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SADDLEBACK KSG TEAM ARGENTINA 2018
Blog Post June 20, 2018 – ARGENTINA FLAG DAY
Today is a public holiday in Argentina – Flag Day. To honor Flag Day, we are wearing our Argentina shirts that have the Argentine flag on it and helping the Tigre Church with their Flag Day celebration this afternoon.
This morning we met in the lobby at 9:30 to walk to a local café for breakfast and devotions. We broke up into small groups again, with 4 per table, with the only rule being that friends and family could not sit together. We did 2 devotions again today and we are now caught up. The kids led the small group devotionals this morning. Kyle liked leading the study – since he had to lead, it made him really feel like part of the team. When Jack was asked whether it was a pain or a glory to lead, he said both.
Tuesday’s Devotional was about Perseverance. The Scripture was Hebrews 12:1-3 and Galatians 6:9. Perseverance is going past our own limits and relying on God’s strength in God’s timing. We talked about what was slowing us down in our perseverance on this trip, and the main answers were lack of sleep and lack of personal quiet time with God. At the end of this devotional, we sang “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”.
Wednesday’s Devotional was about the concept of pouring ourselves out and filling our cup. We discussed what it meant to fill our cup. Some thought it meant that we need to do to be able to give out love to others, so we need to make sure to have our quiet time with God to be able to do this. Others mentioned that they need some down time, not spent on electronics or social media, but time to rest and refresh ourselves to have the energy to give more to others. The Scripture for Wednesday is Isaiah 40, where if we wait on the Lord, He will renew our strength. We took a waiting on the Lord math test to see how many hours we spend in the Word and with God compared to sleeping, working, playing sports, relaxing, etc. Some of the kids were very particular about making sure the hours added up, and they were bothered when they didn’t because categories were missing – like Morgan pointed out that there was a category for playing sports, but not playing music. We discussed what we need to do to spend more time waiting on the Lord, such as spending less time on social media and video games and more time reading the Bible. In order to want to spend more time with God, we need to start our day with God – giving Him our first fruitsrather than the leftovers. We also need to ask God to help us make spending time with God a habit.
After devotions, we came back to the hotel and the children made cards for Tigre, Saddleback Buenos Aires and others who have helped us on this trip, like La Popular, the restaurant down the street that has helped us with lunches, and Jose our driver.Then we had a lunch of salads and sandwiches which we made ourselves from meat, cheese and bread from the grocery store (Joy’s idea, and it saved us a lot of money and ended up having enough food left over to have dinner).
At 1:00 we boarded the bus to Tigre Church. Once we got there, we were put to work right away, blowing up and tying ribbon on balloons, tying ribbon on bags of candy. Most of the kids and many of the adults helped make pastries (“dessert empanadas”) out of dough and a filling of either quince or sweet potato. Kyle, Katia, Addi and Jack had an assembly line going, with one kid wetting the dough, another putting the filling on the dough, another folding, then another using a fork to close the sides. They worked really hard. Tracy, Liz, Myra and Jessica were also helping make the pastries.
After that there was some free time. Then many of the adults were greeters. Kris, Sean, John, Joy and Myra greeted children as they came to the celebration, Jessica, Tracy and Liz handed out pastries, Lisa helped at the drink station, pouring hot chocolate and apple and orange juice, and Tim ran drinks back and forth to the kitchen. Tim also took some hot chocolate to a police officer down the street, and after that she called her mother and child and they came to the celebration.
One of the Tigre volunteers (Alan) was the mascot – a fox in an Argentina soccer jersey. He stood outside and kids started pouring into the church. There were 460 people at the celebration, and the church was packed. They sang the Argentine National Anthem, Correo Kids did several dances, there were contests, prizes and raffles. Morgan got to go on stage and won a dance off.
At the end of the celebration, our kids passed out candy to the children as they left the church. Jack really enjoyed passing out the candy at the end and won a contest among the kids for who passed out the most candy.
Some of us talked to Gabriela, the pastor at Tigre Church as we were waiting for the bus. Of the 460 people, about three quarters of them do not go to church regularly and the Flag Day Celebration is a big outreach for Tigre Church. Gabriela explained that Tigre Church used to be very legalistic with a lot of rules. Gabriela read the Purpose Driven Church and knew that the church needed to change. She fought for change, but a lot of people resisted. In the end, Tigre Church became a Purpose Driven Church and is known as a fun church that loves Jesus with dedicated volunteers who are warm and friendly to newcomers. Now the church is growing so fast that they are thinking about going to 2 services soon.
During our debriefing session after we returned, we discussed how giving people a smile and making eye contact went a long way to making a personal connection, even if we did not speak the language. Morgan has made a new friend, Zoe, and tonight she met Zoe’s friends, and they were really friendly too.
We also talked about the testimonies from the night before. Gabriela was very moved by the testimonies and wants to try to start KSG in their church. The combination of Kyle’s and Jessica’s testimony, where Kyle’s KSG group was going to fall apart, then Jessica stepped in to help lead it, was very powerful. Gabriela told John that some of her Tigre Kids leaders had been planning to resign from leadership, but when they heard our testimonies, they decided to continue to lead in their children’s ministry.
Overall, we loved Tigre Church. Morgan, Kyle and Addi love how friendly the people are there. We are the first KSG PEACE team who has gone to the Tigre Church. We have loved serving at Tigre, and hope our time here has made a difference.
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