1/3: Done!

I can’t believe this is the end of the first part! I can’t believe that I am actually leaving for the states tomorrow! I just want to scream in happiness and joy and in praise to God for all that He has done! It has been incredible!  Just when I thought that I had not learned anything, all this Spanish and bible starts coming out of no where! It’s awesome!

I first want to give all the glory to God.  I couldn’t not have taken these first steps without Him, nor can I take the next steps without either!  HE has done all the work here. HE has allowed me to learn Spanish.  HE has allowed me to retain all this wonderful information about His word.  HE has given me the desire for the Spanish culture.  HE has given me the desire for missions. He has provided a way for me to be here and me to survive!  I remember from the first month, I just could feel God putting a pillow under my feet at every moment!  If you have not experienced this kind of proximity yet, let me encourage you to talk to God because there is nothing like this!  I am so blessed to have this opportunity to study in a foreign country (where I am the foreigner (extrañjera)) and praise the SAME GOD! Different culture, different language, SAME GOD!  And He hears all of our praises.  He hears all of our prayers and needs.  He still sees what is going on.   And He loves us the same.  He truly loves the world and has wonderful plans for ALL parts of it.  He has orchestrated my life before Argentina, JUST FOR Argentina, and NOW it makes sense!  Imagine heaven, where ALL will make sense.  Isn’t that awesome?  We won’t question, we will just know! Something else I have seen here is how much the States needs Christ, something that I already knew but was reminded of in a big way.  When you get the chance to step back and look at your country, it looks so different.  Although, I am so incredibly thankful for the country that I have been born and raised in, and don’t think otherwise.  This whole first part of my experience here has only left me wanting more!  God is opening doors now for His future plans for me and I love that!  He already knows every detail of my life, because He is God and He doesn’t miss a thing, He doesn’t miss a thing.  He knows me!  And I can’t wait to see what all those details unfold to be.

I woke up this morning thinking, “is tomorrow really December 3^rd?” I was filled with joy but at the same time, “where did this time go?”  I remember the first night I spent here.  I didn’t know why I was here! I honestly didn’t know what I was doing!  My mom asked if I wanted to come home and as much as Satan was nipping at my heart, I knew that God wanted me here and this was just Satan trying to stop a REALLY good thing from happening.  And guess what? I have lived that really good thing.  It was awesome! It still is awesome!  And there is still more awesomeness to come!  In our orientation time, I also remember them mentioning that Satan is going to use past experiences to tear us down.  Past things we have struggled with, people from the past, things back at home, other people here, and the list goes on.  That was so true!  But when those things happened, I stepped back, and looked to God, asking Him to pull me out of these things, help me be slow to speak, and that I wanted to bring glory to Him through this situation!  He also used other people for the good, like my counselor, Lyndee.  Por ijemplo, advice she gave me for when the showers were only cold water, or constant changing from hot to cold, she told me to just think of things you can thank God for while taking a shower.  “Lord thank you for a shower! Thank you for ________(Something that He did that day), etc.” So just little things like that! God has done mighty things here and I can’t wait to see what He has next!

For now, I am going to focus on this last day of the missions conference (which has been awesome!) and focus on the time I have left with my friends before I leave!  I am so happy that everything played out how it did!  Would not have had it any other way! 

Prayer Requests:

1)   My path home (Buenos Airesà Sao Paulo, Brazilà Miami, Florida): travel to Buenos Aires, safety, getting where I need to be in the airports,  SAFETY!

2)   Over the month of December, that I retain all this Spanish and bible and that my Spanish gets better at home knowing that I have a lot of Spanish where I live! (not a coincidence!)

3)   The students not going home for Christmas, latinos and gringos.

4)   My sisters trip to Haiti! (for the people they will speak to, for themselves, and the experience they will have.

5)   My time in December, that I can use it wisely J

I WILL BE HOME IN WITHIN 48 HOURS!!!

I'm coming home! Temporarily.

