Oiflashari’s Weblog

Coming home from Argentina has been one of the hardest things I have ever done and I didn’t do it well, rather, I let it happen to me and I relinquished all control over my own life. I adapted so easily and so well to being in Argentina, in my head I made Argentina my home and I became Argentinian, I was not ready to come home. During our last week of outreach we met to talk about how we all felt about going home, I remember feeling genuinely confused and thinking ‘this is my home now, I am an Argentine’. My ability to adapt to other cultures is a gift, I am sure of it. But I have not yet mastered the art of adapting back to my own culture!

I was shocked by our overabundance in the UK. At every meal there is more than enough for second helpings and left over’s and the food is always really tasty. Whilst in Argentina I lost my appetite, I could only eat what was available and when it was available, I had no choice or control, food became a secondary thing in life that I wasn’t particularly fussed about. Then I come home to breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, dessert, evening snack…. It was too overwhelming, I regained the stone I lost in Argentina rather rapidly! And it’s true for all other areas of life, not just food, we have an extravagant overabundance yet we are ungrateful, complacent and wasteful (I am generalising and am aware that this may not be the case for many of us making lifestyle changes due to the current recession).

In Argentina we walk, hitch and take public transport everywhere, this adds up to a lot of mileage for the old legs, it also means that being fit is a necessity and a natural part of the lifestyle. When I got home I found myself in a village in the middle of nowhere with my dad’s car available to me if I wanted to borrow it so that I didn’t have to walk anywhere, I had to remember to force myself to go out for exercise, which seemed bizzare and pointless – walking with no goal in mind!

In Argentina time does exists but it is approached in a very different way! They are more lax about specific time and dates, they seem carefree and relaxed. When we got back to the UK we had 2 weeks of endless meetings… meetings to de-brief, meetings to share and compare latest news within YWAM York, meetings to plan the year ahead… schedules, deadlines, STRESS!!!

I loved the language, I loved learning Argentinian Spanish, I loved pronouncing ‘ll’ as ‘sh’ and I still do that even when I read in English and Welsh. My brain shifted and now it has to shift back! It’s such a shame, I don’t want to loose or waste the language I learnt out there. But there’s no point holding on to it if I never return!

Transition is tough!

Coming ‘home’ was a huge shock to the system! Thank God that my citizenship is in heaven and not bound to an earthly location or to one group of people!

After spending many hours listening to homeless people tell me their stories, after hours invested into the lives of those on council estates and slums, after feeding the hungry and clothing the poor and of doing all that good social action stuff, what’s left? What’s the point of it all? Am I on a mission to make people as comfortable as they can be while they are here on this world? Am I on a crusade to rid the world from it’s pain and suffering so it can be happy and at peace? I’m not so sure! I profess to be a Christian, someone who has realised that they were created by God and who desires to enter into a relationship with God. But God is so high and lofty that I’ve also realised that there’s no way I can reach a good enough standard to even get close to Him let alone get intimate! But because God created me and wants to lavish His love upon me He made it possible for me to get close to Him. This next bit I don’t quite understand with my human mind but I’m on a quest to grasp the significance of it in my current culture; Jesus died for me so that I could be like Him and get access to God the Father! Crazy stuff! Now that I am friends with God I have eternal life so there is more at stake for us than just the world we see with our natural eyes! How cool is that? My only conclusion then, about all the work I do, is that I do desire to help out where possible and I do want to see a radical social revolution motivated by pure, unadulturated love, but I also know that people die and people get sick and that we have to believe that there’s more to life than this! We are all eternal beings and I want us all to have the best eternal life possible. Lets bring as much of heaven as we can to earth, and that will involve clearing up people’s vomit, helping those we love to mourn, comforting the brokenhearted, feeding street kids, hugging people who live on rubbish dumps… Heaven isn’t utopia, heaven is love in action, real love, selfless love! Jesus’ life on earth was our example of how to live out love, how to die for the sake of love and for the sake of those He loved! I want to live that kind of life!

I am announcing a change of nickname! I was given the nickname Hari in my younger days of gung ho wreckless living, so now that I am a new creation in God that name is not quite fitting! The meaning of my real name is Angharad, which means ‘greatly loved one’. I have been looking for a name with the same meaning but the only one I could find was Philomena/ina which is Greek of origin. However, the name’s Cara and Cari are Irish, Latin and Gaelic of origin and mean ‘beloved, freind’. They come from the Spanish ‘Caridad’ meaning ‘dear, darling’. Angharad – Caridad – Cariad – Cara. So, I have decided that my new nickname will be Cara – it’s the closest name that I will find to Angharad, in terms of meaning! I was very pleased to discover that Angharad is such a unique name that has no equivalent in many languages, so all us Angharad’s should bear our names proudly! I am very grateful to my parents for choosing my name and I believe that it is part of my new identity in God, ‘greatly loved one’!

P.S The need for a nickname in the 1st place comes from my work with YWAM and meeting so many people from so many different nationalities. Despite genuine efforts to learn my name it is not easy for many pople to remember and pronounce, so in gratitude and respect for them I have chosen this name!

