Oi Brazil!!

And we have arrived! In the country with perhaps the most expectations for from our team. This is a country we have looked forward to with great expectation for the things the Lord will do while we are here since the beginning of our trip (nearly 10 months ago now), we have so so many connections here, there are many Iris (the missionary organisation we are part of) churches across Brazil and we have a Brazilian team member (Carole) with us so she is just overjoyed and proud to be showing us her country and to be sharing God's love with her fellow countrymen. 

The drive from Cuchilla Alto (Uruguay) to Porto Alegre (Brazil) went well, taking 14.5 hours in total which was our desire, to make it there in one day. Praise God for absolutely no car troubles :) And a smooth, quick border crossing - only 1.5 hours which includes half an hour of driving back on ourselves looking for the Uruguayan side of the border crossing because we accidentally missed it the first time round and drove into Brazil without our Uruguayan exit stamps! Easy mistake to make, missing the border crossing, I think it's at least the third time that we've done it!!

We're staying with a wonderful couple, Ricardo and Vanessa who have made us feel so welcome and loved from the very first moment, and they don't know us from a bar of soap. They're Carole (our Brazilian team member's) pastor's (from Rio) friends so she doesn't know them either. Saturday we rested a bit after travelling all day Friday and Ricardo and Vanessa took us out to show us some of their city in the late afternoon. Porto Alegre (where we are) means "Port of Joy", and this city is exactly that. We are all so full of joy and love being here, and we've only just arrived!! It's been interesting to see the change since Uruguay. Uruguay is known as the missionaries graveyard because of the spiritual heaviness, and heavy it was, I felt quite depressed and sad most of the time I was there for no natural reason - I actually loved my time there, the church we ministered with were amazing to us, I loved the ministry, we stayed at great accommodation, ate enough good food (especially home made cakes!) to make anyone feel happy, and still I felt sad and had difficulty sleeping. Cross the border into Brazil and voila, I'm full of the joys of spring and am sleeping better than I've slept in weeks. 

So far my first impression of Brazil has consisted of eating and more eating. And wonderfully friendly and relaxed people. Saturday night and off we went to the Churrasceria, a restaurant serving unlimited amounts of roast meat. It was like heaven for all meat lovers! Endless supplies of meat brought on large skewers by delightful waiters, a salad bar to impress any vegetarian and pizzas with toppings I've never experienced - who knew you could eat dessert pizzas with toppings such as white chocolate and coconut, caramel and melted chocolate, melted white chocolate and bananas... Delicious, all of them!!

Sunset across the port

Sunday we ministered in a small church in a poor neighbourhood half an hour away. As usual, the day was not exactly as we thought it would be, and we have once again had the opportunity to learn more about the culture in which we now find ourselves, namely that they are extremely relaxed time wise, and any good day consists of eating and more eating. In fact, the first day we asked Carole, our Brazilian team member and thus source of all important cultural etiquette, whether it was typical to eat the main meal of the day at lunch or dinner time. Her reply was, "yes, we do eat a big meal in the middle of the day, but we also eat a big meal in the evening, and actually breakfast is also usually big, so, well, we actually just like to eat a lot, all the time. We like food!" Enough said :)

So back to today (Sunday). Off we go at 9:30am to the church where we enjoyed a wonderful breakfast they'd prepared for us. We thought we'd have a church service afterwards but no, we were just there to hang out with them. So hang out with them we did. After our leisurely breakfast we sat around and shared testimonies, answered their questions about us and how our trip was, what God was doing through us, we shared some teaching with them, etc. Following a good Sunday afternoon vibe we enjoyed some relaxing worship and just lounged around for another hour or two (I'm getting the hang of Brazilian time, very much like African time!) while our next meal was prepared for us, delicious rice and beans, chicken, spaghetti, salad... Brazilians love their meat, which is suiting most of our team just fine! 