I am SOOOO sorry for not writing since November 9^th! I am a terrible blogger! Things have been so crazy here! BUT GUESS WHAT??? I WILL BE HOME IN LESS THAN A WEEK! LESS THAN A WEEK ALREADY! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT??? I will make this one worth reading since I have been so distant with you all over this month!

Lets see!

Two weeks ago, we had a man from the company called Premier Designs, a man that has been coming to Argentina for the Bible Institute for the past 27 years to teach, but he brought the Word and it was great! Everyday, it was EXACTLY what I needed! He talked about time management, planning, and also how all of these things correlate to our walk with Christ.  I have been forming biblical principles with my counselor and the one that I had to work on that week was why I choose to not listen to secular music, and why we should guard our hearts from certain movies/music/shows/etc.  This all was to control our thoughts and what runs through our minds.  Come Wednesday morning in bible class, what are we talking about?  How we can control our thoughts and how to set boundaries for ourselves as to how to do so!  How awesome is that? I was able to form the principle so easily after that class!  We may not always have control over what goes into our minds but we have control as to how long it stays and what we are to focus on.  Have you ever had those moments when you are talking to God and your mind slowly drifts away?  Not always to bad things but your focus is not God.  That’s normal! All you have to do is simply redirect your focus on Him and be all there.  If you are distracted, maybe stop and get those things that are bothering you out of the way.  That class what my energy for the week!  Every year, he brings paint brushes and gives one to every student.  The purpose of this is to keep in your bible (its very thin and small) to remind you to let God paint His path for you, not yourself.  Let Him take the wheel, let Him draw the lines, let Him have control over your life because in all reality, we will lead ourselves to destruction!  So now I have a purple paint brush in my bible J

            This past week, my counselors Dad and her family was in Argentina and he is a pastor from Pennsylvania who taught us a quick study of Hebrews!  This book is incredible!  It is a great check for us because it was written to believing Jews (what we know as Messianic Jews) that were drifting back to Judaism.  If we ever have a time where we feel that God is moving away from us, we are wrong.  It’s us that is moving away from Him! He is always there! Hebrews talks about the superiority of Christ or the meaning that He has compared to earthly power such as high priests, Moses, etc.  Something that really hit me deep was that every one of the 17 verses we have to memorize by Friday, is just a statement proclaiming either how we can make it successfully, how we should be living our lives, and encouragement to us about what the Word, and who Christ is for us.  Its absolutely incredible!  I enjoyed this class very much and he taught it in a way that we could quickly tough the deep of the book and still get a good grasp of it!

            So remember, all you followers that have read from the beginning, when I was counting down the weeks till I left to come to Argentina, and remember when I finally got here, I was counting how many weeks that I had been here? Then how many till I came home….well guess what. It’s less than a week now! In 5 days, I will be in a plane, coming home, to you all, and I am SO excited! I have been pretty good on holding back the waterworks for a while, just because there has been so much to do, but yesterday!!!! I couldn’t help it! Everything made me tear up! Reading His word, talking to my roommates, just thinking about home!  My roomies quickly reminded of how soon I would be coming home, and I just kept saying still! I miss them! I want to go home!  Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE IT HERE! I really do! I just miss home as well J I never thought I would miss Florida, especially the first month I was here because of it being the end of winter, but I do! The weather is finally steady here and it feels great outside, but without air conditioning in class and in your dorms, summer will be rough.  I promise to myself to keep a joyful and thankful heart and that is what I will do!

            I am so thankful for all the wonderful things God has done here, all the wonderful things He has provided, and just all the work that He has done in my life alone!  Word of Life is absolutely an incredible ministry to be a part of and I can’t wait to be a part of it for this whole next year! These three months flew by but at the same time, they felt like three months!  I love how I have this awesome opportunity to come to a different country to worship the same God that I do in the US, learn this beautiful language and be involved with the Spanish culture directly!  I am also thankful for the Spanish ministry that my church at home has because when I go home, I can continue to hear spanish spanish spanish instead of hearing english, which WILL hurt me believe it or not!  So heads up! If you speak Spanish, please talk to me in Spanish!

