Missouri Youth On Missions

We made it to Miami this morning. We left Argentina last night at 11:15pm (9:15pm CST) we arrived in Miami 7:45am EST (6:45am CST) our flight doesn’t leave Miami until 3:00pm EST. So yes we are all stuck at the air port for about seven hours. However we are about three hours away from heading to God’s country. Most of us are sleeping and the rest are playing games. Me and a few others are trying to get our image disk together before we get home. We have about 20GB of images to go through and I am finishing up the Blog updates.

Gallery of today 06/22/07

*Update - Before I could get this posted we just found out that our flight has been delayed until 5:00pm EST

The group is currently eating at La Caballeriza. They will eat, hit Florida St again, then head to the airport for the 8 hour flight to Miami…then home to STL.

The photo gallery has been updated with new pictures and they will be posting an update to the blog shortly.

Photo & Video Gallery for 6/20/07

ERM

Well today we left Rosario and headed back on the five hour bus ride to Buenos Aires. We broke the trip up by stopping at South America’s largest mall, the Uni Center. It is four stories tall and I can’t even begin to tell you how many stores were in there, but there were hundreds of them. We hung around there for a few hours and then came on in to Buenos Aires and split up to conquer Florida St. again. It was a very low key day. Tomorrow we are going to be taking a bus and prayer tour of the city. We also are going to be touring Argentina’s most famous cemetery, Recoleta Cemetery. It is the resting place Argentina’s most beloved Evita and many other dignitaries. We will wrap the day up with our final church service in the city of Casanova. There wasn’t a lot going on today so we have a very low picture day.

Photo & Video gallery for 06/19/07

Well we gave you a small update earlier, but we wanted you to see a few pictures of the days activities. We started out by going to the Flag Monument of Rosario. Wednesday is flag day in Argentina and as we have already told you these folks love their country and respect their flag. They celebrated today so they could have a three day weekend which you can’t really blame them for that. We went to the top to the monument and took in a lot of the sites of Rosario. It was a beautiful day and through out the trip God has blessed us with great weather. It has been cold, but sunny and that is a good thing. After the tour of Flag Monument we went to the recreational park as our last post informed you. The park was hosting a football (soccer) tournament called the Americas International and just about every country in the world was represented there today. We watched some very talented soccer players. The highlight of the day was given to us by Randall Lee. We were watching the YOMers play the Argentine’s in the basketball game when group of young soccer players came by in a group. They were carrying a broom and I mentioned to Randall that look like they were marching in a parade. So “big ole” Randall jumped in the middle of them and started chanting “Mi Cassa, Es Su Cassa”. (Note Randall knows very little Spanish) The kids ate it up and started chanting with him and he and the group marched a good ways down the sidewalk. Well several minutes after Randall had returned the kids came back by chanting Randall’s cheer. So Randall got back in the procession. Well in a matter of minutes Randall had these kids chanting “Youth On Missions…Youth On Missions” and also had them chanting J-E-S-U-S. We have some a few videos of him having a great time with them and then a few group photos. Oh and yes he did draw up a pretty good crowd.

Photo Gallery of today’s activities

We met with the youth group of the JJ Paso church at a recreational park. We have played some football and some basketball. We will not talk about the football, but we did win the b-ball game. We are getting ready to eat and I can tell you the people of this church can cook. I just took this picture and they gave a sample and it is going to be awesome

Well first of all every one of the YOMers want to wish their Dad a happy fathers day! I know many of them went out of their way to call you today, and at $4.00/per minute that should mean something even if you are the one paying the cell bill. Seriously “We love ya Dad!”

Well we are again going to to be playing catch up in this post tonight. (actually it has made it to morning here)

Saturday, June 16, 2007
Well the day started off with the bus heading off to Boca. Boca is a very old part of Buenos Aires and equivalent to our Ellis Island. Many immigrants came to Argentina through this port some of them actually had been turned away from Ellis Island and ended up here. It was full of open air markets, shops and restaurants. Well, we are pretty sure they were happy to see a bunch of Gringos show up with money to burn. We were all joking that the post title needed to be “Mom please wire more money!”. There was some serious souvenir shopping done I can tell you that. Boca is also the hometown to South Americas number one football (soccer) team. This was a fact that wasn’t hard to tell. They had Boca colors everywhere.