It continues to blow my mind just how much genuine love we are shown when we come to new churches and contacts. Ricardo and Vanessa and the Church have welcomed us with open arms, not knowing us or having any reason to receive us or bless us, yet they have done so and with abundance. Ricardo and Vanessa are hosting us for free and have made us feel at home right away and the church is providing all our meals for us. Bare in mind it's a tiny church in a poor rundown neighbourhood, so they are not giving out of their excess, they're giving at a cost to themselves. And so willingly, we never asked for this at all, and with so much love. It really touches my heart and makes me quite emotional when I see the body of Christ operating so well with this love for one another. We come from all 4 corners of the earth, unable to communicate in Portuguese at all (I still haven't quite figured out how to say my name and where I'm from!) and yet we are connected with our Christlike love. 

The first miracle I've seen the Lord do while we've been here is change the weather. Being winter, it's supposed to be between 0 and 2 degrees (celsius). Friday night was 23 degrees (10pm), Saturday 27 degrees and Sunday 29 degrees. Perfect days. The locals don't understand it at all, but we know the Lord controls the weather and I for one (and most of the rest of my team!) are LOVING the fact that it's warm and we're able to wear flip flops again. It's been a long time that we've been bundled up wearing everything we own and still cold. 

We then went home to rest (read, sleep off our full stomachs) and watch the football final (yay for Spain) before heading back for the church service. The highlight of the evening was without a doubt hearing Juliano's, a rough looking man from the poor neighbourhood we were ministering in, testimony. He'd been walking in the neighbourhood when he was saw one of our team members sitting outside the church and he was attracted to the light (God's presence) he saw shining around her. He was drawn towards her and thus the church so for the first time in his life he came into a church. Through chatting with some of my team member's, he saw the love of Jesus in us and landed up spending the afternoon with us, just hanging out with us while we worshipped God, enjoying lunch with us, coming to the church service and giving his life to Jesus. The overflowing joy and peace in his face was so contagious, it makes the sacrifice of leaving the comfort of my life at home in Cape Town, my friends and family who I miss so dearly, all worth it, to see one life as precious as Juliano's changed for the better with the promise of eternity spent in heaven with Jesus all worth it.

View out of our window

6 crying girls standing in front of the church... yip, it's time to say goodbye

Sunday (24th June) was our last church service at the German Mennonite Church. Six of us went to say farewell. When it was time for us to stand in front of the congregation to say goodbye (they wanted to thank us for everything we had poured into them but as ever, it was us who were more blessed from them), my good friend Liz gave a most wonderful thank you, shared straight from her heart. All six of us were crying, plus the paster who was trying to translate for us! Even people in the congregation were reaching for their tissues and handkerchiefs while we saying thank you and goodbye... 

Just one of the wonderful things they did for us was take up a very generous financial offering which covered our mechanic bills. We had no idea how we would pay for our cars to get fixed as we certainly didn't have nearly enough money to pay for it, but we payed what we could and trusted God for the rest. Unbeknown to us the church took up an offering for us and it pretty much was exactly what we needed to settle our mechanic's bill. Praise God for providing exactly what we needed when we needed it. What's more is that they don't usually take up offerings, in fact this was I believe probably the first time they'd done anything like that. 

As if that wasn't enough, they have blessed us by offering us their beach retreat house for free for us to rest for a few days before we head to Brazil. Again, I don't believe they've ever offered this house for free to any other group of people, and we're now up to 26 people in our team so we're not a small group! So Sunday after church we headed to the beach house which is in the small holiday resort town of Cuchilla Alto (translates as something like a high hill). Again we were completely surprised and blessed by the youth coming up that Sunday evening to braai for us and just hang out with us. It was amazing!! I have really loved being with this community, possibly more than any other church I've been with on this journey, they are such wonderful, Godly, practical, loving, fun people. I am missing them already. 