            Anyway, I am so excited to come home! And I know that the month will fly by as well so I am going to jam everything into these four weeks! Including Navidad (Christmas) and Año Nuevo (New Year’s) and spending time with everyone!

Prayer Requests:

1)   Pray for me to hear from God whether He wants me to stay longer (complete first year in August through December of 2013) 

2)   My flight home!

3)   That I can use my time wisely in December!

4)   That I can continue to learn Spanish! It gets better every day but I still need that surrender daily!

5)   Preparing the hearts of the campers that will be here in Enero (January) for the six weeks of six different groups of campers that will be hearing the word! (**Last year, over 650 people got saved alone in the camps!)

6)   Lastly, for keeping my Spanish over December, its more crucial than you think!

THANK YOU ALL FOR PRAYING! I will continue writing blogs until I am completely done with WOL and for a little after so you can see the affects that will continue on my life!  I can absolutely feel your prayers working in my life through the comfort that God gives me! I promise I will be more persistent with my blogging. J CANT WAIT TO SEE YOU ALL!

El Mensaje de la Cruz

What a week this has been!  We had FIME this Wednesday night and it stands for (in english) International Festival of Musical Students (Festival Internacional de Músicas Estudiantes).  The previous week there were tryouts of at least 30 different UME groups (prayer groups for different countries) that were required to make up an original song to perform and 10 would be chosen to perform for FIME! (By the way, its pronounced fee-may, the “i” in Spanish is pronounced like an “e” and the “e” is pronounced like an “a”) After all 10 performed, 3 were chosen based on the message of their song and the musical creativity and a few other categories.  3^rd place was UME Mexico, which was INCREDIBLE!  A 3^rd year student here from Mexico and the Lord has blessed that boy with some vocal chords! Hopefully I can post these videos Facebook so you can hear just a bit of what I have been listening to the past few weeks!  1^st place was UME Africa, which my roommate wrote the song and I can see why they won first just because of the musical creativity alone!  It was such a blessing because my roommate has been struggling with some illness for over a few months now and she started crying when playing cause they were asked to play again after being announced 1^st place, just because the hard work paid off and she knew God had carried her through all the way!  Now, UME Bolivia didn’t place, but they should have!  Cesia, a great friend here from Bolivia, and that learned English in Florida, believe it or not, wrote a beautiful song called “El Mensaje de la Cruz” which means “The Message of the Cross.”  I got chills!  And I also recorded and have been listening to it all day!  So now I am definitely posting these songs!  (Once I get better internet in town) I was just reminded of how God blesses people with these talents to bring glory to Himself and that was definitely seen last night! 

            This week has been another one of those weeks that I am left speechless as to what God has been doing in my life!  For example, today, in my time with God, I asked God to shed light on something that He wanted me to change so that I could continue to be more like Him.  SO my day goes on, and there is something that is annoying me, continuously, and it wasn’t anything that had to do with any person and anything around me, it was all in my heart.  At lunch, it dawned on me, it was God just being loud and clear, that’s why I couldn’t get away from it!  That is just an example of all the wonderful things He is showing me! 

            In bible class these past two weeks, we have had the director of Word of Life Nicaragua teaching us and we have been learning about the Life of Christ.  No joke, Wednesday, we talked about preparing for the end times, the tribulation, and things leading up to all of this.  What a more perfect time to study this part of the Word! I literally was sitting there, realizing that God saved this lecture for today just because of the results of the Election and He wanted to bring us peace!  All of Election Day, I was praying for the salvation of Obama and Romney, and I encourage you all to do the same still!  Ultimately, all the issues with our country will come down to Christ and His return, but when this world ends, we are going to be left without everything, and so will our president, and don’t we hope for Him to have a relationship with Christ?  I do!  So don’t just pray for the restoration of our country, pray for the SALVATION of our country!  Being here has made my American pride inflate like a million times!  Everyone is so proud of their home country here and that is because there are SO many!  I think there are 34 different countries feeding into this campus!  And not just Spanish countries!  (France, Germany, Haiti, Romania, Bermuda, England, and more!)  It’s crazy to know that there are people from the complete other side of the world, not just hemispheres!  But one thing that was very awesome was to be in UME USA and to have those others students from Equador, Argentina, and more, praying for OUR country.  What a blessing! 