After we ate lunch we headed back to the motel to get ready for the youth fellowship meeting. The meeting was held at the bible college and headquarters church. Simply put this service was awesome! Bro. Luke preached and brought the house down, but before he did that we had an awesome worship service. We once again had a bilingual service and Sis. Burgess played for us. Several of the YOMers were touched. The testimonies that followed this service on the bus were amazing. I can promise you are not going to be getting the same kids back that you sent. Lives have been changed forever! One of the most amazing things that happened in the service, that we at first didn’t really understand, was the fact that during the worship service and then later during the alter service the Argentines brought out a huge Argentina flag. They spread it out through the crowd and held it above their heads as they sang and worshiped. Bro. Burgess told us that the Argentines are very patriotic. They were praying for their country that God would bless it and continue to send revival. I am pretty sure that there are a few videos of this in the web gallery.

Photo Gallery for 06/16/07

Sunday, June 17, 2007
Well we have checked out of the hotel in Buenos Aires and are currently staying in Rosario. We got up early and ate breakfast in the Hotel, after that we loaded up and hit the road. We arrived in Rosario around 2:30pm and then started getting ready for our 4:00pm church service at JJ Paso. JJ Paso is about a 30min bus ride from Rosario and the church we attended is the largest in Argentina. They have about 1,100 members and about an 80″X15″ building. They have three church services each Sunday and have to ask that you only come to one of them. It is amazing to say the least. The pastor of this church, Bro. Raúl De Asis, has an awesome testimony. The work in Argentina currently has 40 pastors that have come out of this church. Bro. De Asis is a great man and God has used him tremendously.

The church rented out a club to hold the service in and there were well over 500 people in attendance. This service is really hard to put into words. We have discovered the Argentine people love to worship. I don’t think a football stadium anywhere in this country could have been more alive than this building was. We had a couple YOMers testify tonight, Justin Lee and Holly Cassinger, each of them did a wonderful job. After Holly testified Bro. Burgess had the ministers come and pray for her in the place of her sister. Holly got some bad new the day before we left the states about her sister. They have discovered that she has a brain tumor. It is really early at this time and they are not sure if it is cancer or not. Holly almost didn’t come on the trip, but after tonight she is glad she did. She says she has a peace about it all and knows God has preformed a miracle. We all back that with a really big AMEN! The YOM Choir sang again and did an excellent job the anointing was all over them.

Bro. Luke preached and God moved. People packed in the alter and their was a mighty move of God. The YOMers tonight were in ministry mode. They were praying for as many as they could and God was using them in a mighty way. After service was dismissed no one wanted to leave. The Argentine young people didn’t want to stop and just kept on singing and worshiping. This was after a 4 hour service. Like I said these folks like to worship.

Photo Gallery for 06/17/07

Well me and the IT guys got it figured out and we are back in business. So we are going to have a lot of catching up to do so let’s get started.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Photo gallery of days one and two of our trip

Thursday, June 14, 2007
Thursday morning started out with breakfast and then we headed down to the Plaza de Mayo for a prayer walk. The Plaza is the center of the Argentina government and we prayed for several branches of the government as we walked past them. One of the buildings was the Presidential building, the Pink House, which is most famous for the “Don’t cry for me Argentina” speech Evita, the then president’s wife, gave not to long before her death due to cancer in 1952. We also toured the National Cathedral but was cut short due to us arriving just a few minutes before the afternoon mass was beginning. After the prayer walk and taking in the sites we walked down Florida Street. This is a street full of stores and it goes on for several blocks. It isn’t open to vehicles so it is more like a strip mall in the States on steroids. After a couple hours on Florida St we ate lunch at a shopping mall food court and then headed back to the hotel to get ready for the evenings service at the bible college.

