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My name is Julia, I have been attending the church for around 6 years. Earlier this year I went on a 4 month missionary trip to Argentina with a Christian organisation called Latin Link during my gap year. Latin Link has long term missionaries in countries all over Latin America and also in Spain. Their short term programme, called ‘Step’, sends teams to Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru each spring to help local Christians in building projects.
My team was made up of 10 people (4 guys, 6 girls) from all over the UK, and one from New Zealand. Most of us were on a gap year before starting university. We each had different roles in the team and I was chosen as the team translator as I had done A-level Spanish.
Project 1
Our first project was in a children’s home in Córdoba province. The couple who ran the children’s home, Julio and Patricia, had set it up after Julio had a life threatening illness which made them think about their lives.
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They realised God was giving them a second chance to live their lives completely for him so started working at a children’s home and eventually set up the one we stayed at in a town called San Marcos Sierras. The home had 23 children, from babies up to the age of 18, from a variety of different backgrounds. Some had been abandoned, others abused, some were orphans and others’ parents were in jail.
The building project involved painting all the outside walls of the home and building an extra room over the dining room. There was no church in the town but a pastor visited every week and held a service in an elderly Ladies house which was attended by about 8 people. The pastor stayed overnight at the children’s home on Wednesday nights and the new room we were building would be for him, and also for storage of the children’s clothes.
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Within a couple of weeks of arriving at the home there were a few thunderstorms with heavy rain. The leaking roof meant that puddles formed in the dining room, kitchen and little boys’ room – even dripping into one of the boy’s bed. We were able to put new corrugated metal roofing sheets over half the roof, stopping the leaks.
We had a builder helping us but he worked in the city a few hours drive away so was not able to be with us all the time but it was a great lesson in using our initiative. As we lived at the children’s home for two months we were able to get involved with looking after the babies and playing games and doing crafts with the children.
Project 2
Our second project was at a church of around 300 people in a town right on the border with Bolivia. We stayed in the church compound, which was also a discipleship training school for 11 people who we shared all our meals with.
The building project was to complete the second floor and start the third floor of a building to house visiting pastors for the convention which is held every July. Our work involved digging tunnels for pipes, knocking holes in walls for windows, plastering walls and ceilings and twisting together wire frames.
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We had a building master and people from the discipleship training centre working with us each day and men from the church would often come in the evening after we had finished working for the day and work until gone midnight!
The church had four services per week, not including the youth group and Sunday school. We were able to get involved with the services on Saturday and Sunday evenings with songs and dramas. The Sunday school on Sunday mornings was attended by around 150 children, up to age 13 and we were able to help in the classes with children’s songs and dramas about the bible stories they had been studying. The church also had a large youth group and we went out with them to the town square to do dramas and evangelistic talks. Every Saturday afternoon we went with the people from the discipleship training school to the surrounding neighbourhoods and helped to run children’s clubs with games, songs and bible stories.
It was an amazing experience for everyone on the team to have the opportunity to be with 9 other young Christians 24/7. We’ve learnt so much from each other and from the amazing people we met in Argentina. They always showed us so much generosity, always gave us the best they had and God taught us so much about himself through them.