First week of Argentina

After meeting at 2pm at Gatwick airport on Tuesday 28^th March, the team was united, ready to spend the next 4 months with each other. It was a long Journey, flying to Madrid, to Buenos Aires, and then to Salta, and while there were delays to initial flights, we all arrived in Salta safely and in good spirits, even if we were a bit sleep deprived! There we met Annelien and Mati, who took us to Mati

and Paula’s house, where they kindly let us stay, before we either caught a 6 hour coach into Tartagal, or a 4 hour car lift from Mati.

The first few days of Tartagal we focused on settling in, learning about the culture and the project, getting to know each other, drinking maté, and learning to actually buy the correct ingredients and amount in order to cook meals as we bought too many lemons and two packs of coal! Some of the coal was used to make a typical Argentinian meal ca

lled Choripan which we will definitely be trying again, along with attempting an Asado. So perhaps the coal will come in handy.

Our first impressions were really positive, we love the scenery and surrounding mountains, the accommodation was better than we expected, and the people we met were all very welcoming!

On Saturday, we were invited to a wedding and enjoyed watching a different cultures way of celebrating a wedding. It was surprisingly similar to one you would have in England, although the sermon was longer and the music was MUCH louder! The wedding was also held in the church where our project would be taking place, so it was nice to have a look before next week.

On the Sunday, we attended both the youth service, and the main service in the evening, which is different to England as far as I am aware not many churches have services until 10:30pm. We had the pleasure of performing the song ‘This is Amazing Grace’ and a few of us shared our testimonies. Another way that the church is different here in Argentina is the cool dances with flag and tambourines during the worship songs.

We also had a delicious Chicken BBQ which was kindly hosted for us by Mati’s family in Tartagal.

Thank you for all your prayers so far, we have arrived safely and have been getting along well, while settling into this new culture.

It would be great, if there could be continued prayer on settling in to the country. For example us continu

ing to get on well with each other, and building an even stronger bond, acclimatising to the heat, and building stronger connections with the surrounding community as we continue to attempt to improve our limited Spanish to overcome the language barrier.

We start the building work tomorrow!

¡Gracias!

Jakob, Tim, Catherine, Rosie, Izzy, Natalie and James.