I have been thankful to be home at this time. This past week of being here has been a great blessing. I was able to see my niece play some softball games, spend time with my mother on my birthday and stay with my grandparents. I have been catching up with some friends along the way. Also I have been getting some business done. I sent in my camera to get repaired. They have already sent me a UPS receipt saying that the camera is on its way back, hopefully by tomorrow. I don’t know whether they fixed it or not but it could be worse. Another process that I am trying to work out getting a new phone. Honestly this process is absurd and sucks. I am trying to be with Sprint so that my plan can be connected with my work. My trouble lies in my credit. I have virtually no credit. They won’t let me have a phone without putting in a $500 deposit (that will be held for 13 months). I looked at some of my options and I have decided to get a credit card through my bank. Of course, to get a credit card with a good interest rate you have to have good credit. Again that means I have to take another hard road of having a credit card with interest of nearly 20%! What can I say? You got to do what you got to do. My first option was not to get a credit card. My personal opinion is to stay away from them, but getting a personal loan was not the best way to build my credit at this time. Once everything is settled I will likely get a new phone number.
My current plans are to have some speaking engagements while at home, try to set up a fundraiser, then prepare to go back to Dayton. I look to going home no later than July 19. I will be getting back to Dayton just in time to prepare for the tour of events. Events will begin in September and go through Thanksgiving. We will be competing with HS football but it is not too big of an obsticle. Greater is He within me that He that is in the earth.
That’s right, we finally made it back to the states!
It would be great to start out by telling you the stories of people that I met and what all I encountered along the way, but I am not going to do that in this blog. I am going to try and accomplish what is usually hard for a guy to do. I want to express some emotions about the trip and being back so let me know if this works.
Traveling by plane is a great way to travel fast, but as for my body it doesn’t like it too much. I have a little bit of nausea. It wasn’t bad, just the take offs and landings. Once there we took an old bus to get to the orphanage. It was a rugged bus. That didn’t bother me but the fact that all the vehicles ran on diesel didn’t help my lungs. If you understand that I am stubborn and resilient than these things don’t get to me. Now we arrive at the Hogar De Ninos Refugio Del Rey aka The King’s Refuge Kids Home. We were greeted with kids that were excited to see us. I had the same feelings back. I was ready to have fun and be a big brother to these kids. During the course of 2 weeks there I did just that. Some of the young boys were hanging off me and the girls were having fun with me. I was had mixed emotions. I knew that this time was only a fraction of the trip and that there are 5 more weeks ahead, but I also knew that these kids need older “brother” to be there.
Like a guy can so easily do, I compartmentalized that time and looked forward to Mendoza. This base that I would be helping was 5 years old but the ministries that help build it have been in process for a couple decades. My group was only there a couple days and we were off to stay in El Campo. What is El Campo? At first we didn’t know that term. We knew it as the desert, but the word desert is a word of curse. The people that have been doing the ministry know the people that live there and they all call it El Campo. So what does it mean? In English terms it means country side, but that doesn’t translate correct so we left it as El Campo. The people there are very hospitable. I have not witnessed that volume of welcomeness by anyone in the states. The best I have encountered is the phrase “make yourself at home,” and unless I really know the people I don’t transition to that mode easy. We got to meet several families and each time was a huge blessing. Back at the base we developed friendships with some of the DTSers. They had great hearts and all had boldness to share Jesus. Many of them made impressions on me. There were former drug dealers, who radically had their hearts changed, and others that are funny, others that traveled lots and others that were the sweetest people ever. I look forward to meeting them all again.
I think the last thing I will comment on is how the “tourist” time went. I was able to take in some history before the whole trip ever started but so much more about individual cities came from the locals. I was able to encounter spiritual strongholds in cities and understand some of why Argentina is the way it is today. They have so much influence of other cultures but little of there own ancestry. It was amazing to see how they lived and what type of things transform their culture. I expect God to continue moving and shaking through that place as he has already started.
