Back to the team - Buenos Aires

I arrived safely in Buenos Aires and met up with the team, thank you Liz and Tanya for driving 2 hours to come and get me from the airport. Gotta love city traffic! We stayed at a YMCA base outside the city which was pretty rural (which resulted in eating empanadas for at least 2 meals a day for 4 days straight as this was the only food in the town). I arrived during a rest time for the team which was great, we were in beautiful grounds so it was a good place to rest and get used to living in community with twenty plus people again. 

I took a day off to go sightseeing in Buenos Aires which was lots of fun. We prayed for people who God highlighted to us on the street plus enjoyed some tango dancing while having lunch. I got a more scenic tour of the residential parts of the city when Liz and I accidentally took the right bus but in the wrong direction... Oops! Happens to the best of us! Was a great opportunity to see more of the city though :)

Four days later and we were on the road again, Uruguay here we come! 

Natalie getting a tango lesson

Argentinian architecture

To Spain and back via the Holland Revival

Well I am now back with the team after a wonderful break in Spain. Being with my family (my brother and his wife, their baby and my mom) was really good for me on all fronts, emotionally, spiritually and physically. I loved being in a regular home again, having my own bedroom, being able to have a hot shower every day, access to a fridge with yummy healthy food and loads of good Spanish coffee. Highlights of the trip include much rest, then more rest, good food and visiting some of my favourite places in Salamanca, the town where my brother lives and which I have visited many times. The best part of course was being with family and getting to know my niece, who was only 9 months old then.

Who couldn't love this child?!! So cute... and please note

her adorable jersey I brought back for her from Peru!!

At the last minute my 3 week break turned into a 7 week break when the team landed up being about a month behind schedule, so when I was supposed to rejoin them in Buenos Aires they were still right at the bottom of Chile. It would've been really hard for me to meet up with them there so I decided to stay with my family for an extra couple of weeks.

Which is how I landed up at the Holland Revival. The week after I was supposed to head back to South America my brother and his wife had a conference in Amsterdam so they were going there for a week with my mom. So I gatecrashed their little family holiday! 

Happy family - my brother and his wife and their daughter

Slight backtrack, the weekend before Amsterdam my mom and I did a road trip south to Jerez to the annual horse festival, which is particularly famous for the Lipizzaner horse show. It is especially noteworthy as the show was at the actual Lipizzaner horse farm where these beautiful horses live and are trained. It was truly spectacular. The festival was a lot of fun with flamenco dancing and festivities late into the night. We took a scenic trip back to Salamanca via Sevilla and a few other local towns to get a feel of that area a bit more, plus visit some historic places such as the Alcazar Palace Gardens which were incredibly impressive. 

Amsterdam was such a fun week, beautiful weather in the high 20s most of the week made walking around very pleasant. Holland has been known as eating as much as Germany with the quality of France and I think this is very true, the food really was spectacular and we did eat a lot! The people were so friendly to, we'd come back to our home each day with stories of people's kindness and politeness and it would just blow our mind. I've been to Amsterdam a couple of times before but it was great to see it again with my family. In the middle of our week there I went to visit a friend of mine who I knew from my time as a missionary in Mozambique last year in a town called Harderwijk where they were holding a number of evening meetings as part of the Holland Revival. They'd started by having about a week of meetings for the Holland Revival Conference where as a community they cried out together to God to bring revival to Holland, but due to God crashing in and moving in many amazing ways the meetings kept going, so by the time I joined them they had been going for over a month. This was an amazing time of ministry for me as Mattheus Van Der Steyn was leading the meetings and he is one of my favourite men in ministry. I was super surprised when he asked me to help minister with their team, I was expecting to be there as a visitor! It was a great honour though and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Mi familia - me, my brother, my mom and my niece

From Amsterdam after a very tearful emotional goodbye to my family I headed on to London while they left for their respective homes in Spain and South Africa. London was a blessing like no other. I went to visit old friends and my church there (having lived there for 4 years 4 years ago it is a place still close to my heart which I also call home). It was amazing reconnecting with old friends and visiting my old church, which I love and think is amazing. Plus that weekend I was blessed to be part of a 3 day worship conference camping out in the country. It was an amazing time of seeking the Lord and for me to be refreshed in Him so that by the time I returned to my team I felt restored and strong enough to continue ministering. A truly incredible way i know that Jesus loves me is that I was in London for what I think was the one week of British summer. Every day I was there is was a perfect about 28 degrees. I even got a tan, seriously. Leaving London was hard as I was so blessed by my time there, but by then I was ready to return to my team in Buenos Aires refreshed and ready to show God's love through the rest of South America.

