I’d love to be home, so why am I still in Buenos Aires? My stay is extended to do one of my important functions — networking. A dear friend, Roscoe Brewer, arrived this morning and we spent the day together talking about the kingdom and what God is doing around the world. Many of you will get the chance to meet Roscoe when he speaks at KCBT June 29th. He is one of the most passionate individuals I have ever met. Fortunately he is passionate about God’s mission. I consider him to be one of a handful of life-transforming mentors. Roscoe is working with least-reached people groups in India, central Asia and the Middle East.

Another friend here, Edgar Sureniam, has some key contacts Roscoe needs to meet and there are possibly ways that they can work together even helping to channel more Latin American missionaries to the least-reached. Edgar speaks little English and Roscoe speaks little Spanish. I believe so strongly the two of them need to connect that I have stayed these extra couple of days to bring them together and translate for them. I have no idea what God is going to do with this, but I am convinced something good is going to come out of this. We are meeting tomorrow at noon, and then my flight leaves tomorrow night.

Short Term Opportunity – For any of my student readers I want to toss out an opportunity and see what happens. While meeting with Thomas and his team, as I described yesterday, I learned they have been praying about expanding their short term team. CEC has a constant group of about 14 or so European students, mostly German, Swiss and Austrian (all German speakers). Most have a 6 to 10 month commitment. For the first time they want to open a couple of spots for select North Americans. These students are involved in a number of ministry opportunities, but they make it clear that the major objective is the learning experience for the young person. In other words, it’s more about being and learning than doing. They live in local homes and spend the first couple of months in intensive study of Spanish. I was pretty impressed with the level of Spanish after such a short period of study. For an American coming down, there would probably be the opportunity to learn a bit of German, too. German is a major second language in this part of South America.

Following the initial language study and orientation, CEC likes to give each student the opportunity to have two different experiences during their time here. One might be in Chile and the other in Paraguay, or Bolivia, Argentina or Peru. If you are interested, let me know and we can talk. You would need to raise your own support for your plane ticket and monthly expenses. One of the main thoughts going through my head as I reflect on the networking and partnering I have been doing, or the short term opportunity for students, is the blessing of being able to work together with people in the body of Christ who are from other places and speak other languages. This is a life transforming experience.

Whether it is connecting two contacts who need to know each other, or trying to channel students into a wonderful opportunity to find their places in God’s plan, I am totally committed to learning how we can all work together for the sake of the kingdom and not having to reinvent the wheel or jealousy guard “our” ministries. I get so weary seeing folks building the own personal empires that I want to learn to do God’s business in better, more effective, more Christ-like ways.

Well, I must go. Roscoe and I are going out in search of world famous Argentine beef! There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. I can hardly wait! Let’s see … I think we’ll go here!