrio children, who have seen and experienced so much hardship, was such an incredible blessing. We were able to pour into these children more joy and love than they have perhaps ever known. To create a place of safety and trust, where they could be the kids they were made to be. As they began to open up and share their stories, their hopes and dreams, we were able to grasp even just a fraction of their lives. It was amazing to see God beginning to move in their lives, and an incredible joy to watch them laugh and play. It was tiring to be around so much energy, and exhausting to push kids on swings for so many hours, but it was good. Good to see God move and good to love so incredibly. Please pray that in these next two weeks we would be able to further develop these relationships that we have started. Also, that we would be intentional and have energy to keep going. Yesterday, Angelene began her long trip home, so pray for safety in her travels and for peace. Thank you all so much for your prayers!

We love you lots

-christine

7/20- A note from Angelene

This is the kind of sky you believe to be all the way to the ground-a bus winding an hour’s worth of switchbacks to the place where the blue seeps into everything, so crisp you taste the color in your lungs. Your idea of horizon is jarred because that invisible line is obscured by the water-color worthy peaks in every direction and, mostly, because you can’t begin to imagine so many shades of sky in one place. These stars even seem to be reaching to the tips of your fingers, so close you want to collect them in a mason jar with a cloth top, like when you lived in Georgia and read by the flickering light of the lightning bugs during storms that shook the window panes. The crackling of the icicles on the fence echoes here like the lightning in your memory—the sound so penetrating because you know you and the eight others inside are the only ones for miles to hear it. Sometimes the silence is so profound that you want to step on the crunchy grass to be sure you haven’t gone deaf from the pureness of it. When the sun is up you make coffee in the chipped yellow mugs with a sock and some grounds stored in an old jam jar, your hands wrapped around the cup like mittens and your nose wrapped around the smell like an apple pie on the window sill. You climb the closest peak, the ridge covered in brown brush and cacti shaped like watermelon, panting every three steps for the thin air in your lungs. If you had any breath to catch, it would be stolen back by the sight over your sage-brush ridge; snow pluming from the tips of the Andes, so high up the clouds melt into the faces of black rock and white gusts, you standing in the foothills wondering how you went so long without believing in God. Because He is here, you know it, you are more sure of it than the time you went to the Met in New York City and stared for hours at the Rembrandt there, until the place closed and you made friends with the security guard that walked you out. God is here, that line between the ground and the sky, only here the line doesn’t seem to matter; you can feel that collision so powerfully in your bones you feel you have taken wing. You are walking around in it, in the sky, and God is that collision you feel—that line between divinity and depravity, and you know now that you’ve been walking it your whole life. But here the cabin with the cast-iron stove rests firmly in the foothills of divinity, with the people you love playing cards and drinking hot chocolate melted on the gas stove.

So you carry the divinity with you when you go back down the mountain, back to the place where the line is more obscure and the collision hits more like a punch in the gut than a sprouting of wings—to the place where you spend hours a day scrubbing walls covered in soot because someone disregarded love for a water heater and burnt the place to the ground. You carry the divinity in a secret corner of your heart, to be pulled out when the depravity hits you in the face; when you walk a mute six-year-old to her home after an hour of songs about Jesus and meet her father, a man as big as a house with dead eyes and a bottle in one hand. You carry divinity to share as a testimony that beauty can exist, if not in the same place as darkness than at least alongside it. You share divinity, you hold it up, for yourself but mostly for others, when you are surrounded by depravity.

We are accustomed to praising God when the divinity is as evident as the mountains outside our window, but we must remember to praise Him even in the depravity, remember to hold tightly to His glory when it is less evident. When we do, it makes it easier to find the divinity tucked into the creases of the depravity we are too familiar with—we start finding it in the joy of holding a child’s hand as they stand in line for the daily offering of bread and warm milk, in the evidence of hard work seen in putting paint on walls formerly covered in soot. We begin to see God in the soccer field surrounded by piles of rubble, hear Him in the Spanish songs sung at VBS. He begins to make Himself manifest in our lives when we are willing to be filled with is divinity, when we are willing to spill what we know of the glory of God into the lives of strangers. Sometimes God allows us to be refilled; He quite literally carries us to the top of the mountain and takes our breath away.

Divinity and depravity; lessons from the mountaintop.

-Angelene

from the mountain top to the valley.

This last week we had a mountain top experience. Literally. We were blessed by some friends offering their Andes cabin to us for a weekend retreat get away. We packed our bags and loaded up some buses and made the trek out there. The view was literally breathtaking (We will put up some photos later to prove it). We were able to reflect, rest, drink mate, hang out with our new friends, and revel in God’s creation. The hike to the view point was long and thorny, but once to the top, the view was beyond amazing. Our team was able to encounter God and share how he was revealing himself to us through his glorious creation. It was a much needed retreat. My favorite part of the weekend was more relational. Our in country supervisor told us that for the next 2 months (and always but especially those) we are to be missionaries at all times. This weekend I would like to say that was our focus, but we really lapsed into taking a rest, and hanging out with the 2 Argentina ladies who went with us, Vicki and Eva (both are heading out to camp with us in a few hours). Vicki is Eva’s friend who when we first met her seemed cold and distant. I sat next to her on the bus both there and back and really got to see her open up. She ended up being hilarious and sassy (a word that we are still trying to translate into spanish,.. she still doesnt get it and might be offended. I am trying to explain to her I think it is a good thing! ha!) The ride back after a marvelous weekend was beyond moving. The first thing she did was sit down on the bus and apologize to me. She said that when we first got there she didnt want to be our friends and now felt convicted. She said that this weekend God had done something in her heart and she wanted to change and be free, like how she saw that we were. She shared more of her story with me, which is heartbreaking and I would appreciate your prayers for her family. She is struggling to trust God with a really hard situation and this is causing her to run from him. I was able to pray with her and make a new deep friendship. She said that our team means so much to her now and she will never forget the impact this weekend had on her, getting to see us interact and point her to Christ more. We were just having fun, and felt very humbled when we found out how God had chosen to use us in her life like that. He is so good! We will get to hang out with Vicki some more before we leave, so pray that we can continue to bless her.

