Christmas in July

God has been doing great work in and around us. The cold has been heavy over the past two weeks, but our times with the children have increased, for they are on winter break. Still, we would to share the personal time our team has had this week.
God blessed us this week with a vacation. The officers of the Concepcion corps invited our team on a trip with their family to see snow. Tuesday morning we arose bright eyed and bushy tailed at the hour of 6 a.m. to begin our journey.
The team was in one van while the officer’s family and our things were in another. Still, our vehicle didn’t make it far….it broke down with a flat tire, but our spirits would not be broken. While waiting for the new car to arrive the majors joined us with hot coffee and the singing of songs. After a short time, a new van arrived for us and we started the journey again. Slowly we began to see a powdery substance coming from the sky…..it was SNOW!! We were stopped after a while and were required to put chains on the van. While waiting Melanie couldn’t stand it, she jumped out of the van and began to enjoy the snow! We all followed and began making snow balls! Now, how many summer service corps teams can say they played in the snow on their trip, but wait, there is more (much more)!
We arrived to our cabin after a little bit of a struggle on the driver’s part (they got lost), plus the snow was coming down heavier! There was already about fifteen inches of snow on the ground when we arrived and it was impossible for the cars to pull into the drive way! We all got out and had to start hand shoveling snow out of the way so we could park the cars. We had to push cars, move snow and wade to finally get into our cabin.
After a while, Morgan, Beracah, and Melanie couldn’t stand it anymore….we ran outside and played in the knee high snow. Despite the snows inadequacy for the perfect snow ball, we still had fun running around throwing it at each other, tackling the others into the snow, and making snow angels. It was cold, but worth it!
As the night progressed the team was called for family games! Despite the language barrier we had an AMAZING time playing and singing LOTS of songs. The night ended with plenty of laughter.
We awoke the next morning to even more snow, and a bit of a problem…..the cars wouldn’t start, the snow had buried the vans, and the owner of the cabins was requiring us to leave. What were we to do but to start gearing up for the snow? We quickly packed the cars and began pushing, digging, and shoveling to get the car out. We had to walk in front of the first for a short distance to get it back to a semi-cleared road. Thankfully, that car at least started on the first try, but we were not so lucky with the second. This one took much more effort and time. Thankfully, one man was kind enough to pull it with his truck to get it started. We can honestly say that as a team we prayed the hardest we’d all every prayed in our lives. After hours of pushing back and forth we finally started our slow journey back home. The van we traveled in (which was revived only through the awesome power of God) had many problems along the way, and what was supposed to be a four hour trip ended thirteen hours after we started. Over all, we had an amazing time, and had the unique summer service corps experience of snow. Today, our arms are tired from it all, but our toes have begun to finally be warm again, and our spirits are unwavering. We want to finish our last few days strong.
Can’t wait to be home soon and share more of our stories with you all. We love you all!

Oh, and here is a picture of the mountains we saw, and hwere just over them lay Argentina.