The last few days have been complete relaxing days, long walks on the beautiful beach, log fires to keep us warm (it's cold!!), good home cooking and sleeping late. Plus, most important of all, lots of quality time being spent with the Lord to refresh and recharge before heading off to Brazil this weekend. Half of our team will be heading to Porto Alegre in Brazil on Friday to start ministering at a church there, the other half will be staying in Uruguay until all the visa issues are settled. Quite a few people are still waiting for their Brazilian visas, which is taking longer as the Brazilian Embassy is striking, plus one girl lost her passport so she's having to get a new passport before she gets a visa, which is proving complicated and stressful, as to be expected when dealing with Embassies I guess. So we're not really sure when they'll be joining us, I don't need a visa so I'll be heading out on Friday. I'm not looking forward to leaving this beautiful beach location plus the rest of our team, but I am excited about the next stage of the journey which will be in Brazil, a country we have all looked forward to going to since the beginning of the trip. We have a lot of connections there plus many people on the team feel that they will be having a future in this nation so it's an exciting time indeed. 

Last car news to report back on is that the car which broke down in Peru in February has now finally been fixed and sold, praise the Lord. Thank you to those who have babysat the car for the last four months, we are very happy to have them back with our team finally. Plus it's great to have that car off our hands, it was such a hassle for such a long time!! Of course fitting 26 people into 4 cars for the next leg of our journey as we drive into Brazil will be interesting...

Some photos from a day out to some neighbouring towns:

Monday I took the day off and went sight seeing of the city. There is a sweet downtown area where it's really popular for locals to hang our and drink mate (a hot tea drink). The streets were filled with quaint shops and restaurants, I really enjoyed wandering around. I can just imagine how the streets must come alive in summer. Being the middle of winter it's a dead season, definitely not tourist season by any stretch of the imagination!! Walking to the end of the pier where only the fishermen hang out was interesting - the American girl wasn't that keen on walking so far, me being the South African was concerned for our safety as 3 foreign girls walking down a semi deserted pier, while the the English girl didn't give it the distance of safety a thought, she was just keen to go for a walk!! 

Tuesday was a family day of lunch at Rainer (the pastor's) home (it was a public holiday in Uruguay). They blessed us so incredibly with an amazing braai (barbecue) of steak and German sausages plus a large selection of delicious salads. Dessert blew us away with not one, not two but three home baked cakes!! Oh my goodness!! Lemon cheesecake (one of my favourite), chocolate cake and vanilla cake. Sjoe. Definitely in need of going on a diet!! Apart from the wonderful food it was so great to spend the day relaxing in their home, enjoying just spending time with them, not just ministering in church meetings. 

Wednesday I discovered that the closest internet was a half an hour walk away at a local gas station, so off I set to go Skype my sister for her birthday. I was super happy when I got to speak to her and her two little boys. Living the way I do it's hard to commit to Skyping my family for their birthdays, I just never know where I'll be!! Speaking to family is always such a gift while I'm away, especially seeing my nephews (they're only 5 and 3 so kinda little), although it does make me homesick. 

In the evening 5 of us headed off down the road to lead a prayer meeting at a Baptist Church which had somehow heard of us and then wanted us to come minister, so they invited us to come to their weekly prayer meeting. There were about 10 middle aged people who you could see faithfully met every week to pray and seek the Lord for their community, but it was a little dry. The beginning was especially hard for me as as soon as I got there i started feeling sick and very tired, I really just wanted to go home and watch movies with the rest of our team, the last thing I felt like doing was leading a prayer meeting on a cold winter's night when I really wasn't feeling in the mood. But I pressed through (and later found out some of my other team members had struggled a bit too) and it was sooooo totally worth it. We shared who we are, why we're there, what we're doing and how God has used us and blessed us throughout our journey. As the evening progressed we could see them getting more and more encouraged, with their hearts opening to the Lord more and more with each testimony we shared with them. We prophesied over each person as well as the church as a whole which I think just blew them away - there's nothing like having a stranger come in and give you an accurate word that there's no way the stranger could've known without God telling them. We were all emotional and on a bit of a spiritual high by the time we'd finished praying and prophesying. In the now common Uruguay hospital way they invited us for tea and cakes after the meeting, which we of course obliged and enjoyed! As was now becoming the norm, we were also given the left over cakes to take back to the rest of the team!!