Fun times in London - enjoying the one week of summer sun in a kiddies pool!!

Santiago

Wednesday a small group of us went into Santiago to do some treasure hunting (ministering to individuals on the street the Lord highlights to us) and sight seeing. On the way into the centre (2 buses and a metro later) Ben had a word of knowledge for someone walking with a cane and pain shooting up their right leg. He saw people with canes all around him so prayed and shared with them, the second lady started walking perfectly healed, having never walked like that before. She left with her cane under her arm ready to give it away, rejoicing in her healing. 

Santiago is a great city, I felt really comfortable here, maybe because after the craziness of my last 7 months of living on the road it gave me a sense of normality, I did live a very corporate lifestyle in London for 4 years after all so being in a business centre is very familiar to me.

Lunch in Santiago with Ben, Kurt, Liney and Liz

A view through Santiago

Thursday was an early start to drive to the airport at 5am - got lost, drove down the wrong side of the road twice, numerous turnarounds, competing with the GPS and where we thought we should go, asked the car next to us for directions at a freeway offramp... No stress as the time for my flight got closer and closer! Got to the airport perfect timing thanks to Liz's amazing driving, Kurt's impressive navigation and Liney's fantastic help with Spanish, in time for a flight delayed by an hour. 

You know you've been on the road for too long when you're excited about airplane food. It was good, even got a fresh bread roll warmed in the oven, plus real butter! Haven't had that in months. My interchange at Buenes Aires didn't go as smoothly - possibly to do with the fact that I was trying to check into the Iberia direct flight to Madrid at 1:05pm instead of my 1:20pm flight to Rome (and then Madrid) with Alitalia. Easy mistake to make considering I'd been up since 4am after 3 hours sleep. Also a good time to discover I'm actually in the wrong terminal, not just at the wrong boarding gate. Oh, and I don't have a boarding pass as I'm in transit and haven't actually checked in. Great, not challenging to communicate this in Spanish at all. All's well that ends well and I got on the flight, all 13 hours of it. 

And now I'm on a much needed holiday to Spain to spend some time with family resting and recuperating. Living as I have been for the last 7 months has taken its toll, it's been an unforgettable experience, but it's also been exhausting. Two continents, 13 countries, thousands of kilometres travelled by car, bus, train, airplane, taxi, motorbike, metro, tuc tucs, hitched rides on the back of pickup trucks, boats and of course walking, living in very close community with between 20 and 33 people at any given time in very challenging conditions, not to mention all the ministry we've been part of, no wonder I'm tired. And ready for a break. I'll meet up with the team again in Argentina in May. Well that's the plan... If I've learned anything over the last 7 months it's that what we plan and what actually happens is generally 2 different things...

5 day drive from Peru to Chile

First night in Chile we slept in the town of Iquique on the beach then headed off at a reasonable hour on Saturday onwards towards Santiago. It's over 2000km from Tacna, Peru to Santiago, Chile, so understandably we needed to do this journey over quite a few days. The first two or three days of driving were through the Atacama desert. It's the dryest desert in world, I think this explains why the terrain is so not interesting, just giant piles of dirt in the shape of a hill really.

We spent 2 nights at Antofagasta so that we would have Easter Sunday as a family day of rest. This was a fun relaxing day of a late breakfast and family dinner with communion in remembrance of our saviour's death on the cross.

As you can see the Peru to Chile (all 5 days of it!)

drive was not along the most interesting of scenery...

Driving to Santiago, don't be deceived, it's not

nearly as pretty as this photo makes it appear!

Monday we set off off again for what turned into a super long day of driving, we arrived at the town of La Serena after 11pm, boy were we ready for dinner plus bed by that time!

The time had finally come to offload one of our pop-up trailers. Having made it all the way from Portland in the USA to Chile it had finally fallen apart enough to not be worth carrying around with us. So we put it up one last time while we in Antofagasta to see if we could find anyone who would like it. Alas no such luck (!) and so it got hitched back up for one last travel day with us... This pop-up had been home to 6 of us ladies for many months through Central America, so understandably it meant quite a lot to us. I think you could accurately say that we had a love hate relationship with it - hate because it was so broken and such a hassle to put up and down, but also love as it was our home for many months plus it was a place we'd laughed and cried in and shared many memories. Of the 6 ladies there are 4 of us still on the trip, so we took a couple of photos of us with the pop-up for one last memory...