The 3 things I learnt from the YWAMers in Argentina;

1. Generosity

True generosity comes from the heart and the Argentines truly have this character quality deep within them, they would give when they didn’t have anything else to give, they would give from what little they had and they would give gladly, with joy.

2. Creativity

This goes side by side with their generosity because they would make things to give to people. They were also very enterprising with their creativity; they would make things to sell as a source of extra income! They had a strong desire for their creative expression to be of a high standard, eg the quality of their drama, music and dance training meant that they will be up there with the best in Buenos Aires!

3. Hard work

They all worked so hard to make dreams become reality on a daily basis in both the large and small matters of life. They also had a high standard to their work, they really modelled to me that ‘if something is worth doing it is worth doing well’. This is of great credit to their relationship with God, their desire to please Him and to serve others wholeheartedly.

I am from Wales and ever since I was a child I have heard about a far off land where my ancestors went to set up a better life for themselves. I have always been intrigued by this epic adventure story and I have always dreamed of going to Patagonia, but I’d never made realistic plans to go there! This year, myself and 3 others had to decide where we would go for our outreach trip, we spent time listening to God, surrendering our own ideas and then being obedient to God’s guidance. God led us to Argentina and two specific locations within Argentina! It took me quite a few days after we’d made the final destination decision to realise that we were going to be spending 3 weeks in Patagonia! Crazy! I was stoked!

One of my childhood buddies back home listen patiently to me as I ranted on about the fact that I was going to Patagonia and he gently told me not to get my hopes up too much! You may think he was being a kill joy but he actually helped me to have a realistic expectation for my trip.

On the 20 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Puerto Madryn I woke up at the crack of dawn, I watched the sun come up and enjoyed being in the knowledge that I was on my way to my estranged ‘home from home’. I was awake from 7am to 2pm and all I saw was desert! I was not impressed! But as I spent more and more time living in the desert, which was right by a sea with whales and flamingos, I fell in love with the people and I received God’s heart for the land. To our human eyes the land looked dry and barren but to God it was a ‘land of milk and honey’ where many of His obedient children had chosen to come to bring His Kingdom here on earth and into the lives of the people there!

I had the awesome opportunity to visit Gaiman, a small town in the valley where there’s a lively Welsh community. I drank Welsh tea in a Welsh tearoom and had a few conversations with the local Welsh-speakers. It was fascinating to hear Welsh spoken with a Latin American accent! We also prayed as to why God would choose to bring me here and we believe that He wanted me to reclaim the pioneering spirit of my ancestors. As a prophetic act in response to this word from God I collected a tiny pot of soil from Gaiman and have brought it home to Wales as a symbol that I will follow in the footsteps of my countrymen to take new ground in the Name of the Lord.

it’s a 20 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Puerto Madryn! But the buses are really comfortable, like the 1st class seats in a movie theatre! And we always travelled overnight so it wasn’t too bad! But the view is just desert for hours!!! ti  hi hi!

We lived here in Puerto Madryn for 3 weeks! I loved it! It was one of the happiest times of my life and I felt so at home there! It was dessert but God gave me a vision of what the land could be – a land of milk and honey! Here we visited a day centre for people with physical and men tal disabilities, we worked with a depraved housing esatate that the local YWAM group have adopted, we taught on their DTS on the topic of Identity, we went to Gaiman for the day to follow in the steps of my pioneering ancestors, we preached at a church, we ran evangelism workshops, we prayed for newborn babies at the hospital to bless their lives, and more! I loved going out into the dessert hills for my quiet time, God met me many a time out there! This was our 1st outreach location and my favourite, it got hard after this!

The Christian leaders we met in Argentina inspired me in the way the impacted society on both a macro and micro level. They modelled a Christianity in action that literally feeds the mouth of the hungry whilst also discipling those in political power on how to change the structures that cause the social problems! This is something I want to adopt inot my own life!

When we were in puerto madryn, patagonia, we were lucjy enough to see wild pink flamingos, sea lions and whales!!!! I used to go for walks on the beach if we had free time and God blessed me so much in those times. I didn’t take my camera out because sometimes it can ruin the enjoyment of the moment and the fact that I have no photos makes it a magical secret moment between God and I. A moment I will never forget, walking bare foot through the sea on a fresh spring day! Aah!

Our YWAM community in York is a bit different to other places. We just live in regular houses and we are small in numbers. Other YWAM are a bit bigger, have more people and are more scheduled! I LOVE SCHEDULE!!!! I find schedule to be so helpgul to me because i like routines and habits. My life is so varied at the moment that it’s really hard to find consistency – we travel around to different parts of the country, europe and beyond and we have varied schedules on a day to day basis. So, transitioning back to having freedom from schedule is very hard for me but a very integral part of my personal discipleship. It’s easy to now what to do when you’re told what to do and when to do it, but what do you do with your time when you have to fill it and you have to steward it. I have to listen to God for guidance on the best use of my time so that I don’t go on unproductive wild goose chases!