Another ministry highlight was just two of us going to minister at a home group one evening. This was a great cultural experience for me which I thoroughly enjoyed. Lisa (one of my team members and I) went to Helmut (the German pastor's) and his wife Fanny's house before the meeting to enjoy tea and coffee and pastries with their family. This apparently is a typical Uruguayan thing to do, enjoy mate (the local tea) and pastries after work, before dinner. Afterwards we went to another couple's house for the home group. It was such fun, 4 couples in their 50s and 60s and Lisa and I! The group have been meeting for nearly 20 years so they really are family to each other, also because some of their sons and daughters are all inter-married! Small German Mennonite community indeed :) Again we shared our personal testimonies plus answered their questions about our trip. I also preached (my first time on this trip!) which was a little nerve-wracking (I am actually quite a shy person, especially when we're talking about the responsibility of accurately teaching God's Word) but it was good for me to be challenged and step out in faith in this area. Afterwards we enjoyed some homemade pizza, plus the now expected homemade cake, tonight being a delicious light lemon cheesecake!!

Saturday was a bit of a sad day for me when my washing never came back from the laundromat. Bare in mind that I have a particularly small wardrobe of warm clothes, so when most of them get lost at the laundromat, it's quite a devastating event. To this day I have no idea what happened, somehow only my clothes (out of about 10 of us who sent our laundry to be washed that day) did not come back from the laundromat, but when I went back (3 times!) to the laundromat to find out where they were they were nowhere to be seen. Hmm. Interesting. So now I need to get over the fact that these clothes will never be seen again but will need to be replaced as soon as possible. As we're now staying out of Montevideo in a really small holiday town there are no shops anywhere near me so I'm not sure when I'll be able to get some more clothes, but hopefully soon... In the meantime I'm borrowing clothes from my team members :)

Heading into downtown Montevideo

Friday the 15th June and we were on the move again, this time to the Bible Institute (like the Salvation Army) in downtown Montevideo. We would miss the beautiful farmlands of Mi Refugio, but it would be good to move to the city to be able to minister there, plus the accommodation was free, which, given our team's current financial position, was a great drawcard! Driving there was, no surprise, an interesting experience, with the 14km journey taking us 2 hours! Turns out the GPS wasn't programmed correctly... so we went all the way round and through the city. We spent a lot of time driving through the poorest neighbourhoods, wondering if this was where we would be staying, we were after all being given free accommodation so it wasn't a good time for us to be picky!! After many awkward pullovers stops in the middle of busy roads to get directions we eventually got there. And while interesting, the house was great. Freezing cold but we all had our own beds so that was nice. The bathroom was quite interesting - the guys and girls was only separated by a thin plywood so you can hear everything that goes on in the other bathroom, plus in each bathroom there were two toilets without any separation. I don't know about you but community peeing is still a bit beyond me!!

Saturday was a good day of relaxing, getting to know our new surroundings (there's a great street market round the corner every Saturday selling fruit and veg and other things, like clothes, which I would come to discover the following weekend when I had the unfortunate experience of losing all my laundry at the local laundromat).

Sunday our team split up and ministered in 3 different places. I went with a group to minister at a small church consisting only of children (I wonder where the parents were?! Maybe we just went to the kids service?) near the beach about 45min away from where we were staying. The kids were so sweet, we explained our story of who we are and what we're doing to them, shared some stories and testimonies of our travels and showed them around our car. We'd driven in one of our motorhomes that morning so looking around it was a great adventure for them, seeing how the bed falls out, the cupboards, fridge, etc and the boys pretended to drive it! Another highlight was us sharing stories of some of the grossest things we've eaten on our travels!! We prayed and prophesied over them which was really powerful, speaking into young children's life is so important. A few of our team stayed to continue leading them in a kids service while the rest of us went a block away to evangelize at a Feria (street market). It was a load of fun, chatting to local people, sharing with them who we are and of course experiencing the locals foods and products on sale. 

