Reaching the hip-hop culture

Now it has been few weeks back here in Buenos Aires Argentina. It was easy to readapt here.

In the first week we held a hip-hop event at the base. "YWAM Street Battle" was as any other dance battle, only arranged by ywamers, at our local base in YWAM Ituzaingo. Our hall was filled with around 200 dancers as they competed in the styles of break dance, hip-hop dance and house. The event was such and success, the dancers were amazed by the good organization and our love and care. We have been able to continue the good work we’re doing with them.

Final de los crews: AME Crew vs Supercpeones #ywamstreetbattle

A video posted by Compañía De Arte AME (@ame.artcompany) on Aug 28, 2016 at 7:13pm PDT

#ywamstreetbattle Mas fotos en Facebook! Etiquetate a vos y a tus amigos!

A photo posted by Compañía De Arte AME (@ame.artcompany) on Aug 30, 2016 at 6:42am PDT

If you'd like to see more photos please click here.


What else?

• I have been editing some of our videos.
• We inscribed our band Pujahca to a band competition. We’re still waiting for an email wether we passed or not. 
• Yesterday we visited a worship conference. Hiram, our leader was teaching about evangelizing and influencing in every sphere of the society and the guys danced.

Please be praying:

• I’m a bit sick right now. The weather has been variating radically lately and many of us are catching cold. Let’s pray for healing!
• Our project of opening a base in Rosario moves slowly forward. However there’s a man living illegally in the house we are looking forward to move into. Let’s pray he would leave as soon as possible and we wouldn’t need to wait for the police to interact. 

Thankful for all your support folks!

¡Feliz navidad!

I wish merry and blessed Christmas to all you readers, friends and supporters with some news:

written on 21st of December

I'm writing this update on a train. We are leaving Mar del Plata behind and heading for the downtown of Buenos Aires. 

We are in a new season of the school. The classes are behind and this month is dedicated to an artistic investigation. The idea is to get to know cities with strong artistic movement. As we are many in the school we split up. In my team we have six students: Jason, Mora and Lester from Guatemala, Gerald from Nicaragua, Mirja from Finland and Lorena from El Salvador. My amazing co-leaders are Joel (Argentina) and Camila (Chile). As none of the students is Argentine we decided to stay in Argentina because it has lots of stuff to be seen and discovered.

So we just spent two weeks in Mar del Plata, in the touristic city on the coast of Argentina. This was actually my second time there this year! In February we presented our musical over there. This time we stayed at the local YWAM base. It was totally best for us! The guys welcomed us so well and we got to spend really good time together as well. The base is only one block from the beach. To be honest it's a great privilege and blessing to be able to go to the coast. It's totally beautiful and relaxing!

We got to see different shows almost every night: music, dance, theatre, street art etc. We have break dancers in our group and anywhere we went the guys got to dance and the people were super interested. This also opened doors to new contacts and to evangelize people. 

Mirja teaching ballet to the ywamers

For me leading a group to another city is quite a new experience and that's why I'm super thankful that I'm not alone. Together with the other leaders we compliment each others and also share the burden. 

For me the first week was a bit difficult because I got sick. I had strong allergies and right after I got an infection in my throat. So I spent few days in bed with high fever. It wasn't easy because I felt I'm more like a burden than a help. But God was treating my heart. He affirmed me once again and taught me that my leadership or authority don't come by what I achieve but straight from Him.

I'm so thankful to Daddy for these two weeks of care and blessing! Tonight we'll get to the "Capital base" of YWAM. That's the base in the downtown of Buenos Aires where I did my counseling school two years ago. We'll continue our investigation in the centre. However we'll head back to our home base for Christmas and new year. It's better so spend the holidays in a familiar environment as most of the guys spend their first Christmas away from home.

Thank you friends for making this trip possible! Your support has allowed me to join the team and share the financial challenge as well. Your prayers sustain me and drag me deeper to God time after time. 

So let's thank Daddy:

• For healing me and also treating my heart
• For taking so good care of us
• For His grace every morning ;)

Please be praying for us:

• For the financial challenge of the group (they are lately doing their best: selling bread and dancing in the parks to get some money)
• For protection and health
• For wisdom and discerning to everyone in the leadership

internship over!

Hi again!

The Art Internship finished last Monday with and amazing gala night. The program included the dinner and lots of our presentations: four skits, three folklore dances, an acapella song and dance mix of contemporary, hip hop and lots of more. Even though I was a staff member of the internship I was on four of the performances because I had been taking the classes.