            So this week in bible class, we have been focusing on the second half of Christ’s ministry, discipleship.  We, as believers, are called to disciple younger believers and to BE discipled by a more mature believer than ourselves.  I never thought of it that way, but its true!  When Christ was in Gethsemane, He was praying to God saying “Here God! I did what You told me!  I’m giving the glory to You!” How incredible!!?!  He knew what was ahead of Him the whole time.  All 33 years of His life, He KNEW that He was going to die, but He did it to save us, and He did it so He could glorify Himself in Heaven again!  Magnificent if I say so!  I hope you are as encouraged as am!  But the whole point of the disciples were to form the church body once Christ has returned to heaven, and the disciples were to go out and make more disciples.  We, as disciples of Him, are CALLED, not asked, COMMANDED multiple times in the gospels but to be specific, Matthew 28:19-20.  Christ tells the disciples to “GO ye therefore, and TEACH ALL NATIONS, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world. Amen.” This verse is what compelled me to have a heart for missions.  This verse gave me comfort in coming to Argentina.  This verse, from Christ’s lips Himself, will always be engraved on my heart.  I mean look, He gave us an instruction and said but wait! I will be with you the WHOLE WAY!  If you ask me, I would be….AM running for that call!

            I can’t believe I am in the month count down!  I will be heading home in 3 WEEKS from THIS MONDAY!  CRAZY!  But, I still need to focus!  FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS!

Prayer Requests:

1)   SPANISH! It’s getting better every day!  But I still have a long way to go!

2)   Tamara Edwards (I don’t know if any of you know her, but she is flying to Argentina, really close to me, for the month of December, to study!) So pray for her travel in that month and for wisdom and strength for I know exactly what she is going through!

3)   The students going to Haiti in December (Katie Sirk, Megan and Mike Wheeler, and Tiffany Buelher)

4)   My concentration on these last 3 weeks! I love it here! SO MUCH! But I do miss home J

5)   Please start praying for clarity on if God wants me to stay here longer after PBB is over.  Spanish is my ministry and it would help me immensely to stay longer! But only if that is God’s will!

THANK YOU FOR READING! J Please message me with prayer requests or just to say hi! Would love to hear from you! J

November...Está en realidad noviembre.

