Well, recently I've just been busy wrapping up all my classes and getting ready for our before-finals-tests that are this week! I have a presentation tomorrow, an exam Wednesday, another exam Thursday, and two quizzes next Thursday! After that, I'm home free! Well, except for the portfolio I have to make about my trip for a 3-hour class credit at Clemson! It shouldn't be too hard! It's basically an easy A for a 3-hour independent study class! I'm up for that!
The weekend before last, I went to the Saturday night Bible study (amazing, as always) with Commission International (headed up by the Fulfer family), spent time with the international students at a friend's house, and then went downtown with some Argentine friends. There, I met the new exchange students at UBP who are here for only 5 weeks. So little! I'm really glad I came for longer! I know after 5 weeks here, I still had A LOT to learn! It is really strange to hear English being spoken on campus by these new students tho! :) Now our group can't mumble things to each other in English without worrying about anyone around us understanding! Haha, joking, joking...
Nothing really exciting happens during the weeks here so I'll skip to the next weekend :)
This past Saturday we had our long-awaited tango presentation for all of the other exchange students, professors, and Argentine families. My family couldn't come, but most of the other students' families could. The presentation went really well. It was part of a huge goodbye party for us, even though we still had 3 more weeks! We ate locro (not my fav) and empanadas (my fav), sang songs and danced dances that we learned in our Culture class, and some of the students played drums that they made themselves this semester! Everyone in the tango presentation had to wear all black and white, so all the girls had their nice black dresses on and the guys had the "white-dress-shirt/black-slacks" look going on.
Check out the video of us dancing at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcV-TPdVMac
After the goodbye party, I went to the Saturday Bible study but it was especially exciting this week because was at a new location--the house the Fulfers are renting as a bi-lingual house for exchange and Argentine students studying in Córdoba! Right now, Leigh and Tim, two college students from the States, are living there and helping the Fulfer's out in their mission efforts for 2 months! When in the States, the Fulfers advertise this opportunity at Christian conferences for college students and they've had several kids come help them out over the 3 years they've been here. Another guy who's come the past two summers, Kevin, will be here in a couple weeks. Both Kevin and Tim go to North Greenville, so we have a lot of friends in common! Leigh is from Texas A&M and really has a heart for missions--she's really sweet :) The house is awesome though! It's huge and really old with so much character! It's one of those places that makes you want to take a lot of artsy photos--at least it did that for me :) After talking with Leigh and Tim for a while, we had Ekklesia, the name for the Bible study, and then we ate an asado until 1am! From there, a group of 9 guys and 4 girls went to Caserrato for some delicious ice cream and we ate there and talked until 3:30am! Only in Argentina can you hang out in an ice cream shop until 4 in the morning with no problems! I know in Greenville, my friends and I are always ticked that Starbucks on Woodruff Rd. kicks everyone out around 10 or 11...that's never a problem here!
Then, yesterday I went to church, heard a great sermon by Pastor Sam, and hung out with Laura, the Fulfers, Tim, and Leigh a little more! When I got home, I got the huge blessing of being able to talk a little about spiritual things with my family because my mom just got back from a Logosophy conference. She mentioned how one of the things she learned was that we need to examine all of our thoughts and actions to see the motive we have behind them. I piped in and said that this idea is in the Bible--as Christians we're commanded to "take every thought captive"! We also talked a little about homosexuality and how God loves the person, but hates the sin. I talked about how it's just like any other sin, but we as humans dismiss these other sins as "not as bad". For example, God looks at a person who gossips all the time the same way. Whether it's a gossiper or a homosexual, we as Christians should love them completely just as God does, however, we should not condone the sin they are living in. Please pray that spiritual topics will come up again in the conversations I have with my family these last two weeks.
A few days ago, I got to talk for a while with one of my sisters about what she believed. She said she believed only through Jesus can we reach God (probably coming from her Catholic influence), but that she believes all religions call the same God different names, and that one thing might be true for one person, but not true for someone else. It seemed to me that she's a little confused. She also said that we can get to heaven by doing good things. I shared Ephesians 2:8-9 with her and told her how I am aware that there are other religions in the world, but that doesn't mean I believe they're other versions of the truth. I told her that the Gospel isn't MY truth, but it's GOD'S truth from His Word. She acted like she'd never heard that before. Please pray that we'll be able to continue this conversation. She was really interested in talking about spirtual things and open to hear what I had to say. Praise God for this!
Also, I just realized I never mentioned the trip we made at the beginning of May to the Northwest of Argentina! We had a blast! It was organized by Alejandro, the director of the Clemson-Córdoba program here, so technically it was for the Clemson students, but to make it cheap enough for us to stay 3 days instead of 2, he invited all the other exchange students to come too! To sum it up, we saw a bunch of breathtaking mountains, visited the third largest salt mine in the world (CRAZY!), stayed in a beautiful lodge, and sang 24/7 in the bus all the Argentine folklore songs we learned in our culture class, with our professors playing a guitar and drums! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention our professors came too! Alejandro decided to bring them instead of our student tutors, and I'm so glad he did! We really got to know them a lot better as we spent time together outside the classroom.
Thanks for reading! I covet your prayers as I complete exams, quizzes, and presentations this week and next! At least I exempted all of my finals! Chau!
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