We came down from the mountain and went straight to the valley (Lavalle is a desert community.. literally translates to “the valley”). And boy, was it a valley experience. We just got back late last night and as a team are still processing what we saw, lived, and experienced in the families we met there. But in short, the thing that stuck out to me were the extremes of the place. The freezing cold in the morning and the heat of the afternoon. The vivid sunrise, and sunset, and the vast sky of stars, so close you feel like you are breathing and swimming in them. There is no form of comfort you are used to. You get the water from outside, you go to the bathroom outside, you make everything from scratch and hope to catch the guy on his motorcycle selling stuff the one time he drives on the main road a day.

The family we stayed with were beleiveres and had joy and hope coming out from their smiles and eyes. Most of the other families we visited did not have Christ. Their vacant eyes and their hard living situations broke our hearts. We met a family whose 17 year old daughter had just given birth and whose 13 year old daughter was just about to. We asked Gabi (our guide whose family  lives out there) if they knew who the father’s where and she said it was a shameful thing that nobody was talking about. Most families had many kids and a tiny house to hold them all. They were precious and dirty and looking for love. We got to hold a gathering and invited all the kids and families to come hear a story and learn about God and eat some homemade facturas (YEah, I learned how to make them from scratch then put them in an outdoor fire wood oven to cook them, no big deal!) and hot chocolate.

God did alot in our hearts in the desert. We, however, have short turn around to recover as we head out to camp this morning. 3 days with children from the barrio, these crazy kids who are desperate for love, especially Christ’s. Pray that we overcome our physical and emotional tiredness and that we can share Christ’s love freely with the kids who come. Pray that God gives our team energy and rest and the ability to keep going. WE need his help this weekend, as we will not find it in ourselves to serve willingly after 3 nights of freezing cold and little sleep. What a cool way for God to bring glory to himself.

There is so many more stories that are not told in this post, I hope to have everyone share once we get back from camp. Thank you for your prayers, they are felt everyday.

- jess

7/12. la mitad - A note from Jess

Four weeks gone. Today marks the half way point of our trip. We have 4 weeks behind us and  4 weeks before us. Thirty-one days left to serve the people in these streets that have let us into their lives and worked their way into our hearts.
We sat around a table yesterday afternoon and continued to search our hearts as a team and challenge each other to keep going further and continuing to be movable for Christ. Praise God for all he has revealed to us in our time here. It is obvious through the theme in our conversations with people we meet, devotionals we read and sermons we read that God is trying to tell us something. Something about compassion, how it differs from pity. Something about how God is a God nearby and not far off; who suffered WITH us not just for us. Pray for us as He continues to reveal what that means for our team as we strive to connect to people with deep, deep hurts across cultural and spiritual divides. Pray that our team would be encouraged and challenged even more in our service in our 2nd half of the trip, that we would not grow weary or complacent. Pray for Will and myself as we lead this wonderful group closer to God’s heart and closer to what it means to live a life of mission.

Four weeks behind. We got to put the polishing paint, varnish, and detergent on the youth center/new kindergarten in the barrio today!! This has been one of our main focuses since coming, so it was bittersweet (okay, way more sweet than bitter) walking out of there from our last full day of work tonight. It looks like a completely different building than the one we encountered 4 weeks ago. Praise God for his faithfulness and the story of him we get to share through the renovation and restoration of this building to the families in the barrio. Our trip takes a shift now to more relational focus, and today we got to spend some really sweet time with families we encountered in the streets who came to look at our work. So many of them are in very tough circumstances. Pray that we could continue to deepen our relationships with them and their children, and that they would come to know the Savior who renovates and restores lives.

Four weeks ahead. One of our own, Rachel Rojas had been studying down here in Mendoza for 6 months and we saw her off at the airport today. On the day that marked our halfway point, it was a poignant and timely reminder of how quickly our time will pass here and how much time left we have to make an impact. Friends who had become family came and surrounded Rachel with hugs and prayers and tears before she left. We as a team felt like outsiders looking into the fragile and beautiful relationships that Rachel had been forming in her time here, and it spurred me on to keep using my time, my love and my relationships intentionally while here. Two months may not seem long to some, or to others it may seem an eternity. Either way, God can build so many beautiful things in bringing people together in 2 months. Coming up we have many outreaches we are planning. Kids camp (ages 7-12), futbol (soccer, for all you gringos) tournament, and jovenes (youth) outreach meetings, just to name a few. Thank you for all your prayers, we could not be doing what we are doing without them. To God be the glory.