The video I made for our graduation

So this week has been a bit lighter, because the art ministry is on hold for two weeks. However there're heaps of stuff to do here in the base: construction, painting etc. Right now I'm writing this in the phone office. Anyway the stress and the busy schedule of the last weeks of the internship took my defenses down and when everything was finished I got sick. The tiredness just took over and even though I tried to help people with constructing etc I ended up to my sick bed. Praise God I'm better already and we even visited one church yesterday and performed. 

So after a week we'll start fully with the ministry. We'll have a small seminar to talk about our vision, plans and goals and to let God guide us in all. This is also because we're having new staff members from the guys of internship.

Just wanted to share these small news. Please be praying for God's direction to our ministry and also for my future plans to visit Finland etc. Thanks for all the supporters once again. My every week is a miracle of God's provision. I eat every meal with a greater gratefulness for recognizing God's favor over my life.

¡Hasta luego!

Outreach in Santa Fe, Argentina

Hi!

I'm back here after a while! The outreach is over and I'm back in Buenos Aires. Tomorrow we'll have the graduation of our Counseling School. Time have gone so fast and I'm just so thankful for God for everything He's done. 

But now, let's see a little bit what happened during the first three weeks of our outreach. 

As I wrote before, our plans to go to Cuba were cancelled. But in the same time God opened another door to go to the Province of Santa Fe in Argentina. So that's where we started our outreach on the 15th of January.

Our team leaders were Oswaldo (El Salvador) and Mayra (Colombia). The school mates with me were Alanna (New Zealand), Raiza (Colombia) and Cecy (Argentina) who joined us one day later. 

The bus to Santa Fe took like five ours. When we got to the terminal the people from the church were already waiting for us. They took us to the place we stayed the three weeks: a big camping outside the city. 

The population of the province of Santa Fe is 3 200 000 and 400 000 of them live in the capital city which is also called Santa Fe. The church we were working in was a big church and had many annexes, smaller Christian communities under it.

The first week we're preparing the camping to receive the huge youth camp. So we did what we know by hard: work duties. We cleaned the bathrooms from the bugs and spiders, built tens of bunk beds, cleaned the kitchen, washed the floors as well as possible. 

During this youth camp of 200 young people we didn't have so much planned schedule but we helped with ministration when possible. Also they asked to lead some games and so we did in two afternoons. God also used us to personal discipleship and ministration and also the youth leaders sent people to us when the noticed that they didn't have tools to help the people with heavy problems. 

After the first week we got really sick, as I wrote before. The water from the well + all the food we ate + hundreds of flies around... made us end up to a hospital. Alanna and Mayra were really week, but I wasn't much stronger either. So for the first time in my life they put me the intravenous drip (three times) and I ended up sleeping in the hospital. 

The health care is free in Argentina and this hospital was actually really nice. But I can't say I liked the experience. After this event we took more care with our water and dishes and stayed well the rest of the time. 

The following weeks we were preaching and teaching in different annexes, the small churches under the mother church. The people were mostly open to our teachings, but sometimes the spiritual atmosphere was REALLY heavy and there was something that made it hard for the people to receive.

I can't remember that I'd preached before in any church... But this time I preached twice in SPANISH..! I also translated Alanna from English to Spanish twice! These were big steps of faith but God was faithful and helped me. I spoke about the intimacy with God and forgiveness. The following time was in a prison and it was something I won't forget easily.

Inside this prison there is many pavilions of about hundred people. Today one of the pavilions is almost totally Christian. That means that most of the prisoners in this pavilion have converted to Christ during their time in the prison! Every day they have a meeting and most of the prisons take part. So I was totally surprised when I entered into this place and saw happy and internally FREE men! It was an honor to preach to this audience and they listened every word I said. They were also really open to receive prayer and discipleship after the preach. That's amazing right?

There was also another camp during our time in Santa Fe. This camp was for the adolescents. We were asked once again to lead some games and also to have two drama workshops. It ended up well.

During the three weeks we also had opportunities to visit different families, to eat well and also encourage and disciple the broken people. Even though we didn't have lots of plans beforehand we were able to see how God used us. 

Reasons to give thanks:

- For our health

- For the revival in Santa Fe and the prisons

- How God used us

Pray for Santa Fe:

- More committed people to work in the churches

- against the sexual abuse - we found out is a strong problem in this area

- For the families to stay together and raise up their children in good environment

Thank you for your support and prayers!

I wish I'll be able to post more soon so you can hear about the rest of the outreach!