Highlights of the morning include 3 people giving their lives to Jesus, yay God, plus meeting Joe, our homosexual friend from San Francisco who'd moved to Uruguay to be with his partner. It was so great having a conversation with them and sharing some of God's love with them. A funny part of the morning was when the pastor's daughter told us about a depressed lady who lived in one the houses nearby, so Charlotte and I of course say great let's go visit her, which totally shocked the daughter as she was definitely not keen to do this! We went anyway and it was classically awkward, a couple of white foreign girls knocking at a family's door to say his and bless them, baring in mind we barely speak Spanish! But it was also great, the family appreciated us coming round, again just showing a bit of God's love to them, and I hope the pastor's daughter learnt from us about how evangelising is not just handing our tracts hoping people will come to church and get saved (actually this is never what I do, totally not my style), but rather how by building a relationship with people, talking with them and sharing God's love with them you will see their hearts change as they welcome Jesus into their lives. After the Feria evangelising and kids church service we shared a wonderful home cooked meal with the pastor and his family and some ladies from the church. Again we were spoilt with some delicious home cooked cake. Uruguay really has been a country of beautiful home baked cakes for us!! 

Cakes, cakes and more cakes

Some of our ministry has consisted of putting up a fence, leading home groups, youth groups, prayer walks, business prayer time, leading church services and street evangelism, amongst others. One of the highlights of my time of ministry was their weekly prayer meeting. When we got there it was really dull and dry (not helped by the fact that we were really late as we got lost getting there!). After worship we went forward and had prophetic words and teachings for the church. While we were sharing what we felt God say to the church we could noticeably see the difference as they started hearing what God had to speak over them, we could literally see their hunger for more of the things of God. It was such a priviledge to pray, laugh and cry with the folks who came forward for prayer. The evening ended with lots of smiles and laughs - smiles because the pastor's wife had made us delicious home made cakes to take back to the team, and laughs because backing up on the way out our car got stuck in the mud in the ditch and some of the guys in the church had to come dig us out. I guess that's what happens when you send 6 girls by themselves - we get lost getting there and stuck going home!! All's well that ends well :)

Another evening we all went to different home groups. This was so fun, I loved being in their homes, getting to know them on a more intimate level than just at church. We shared about our journey, God's faithfulness all the way, I shared my personal testimony of how God turned my life upside down by taking me out of a corporate career to send me to the nations as a missionary and we prayed and prophesied over each person. As ever it's so wonderful to see how hungry each person is for more of what God has for all of us. It never ceases to amaze me how people are thankful when we come and minister to them, yet I feel that it is I who am blessed when I minister with them, it's my priviledge to be able to sow into their lives, and I also walk away feeling that I come away more blessed than when I went in.  

We have experienced God's power in healing, for example we prayed for a lady with cancer and she was healed of it, praise God for this miracle. 

One morning I went with two other girls from our team with Rainer, the pastor, to his business to pray for him there. He works full time (he and his partner run their own logistics company) while also serving as the Church's pastor. It was a priviledge to pray and prophesy for him, that God would continue to be in his business and guide him in all his dealings as a businessman. It is a wonderful thing to see Godly men in business. This morning reminded me of my working days, and made me miss them a bit. Who would've thought I'd miss working in an office!!

"Mi Refugio" ("my refuge") was such a great hangout place, plus we loved being with Bill and Lynda, the American missionaries who manage the retreat. They're an older couple who loved having us there, especially Bill, he was really emotional when we left. 

