ARGENTINA TRIP - DAY 3
24th September 2007 - Buenos Aires - 6am

Well we made it to Buenos Aires after 50 hours of travelling!!!!!
The overnight in the Washington Hilton at the airline's expense was not all bad.
The Hotel was amazing and the standard of service was like nothing we have ever experienced anywhere - the staff were really on the ball with free lifts to the mall and the Smithsonian Air & Space Centre. What an amazing FREE museum!
We saw one of the shuttles - James Irwin's space suit - the Enola Gay - Concorde and every other imaginable shape and size of aircraft from the early pioneers until modern times. We watched an IMAX film about the 12 men who have walked on the moon (JOB - just be quiet!)

What is it about hotel showers? I swear they are like fingerprints and snowflakes. They are all different with their own personalities. You think you have it just right and then just when you are all lathered up you get scalded - so you try to adjust the "fawcett" and a whoosh of ice cold water hits you in the face!

The final little surpise stored up for us by United Airlines was the allocation of our seats to Buenos Aires. We were in the same row - GREAT! But we both had window seats - work it out for yourself. When I told the lady at the boarding desk that there was no way that Mo and I would be sitting 7 seats apart she acted pretty quickly and we snuggled down for the 10 hour night flight.
The taxi ride along the freeway into BA is best left to the imagination and definitely best negotiated with eyes closed - the speed limit is 80k (50mph) and the driver managed to do 130k (80mph) most of the way!
The Hotel is fine with a fridge and microwave - and we are only a couple of blocks from the Church. After a shower we went straight to the Church and caught the last half hour of ministry from Claudio. The Church is even more amazing than we remember it. A much larger buliding and congregation. They have two congregations on Saturdays and three on Sundays - the services last about 4 hours with over 2,500 people. Some stay for more than one meeting and there are queues round the block to get in!
We went off for some lunch at about 2pm - an amazing Argentine/Chinese help-yoyurself buffet with all kinds of food from choose-it-yourself stir-frys to large pieces of meat on a coal fire (it was way too big to call it a charcoal grill) Cost? Under £5 each with wine! We will have to find somewhere cheaper.

After lunch we went back for the 4pm service as we needed an early night. The building was nearly full by 3:45 but as UK guests we were shown to the front and given translation headsets.
The worship was astounding - a 50 strong choir and band that looked like they meant every word they were singing. It seem that the duty choir of the day do at least 2 of the Sunday services (all 4 hours long - what committment!)
We had an emotional reuinion with the family we stayed with in 1997 - Nomar and Andrea's 4 kids remembered us and the fun we had. Nomar led part of the service near the beginning. For those of you who are interested - he read a few verses from Mark 2 about the healing of the paralysed man - gave a short 5 minute Gospel presentation and around 50 people responded to receive Christ. Another group came out to receive prayer for healing.
Eventually Cluadio came on to preach - he is a bouncing ball of fun - I have never seen a preacher enjoy himself so much. He spoke from 2 Kings about Elisha asking Elijah for a double portion of what he had! You can imagine where the ministry time went after that. Let's just say that he had spotted Mo and I from the platform and came and prayed for us in our seats - what a start to the week! Bodies all over the place!

I guess I will have less time for blogging as the week goes on so I will try to keep them a bit shorter - we have to register for the conference this morning at 8am so it's an early breakfast for us.

I will have to find out how to add photo's to the blogs.

Thanks for reading - please keep praying - Terry & Mo