Service at the Bible College was great. We had a bilingual service, the Bible College students did about 15 min of worship songs in Spanish and then they turned it over to us and we had about 15 min of worship songs in English (which is good since that is the language we all know). I preached, which was my first experience preaching through an interpreter. It isn’t as easy as it looks. We were blessed with an awesome move of God through out the entire service. After the service the school made Empanadas and they were AWESOME. They also had several homemade deserts. After we ate we had a great time of fellowship with the students. There were several games of round robin ping pong played and that wrapped up our Thursday.

Friday, June 15, 2007
We spent the entire day at a Gaucho ranch, Estancia. To no ones disappointment, we were not served intestines, however we were served some awesome food. We were entertained with some traditional Gaucho dances and the entire menu was authentic food. We wrapped the day up by going to an arcade mall. Yes a three story mall with nothing but games and activities. Some played laser tag and the rest of us went bowling. The trip had two highlights that tied for the most memorable, those are Nick Spencer petting the “cute” little sheep and looking at us with a big grin on his face all the while from behind him the “cute little sheep’s” boyfriend runs up and gives him a real good head-butt almost knocking him down. The second highlight is when Bro. Luke goes to show off his mad skills and jump off the top of the steps leaving the mall. His objective was that he was going to be clicking his heals together while in the air. This part was executed with ease and talent, however we are pretty sure he didn’t give much forethought to his landing. What we see next is Bro. Luke landing on his back then rolling to his chest while this is going on he is getting very close to a taxi parked letting out passengers.

Pictures of Thursday and Friday activities and church services.

We received word from the group that the reason why the blog is not up-to-date, is because the internet connection in the room is not working properly. Quote from Riley:

“I have lousy Internet connection in my room. It is driving me crazy. I think I know what is wrong, but me speak no Spanish geek. They stare at me and laugh but they won’t let me in the tech room.”

Therefore, we must wait for an update until they get the connection fixed or he finds an Internet Cafe to get the blog updated.

Currently they are on their way to spend the day at a world renown “Estancia” (Argentine Ranch) guided by real “Gauchos” (Argentine Cowboys). When I went on a mission trip to Argentina in 2001, this is where they fed us cow intestines (it’s a delicacy there)…so if their trip is like ours there will be some stories to tell after today.

Until Later,
ERM

Well tonight we had a wonderful service at a local church here in Buenos Aires. Now when we say local, we mean an 1.5 hour drive from the hotel. This city is amazing in a lot of ways, but two is its population and size. You can drive several hours in any direction and still be in the same city.

The service was like I said, wonderful and power packed. It is amazing that you can be standing there and not know a single word the worship leader is saying, but still be able to lose yourself in the presence of God. As one of the “responsible” members of the trip I can say to all you who have a young person here that you all would be very proud of them. These kids have already proved they are serious at what they are doing here. They jumped right in and began ministering to these lovely people.

It all started on the bus ride. Bro. Luke led us in focused prayer on the bus as we left the hotel and the spirit of God came down and followed us right to the church service. We sang as a choir, a few testified, and then Nick Spencer and Bro. Ken James preached. This was a special event for Nick and the reason was this was his first time to preach. I don’t mean in a foreign county with an interpreter, but his first time ever. We gave him a huge round of applause on the bus afterwards. It took a lot of guts to do what he did tonight.

Well photos and videos will be up soon. We have been having problems with the Internet service and that has caused problems in getting them uploaded.

We forgot to mention something very exciting that happened while we were waiting to board our flight to Miami. Bro. Bruce Howell, General Foreign Missions Director of theUPCI, greeted us and wished us well on our journey. As far as we are concerned he was there only because of MO YOM and we are pretty sure that is how it all went down. However he was catching a flight to Africa and leaving from the same terminal as we were. However you look at it we felt it was a great honor that we were able to have this opportunity. He left us with some very encouraging words and a memory that we will never forget.