The four us

Retelling stories from the pop-up one last time

We really wanted to bless someone with the pop-up trailer rather than just leave it as a dump or sell it (once you've put it up it could be a good home, it's just not strong enough to be driven through all the rough terrain as we have been travelling through). So mid-morning we pulled over in the middle of the desert where we saw some trucks. We found a husband and wife there who were delighted with it - turns out she'd been praying for a pop-up trailer for a year, asking God to give them one as they couldn't afford one. And here we go and just give them one for free! I love it when my prayers are answered, but I can honestly say I am more blessed when I am part of the answer to someone else's prayer. The husband explained to me how one of his son's is serving the Lord in Peru and how he didn't always believe in the Lord but while he was in Peru he became saved. They were so happy they gave us food for the road. So we left our pop-up home on the side of the road in Chile for 20 sandwiches and a bag of candy and drinks!!

Putting the trailer down one last time

What we swapped our mobile home for -

20 sandwiches, a bag of candy and some drinks!!

Driving away, minus one pop-up trailer

This is what 2 full days of driving to Santiago consisted of, dessert and more dessert

Tuesday was a shorter 6 or 7 hour day straight through to the YWAM base in Santiago.  It's a lovely base outside of the city on a big plot of land. Only thing is the ice cold showers, and Chile is kinda chilly to begin with...

Kurt syphoning petrol out of one of the cars 

for another one which had run out of petrol

Rest time with "We Will Go Peru" Ministries in Tacna

I then met my friend Liz in Lima and we took the bus south to meet the rest of the team inTacna to Amy Lancaster's sister ministry "We will go Peru". This was a wonderful few days of some much needed rest. The result of being sick for the last month is that I am constantly exhausted so any time to sleep and I take it. 

Tacna is not the prettiest town as you can see but a great time of rest!

Good Friday and we set off towards the Peru/Chile border. This border crossing was particularly painful as they were super strict about not taking fruit etc into Chile so they had us unpack each of our 4 cars and motor homes. Why was this so painful? It's hard to imagine just how much stuff we have in ours cars, everywhere. 20 plus people travelling in 4 cars with 2 pop-up trailers, it's crazy. 

Machu Pichu

I spent just Thursday  in Lima trying to get organised for a few days in Cusco plus had the luxury of afternoon coffee as a farewell to Roberta who was leaving that evening, all the while trying to deny the fact that I was getting sick... By the evening the diarrhea had well and truly set in with hourly trips to the bathroom all night. Friday was a challenge as Melissa and I were flying to meet the rest of the team in Cusco. Let's just say that taking a plane, bus,  taxis and a train with diarrhea and the worst stomach cramps I've ever experienced is not the best way way to spend your birthday. And so began two weeks of me being sick with giardiasis. Giardia are parasites living in your intestines, you get them from contaminated water. I probably picked it up when I was in the Amazon. Not surprising. It truly is an awful sickness, I don't think I've ever been that sick, such pain in the stomach. Anyway, 3 sets of medication (2 sets of antibiotics lasting 10 days plus a course of pain killers for the stomach cramps) and 11 days of diarrhea later and I started feeling more normal.

The famous Machu Pichu

Part our group with Machu Pichu in the background

Worshipping at a high place overlooking Machu Pichu

Cusco is a beautiful city, feels very European, like a Spanish town. Machu Pichu was cool to but unfortunately I really was too sick to enjoy it properly. It was fascinating to learn about its history and the Inca people, although not much really is known about it at all! In line with us worshiping in the high places we took communion, worshipped and prayed up on Machu Pichu. I spent about a week in Cusco, most of the time in bed but by the end of my time I was able to explore a bit which was great.

Cusco

A short song to describe our 4 day launcher trip...

Our group of 4 increased to 5 when Bridget joined us in Iquitos. So the 4 day launcher trip was her first experience of this kind. In honour of this we dedicate the following song to her, sang to the tune of the "Twelve days of Christmas". It's an accurate account of just a few of the crazy things we experienced. 

On Bridget's first launcha trip, there was so much to see...

12 men a staring,

11 vendors selling,

10 babies screaming,

9 ports a passing,

8 peeing chicos.

7 (hundred!) swinging hammocks,

6 dolphins swimming,

...5 happy gringos...

4 skewered grubs,

3 starry nights,

2 fluffy ducks 

and a parrot on a wheelchair!!