    I can't believe its actually November!  I have been gone for over two months! No lo creo! (I can't believe it!)  I have learned so much! But there is still so much to do! The is so crazy!  I am not ready to go home! But I am missing home so much!  I have to keep reminding myself that I still have 6 more months (as of right now, could be more) left of this!  Anyway, let's go back to what has been going on these past few weeks...
    Last week, we studied the book of James.  I learned about James, the brother of Jesus, was writing to the scattered Jews that left and needed to be encouraged and calmed!  But in reality, it calmed me!  The New Testament teaches and prepares us for what is to come in our future.  James specifically talks about how the devil is going to tempt us and how temptation is from the devil when trials are from God and they both have different objectives.  This book also teaches us how we should act and how to have true faith, with works.  The list goes on!
    This and next week, we are studying The Life of Christ!  IT HAS BEEN AN AWESOME WEEK IN BIBLE CLASS! The founder of Palabra de Vida Nicaragua (Word of Life Nicaragua) flew here to teach this class.  He has a bonus because his daughter goes to school here.  This class has been incredible! But this class goes over the gospels and some of the many details of Christ's life.  How cool would it have been to have lived in Christ's time?  I mean, I have experienced this feeling already when I was in Israel, but to be reminded of this!  Israel (of course because this is where this all took place) has been brought up many times this week and was a great feeling to be brought back there!  Now that I think about it, it has not been brought up just in class, there was a missionary here last night from Peru that is an expert on Israel and she showed us a video of a ton of places.  I said quite a few times to myself "I was there! I went there! I sang there! I went in the water there!"  Made me miss it :(  THEN!  Another PBB girl here, her family is going there soon, for a missions trip!  So be praying for the Jensen Family because that is very dangerous but all so thrilling!  Anywho, but this class is incredible!  Our teachers notes have at the bottom "lessons for life" or things to just think about while studying.  Things like "If you had been living at the time of Jesus' birth and John the Baptist's message, and you had realized that God was sending His promised Messiah, what would you have told your friends and acquaintances?"  Think about that.  Does that make you think differently?  We have Christ's death and resurrection to believe in, but they had yet to experience that!  So would you have still put your faith in Him?  If you have no idea what I am talking about, please message me in my Facebook inbox or email me at sirkmaggie@yahoo.com and I would LOVE to explain further!  But we have been talking about Joh the Baptist too because he plays an important role of setting up Christ's ministry and displaying perfectly fulfilled prophecy!  The Gospels, wait....the BIBLE is incredible!
      The past few days have been hard but I have definitely received a lot of encouragement from many people.  Guys, I can FEEL the prayer at home!  I am so incredibly thankful for those of you praying!  It is amazing!  I have a month here until break and I will be finished with my first semester!  I have learned so much and like I said earlier, I still have so much more to learn!  God has provided in so many ways, all the way through the hard days, but this week, in our morning devotional with bible class, that we need to build an altar and give thanks for everything, daily.  It made me think of all the things that I have, don't have here, things I am missing, things that I am thankful to be without, and just for my day!  There are a lot of things I can't bring to words because it is just so awesome and so specific to my heart!  Keep praying guys!

Prayer Requests:
1. Focus for the last month, to finish strong.
2. For God to really work in the hearts of the students here and really use this last month for them (for the institute, its almost summer break)
3. For God to work in the hearts of the bilingual program students here, as if we should stay longer (past our time in PBB)
4. THE ELECTION, IN WHICH I DID GET TO VOTE FOR!
5. My family, cause I miss them :(

Thank you all and PLEASE message me with prayer requests!

#adventure

Sorry to all who follow that I have been delayed on my blogging, but I promise that this one will be worth it!  Story time!

What a Monday this past Monday was!  All for my wonderful package!  It was literally like a movie!  Although, God knew everything that our day had in store, which was an encouragement!  So here is our movie in the making from start to finish…

