before i decided to blog.

Friends. Hello from Argentina.I hope that y'all are doing so good. I've made it to Argentina and was assigned my house on Sunday. My roommate, Meganne, and I live in an apartment in the city with a lady who has 5 study abroad students living with her. This sounds like a HUGE number of students to have at once but everyone in the group has big "families". The other 3 in the house are guys, so for the next 5 weeks we have 3 "hermanos" or brothers. Our "madre" is a lawyer in the city and she lives with her mom and claims to speak no english. But...coming in tonight we found out from another conversation she was having that she DOES speak english and understands everything we are saying. That tricky little lady. Today we started classes and are slowly getting adjusted to the city. There is a major culture shock in all of a sudden having to speak, think, translate, understand all in spanish. I'll be working in a childrens hospital in social services. We had a meeting with the head of the department this morning and she talked for a very long time about the history, the situation and the standing of the hospital. My friend and I were way overwhelmed walking out and needed a long time to think through everything she had said and then had to understand what that meant to us. Its the largest and most respected childrens hospital in the country and I can't wait to start tomorrow and see what our role will be and get to start meeting patients and their families and knowing the hearts of the people here. I'll tell you more once we start getting stories and experiences there. Every afternoon we'll have class until earlyish evening and then Meganne and I come home to rest. We don't eat dinner until 10:00 PM!!! But...I do LOVE dinner here because we all eat together, all 7 of us, and it lasts about an hour and its all in Spanish. Its a good time for getting to know each other and where all of us come from. The things that Meganne and I say and do when we don't understand whats being said are outrageous! Craziness really. We always end up laughing. It's fun figuring this city out and everything being a new adventure. I'm pumped for work to start and for us to start traveling as a group! Tomorrow we have our first tango lesson and then this weekend we go to Mendoza to go skiing, rafting, zip-lining through the canopy and a bunch of other crazy stuff, too!

I'm excited for everything the Lord has prepared for this summer. There is no doubt in my mind that He is going to do big things. Please pray for rest. Right now the sleep at night is enough to rest our bodies but not our minds. Meganne and I were just talking about this strange feeling where we would normally be good to go after sleeping but our heads and bodies are still tired when we wake up. Also, I'm praying for opportunities for intentional conversation and not just surface conversation with our family which is sometimes difficult when there is no english spoken. My roommate and I want to know them and the details of their hearts and lives. One of them comes in our room every day to talk to us in english and he is so fun. If you could join with us in praying for that, it would be awesome! What are y'all learning and how are you being stretched? Please know how grateful I am to have each of you in my life. I love all of you and can't wait to see your faces.

As they say here in Argentina,

Besos y Brazos (Kisses and Hugs)