View over the lake at Mi Refugio

Mi Refugio

Day 4 and now we really need to find somewhere to stay in Montevideo. All our contacts in Uruguay have fallen through so we had nowhere to stay or contacts to minister with. But we trust God and know that even when it seems gray for us, He always has a perfect plan for us. And sure enough again His plan blew my mind with how perfectly He takes care of the details. Charlotte, one of our team members, emailed all the missionary organisations in New Zealand (being a Kiwi herself) asking if they had any missionary contacts in Uruguay. That Thursday (day 4 of our adventures in getting to Montevideo) we got a reply from New Zealand connecting us with Andreas in Montevideo, who we swiftly contacted. Turns out he was leaving for a 3 day conference in Buenos Aires the next day so we hurried over to his place that very afternoon, explained to him who we are, what our heart in ministry is, etc and he put us in contact with Bill and Linda, two American missionaries who manage a retreat property half an hour outside the city. So before we knew it we were staying at a beautiful farm house that very night. Praise God for His provision.

The house was great, although pretty freezing cold, especially at night, with plenty of space to rest and enjoy ourselves - especially having an industrial size kitchen for cooking, that was nice! We got connected with a German Mennonite Church where a few of us lead the youth services that very first Saturday. The girls who went loved their time with the youth and came back really encouraged. I visited their church that Sunday which was really fun. The first service at 9am was in German and the 10 o'clock service was in Spanish! Needless to say I didn't  understand a word of the German service but the Spanish service was fun! The pastor preached on missions and the importance of going to the nations, without knowing that we, an international group of missionaries who have gone to the nations, would be there. How great is God at orchestrating divine meetings! It was great that Rainer (the pastor) was able to use us as examples in his sermon. We were introduced to the congregation and at the end we landed up ministering and praying for many people. The congregation were so hungry for more of the Lord they filled up the next 2 weeks of our time here with ministry opportunities for us to share with their church. I have loved our time with them, they are such a generous, kind, open-hearted community, it has been such a priviledge to minister with them.

Playing catch

Oh look, Kimmie has turned into our team hairdresser!!

Day 2 and we headed off to the town of Colonia on the coast half way to Montevideo. This was a lovely town although we all agreed it would be far more fun to be there during summer when it could be at least 20 degrees warmer!! 

Day 3 and all goes well until we look back and can't see one of our cars behind us, and so begin the car troubles for the day. Turns out their front left wheel just fell off. The axle broke and the wheel fell off. Err. This is how we know God is faithful in protecting us. Thankfully the driver heard a sound and knew that something wasn't right with the car so she drove slowly on the shoulder of the road and only when she had actually pulled over and stopped did the wheel fall off. So we feel blessed that it didn't happen while they were travelling 100km/h, that could have been disastrous. Thank you God for your protection. 

The wheel...

The next few hours were spent hanging out at a gas station in the closest small town while we arranged for a flat bed truck to tend the car. I've have come to love Antel gas stations in Uruguay as they have been a faithful source of Internet connection on more than one occasion. Back on the road that afternoon and we had hardly gone an hour when our big RV motorhome pulled over, not able to continue. We initially thought that the fan belt had snapped, but it landed up being far worse than that. Because of the first car breaking, we had to pile extra people and luggage into the other 2 cars. The extra weight put too much strain on the engine of the RV and it broke. Two weeks and $2,500 later and we're hoping to get the car back from the mechanic this week... So that was the end of our days travels and we found the closest motel to sleep for the night. 

And this is how we sleep, 3 in a bed, with a chair pulled

up for us tall girls so our feet don't drag on the floor!

Fun times with the team!!

We experienced quite a lot of opposition in entering Uruguay. For example it took us 4 days to reach the capital, Montevideo, from Buenos Aires, when it's actually only about an 8 hour drive! But God is good and we have found opportunities to minister along the way. The first setback was being pulled over by the police in Argentina and being given a fine for not having valid car insurance. This wasn't entirely fair as the team had been assured when we entered Argentina that we didn't need insurance, but now we were told we needed it and were thus breaking the law by not having it. Aaarrghh. So in between discussing this in the freezing cold (winter in South America is cold!!), the policemen were very nice about it and gave us a reduced fine rather than impounding our cars. Far more exciting was that one of our team members got a prophetic word from the Lord for one of the policeman so she gave it to him and managed to share Jesus with him. In the natural we tried not to worry about the extra money we suddenly had to pay, especially as we'd barely had enough gas money to start with, so now we definitely didn't have enough gas money to get to Montevideo having just paid the fine. But God is faithful and the very next day we had an anonymous donation in our team account which was exactly the right amount to cover our unforeseen expense. Yay God!