            First, the bus we were told to take, left at 5:20 AM and the reason for being so early was because one of the other two girls I was with needed to renew her tourist Visa and the lines become very long and the whole process takes a while, so the earlier the better.  Well, the bus was a fail, and there was another one coming at 6:30 that we could try to catch.  It was full.  So we ended up taking a 300 peso cab (roughly $60) and we decided to go for it because we were losing time and needed to get there.  We hit traffic, and it turned into a two and a half hour cab ride, but we got there!  Weather was looking like it was about to cry, so we hurried to get Virginia to the building she needed and Katlyn and I went to the post office.  It takes a few minutes to go called up and Katlyn receives her approval quickly but since my package was in Gaby’s name (one of the heads of PBB), they required the physical passport of him in hand, not just the signature and passport number, but the physical passport.  Thank the LORD that a man who spoke English comes up behind us and helps us to translate.  He ended up letting us borrow his phone to call Lucas with an Argentine number. So we go to the waiting room for Katlyn’s number to get called so she can get her package and within 20 minutes or so.  We contacted Lucas and told us to find internet and Lyndee (Gaby’s wife) would Facebook me a picture of his passport, with hope that they would accept that.  Katlyn and I treck all the way across the park (very very large park) to the Starbucks where we could download the picture.  Make it back to the post office, she doesn’t accept it, tells us the same thing.  I hold myself together (crying) until I get outside, and see that it is raining.  Perfect.  I am thinking to myself, “I didn’t pay all this money to get here and to leave empty handed!”  We go back to the building where Virginia (who is the Spanish speaker of the group) is a few blocks down and find her to tell her what is going on.  She encourages me by saying “Maggie.  We aren’t leaving without your package.”  Sidenote: Virginia was expecting her Visa to be a certain number and praise the Lord that it was half of that value!  Such an blessing!)  Anyway, once she is finished with that, we haul back to the post office, wait in line again, and the same women, just our luck, says in Spanish “this is the third time! I told her that she needs the passport in hand, that is the law for Correro Argentino (Arg. post office)!”  Virginia pleaded, mentioning that we came from far away, spent a lot of money, the difficulty of getting back here, and that it’s from my parents from the United States.  The women let down her head in frustration, and looked up saying that we could try to fax it.  We get the number, go all the way back to the Starbucks and tell Lyndee of the new proposition.  Turns out that the fax machine at school is broken.  Just our luck.  So we get lunch and relax and Lyndee tells us that we aren’t far away from the Word of Life office on Florida St. (major street in BA) and that they have a copy on file of Gaby’s passport and if we wanted, we could go to the office and get a copy!  So, going away from the internet, we hurry to the office.  We missed the message saying that the computer in the WOL office was broken.  We arrive, and another member of the Fernandez Paz family (directors family) tells us that it is not functioning but if Lyndee could e-mail it to me, there are little stores around Florida St that we could go and for really cheap, print out the passport.  So we hurry down there, thinking that the post office is open till 6.  Hindsight: it was open till 16 hours, which is 4:00.  So we treck allllllll the way back to the post office, front door is closed and lights are off.  The same women, still sitting up front, totally disregards us, and another man that was up there just kept telling us that it was closed.  Using my CSI skills, I noticed that the waiting room for the packages still had its lights on, so we run around the building, door is open, the same man who told us no was standing at the pick up desk.  When he kept telling us no, I couldn’t help but cry my eyes out.  I was physically and mentally exhausted from running everywhere in San Martin Plaza, and include being soaking wet from all the rain that day.  He sees me and finally lets down and says, “come on.”  With huge excitement, Virginia and I follow him back to the original room where they check papers, and he asks me to sign my paper, accepts Gaby’s passport, and disregards the charges for my package!  He told me to not cry and in my mind, I was thinking, “WHAT?!?! How can you tell me not to cry???”  Anyway, the happiness overran my sadness and I finally got my package!  We were filled with joy and so we go back to the Starbucks, have a huge prayer time because of all that we had just experienced and walk around the stands of Argentine markets.  After that, we just had a huge buzz of relaxation, along with the amount of pain we were in from the physical challenge we had just experienced and got a bus home at 6:50.  The bus, might I add, was pretty empty, double dutch, and had the most comfortable lounge chairs possible.  We slept most of the way home and arrive back at Word of Life around 9:30.  Pick up dinner at a missionaries house that sells empanadas and by 11:30, we are able to rest!  I was just so happy that I got my package at that point that I didn’t care what time it was.  I knew that the next morning would be rough because of how I had to be at breakfast at 6:45 AM! 

            After this adventure, which we names #adventure, I was in immense pain and discomfort the next day and am happy to say that I feel a lot better today but ahhh. I can relax now J

Prayer Requests:

1)   That whatever this illness is, that it would leave my body and I can feel better!

2)   My sister (along with others from Florida and Virginia) are going to Haiti in December and so if it is God’s will, that funds would be provided.  Also pray for the people that they will be reaching!

3)   There is a group from my school going to Africa in the next month, and are on FIRE to share His word.  Pray for safety, the people, and that they can make in impact on that area.

4)   Lastly, that I can finish strong in the last month I have here until the first semester is over.  It has been wonderful and I know that there is still A LOT to be done and to be learned.

Thank you for reading! Please let me know of any prayer requests!  

I WILL keep them in mind! J