An email I sent a few days back

Most of this is from an email I sent a few days back but I thought it'd be good to post here as well...

Things are still going well here in Argentina. Something I have realized while being here is that it's not like a mission trip where you go and work on a project or build something for someone and put all your time and energy into that (which is all I have done in the past). It is a lot less structured and basically we are just living life among the Argentines for 2 months. We do go to the schools and teach English but in our time not at the institutes we are expected to call people and go hang out with them and show them Jesus in our actions. We are making friends right now and it has been good, but it is a lot more socializing then I am used to :) so I definitely would appreciate prayers for the energy to reach out to people.

We are definitely not lacking any of the comforts of home which when I usually go on a mission trip I'm used to not showering for days in a row, etc. Here we have wifi in the house, lots of food, and way too many sweets! Every morning we have coffee and danishes.... but we exercise afterwards so that's good at least. So it's almost like i'm still in America but now everyone speaks spanish and greet each other with kisses on the cheek. There are definitely other cultural differences but it's still fairly similar.
We had a Bible study this morning on John 15 where Jesus is talking about him being the true vine. It was good to go over this because of its emphasis on where we get our strength every day of our lives. One thing that was mentioned by my teammate Weston was that we also need to take care of ourselves so that we can be effective in our time here. This includes eating well, getting time alone and with God to renew our energy, and exercising. One thing I am having a hard time doing is resisting all the delicious pastries they have here. I noticed this hindered me yesterday when we hung out with some kids at an orphanage. After all the sugar I had I did not feel very good and this didn't allow me to enjoy being with the kids as much. So as ridiculous as this may sound please pray that God will help me eating so much Dulce de leche (basically caramel) and cookies and pastries, etc :)
Yesterday we had a 3 hour time in a coffee shop by ourselves to spend time with God and we have been playing Dodgeball in the mornings. Martin, our leader, is so good at dodgeball it's as if he was 15 years old it's amazing. His rules are completely different, but it is a blast and a great way to get out frustrations.

I love you all back at home and please send me any questions you have about our time here in Argentina :) I would love to hear from you all and the encouragement would be greatly appreciated especially as we start going to the English institutes more often and are meeting people.