Driving onwards and we get to the border, only to hit our second problem for the day. Car insurance issues again!  We needed to have car insurance for Uruguay before we could enter the country. Slight problem was that we couldn't buy car insurance at the border as they don't sell insurance at the border, but then we couldn't drive into Uruguay as we didn't have said car insurance. Err. So after some negotiations they let one of our cars drive into the country to try buy the insurance at the nearest town. So off they went and the rest of us hung out at the border for 3 hours. Cold, bored and hungry, waiting at borders is not that fun!! But we do manage to entertain ourselves and learn to be patient through it all. After buying the insurance at the bank on the way our team members felt to pray and prophesy over the bank staff members, which they did! This is particularly significant as Uruguay is not a religious country open to faith at all. For example, holidays all have secular names, like Christmas is Family Day and Easter or Holy Week is Tourism Week. We were also blessed through this with the bank staff members finding and organising a hostal for us to stay at that night in their town of Frey Bentos. 

Two men drinking mate (tea) in the main square in Frey Bentos

A political, economic, general conversational introduction to Uruguay

With an area of approximately 176,000 square kilometres (68,000 sq mi), Uruguay is the second-smallest nation in South America by area, after Suriname. 

Montevideo is the capital of Uruguay and consists of about half the country's population. People refer to Montevideo as being Uruguay, with just a few surrounding towns as it's the only really big city in the country, with an estimated 1.8million of the 3.3million population. Uruguay has a really European feel to it in many ways as there are so many European settlers here (an estimated 88% of the population are of European ancestry). Sadly nearly all the indigenous people were killed in the 1800s so now there are no truly indigenous Uruguayans, but rather Uruguayans of European descent, such as German, Swiss, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish predominantly. 

It's a beautiful country with a farming feel to it, which makes sense as agriculture is a big part of the economy. The service industry is also apparently well developed in this country. Uruguay is not very religious at all, with the majority of the population not believing in any form of religion, let alone Christianity. With about 3-4% of the population being Christian there are no large churches, there's one church with about 1000 people but that's it, the rest have at most a couple of hundred, most of them under 100. It's a spiritually dark place to minister, known as the missionary's graveyard because many missionaries have felt forced out of the country as it's hard here. This we can vouch for as being true as we have had quite a few challenges to deal with as a team, it has been a very weird place for us to be, great ministry opportunities on the one hand, but in the natural it's been very hard with lots of things going wrong and knocking us down. But it's all good and we continue to press on, not letting anything hold us back or distract us :)

Some interesting general knowledge facts...

Uruguay is one of the most economically developed countries in South America, with a high GDP per capita and the 48th highest Human Development Index in the world as of 2011, and the first by human development in Latin America, when inequality is factored in. Uruguay is also noted for its low levels of corruption, being ranked by Transparency International as the second least corrupt country in Latin America (behind Chile). Its political and labor conditions are among the freest on the continent. Reader's Digest ranked Uruguay as the ninth "most livable and greenest" country in the world, and first in all the Americas. This I can believe as we have driven through many miles of beautiful farmlands. Uruguay was the first South American country to legalize same-sex and different-sex civil unions at a national level, and to allow gay adoption. Uruguay and Bolivia were the only countries in the Americas which did not go into recession (2 consecutive quarters of retraction) as a result of the late-2000s financial crisis. It was the first nation in the Americas to test hemp cultivation. And last but not least, and this I think is super interesting, in 2009 Uruguay became the first nation in the world to provide every school child with a free laptop and internet.

A misty day through the farmlands