September, 2016
Hey Everyone! So this month in the Central Corps of Buenos Aires (BsAs), the band, the choir, and the praise and worship team took a trip to Rosario, Argentina, which is about four hours north of BsAs city. The first evening we arrived, we performed an open air evangelical concert in the Parque Alem. It lasted about two hours and, despite being a little cold, it went really well. After the concert, several people from the audience came to talk to us asking about the brass band and the church. And three of them even joined us for the Sunday morning worship service the next day. We played again for Sunday service in the Arroyitos corps of Rosario, and afterwards we went for a small parade and marched about five or six blocks in all.
This trip was fantastic, we accomplished our purpose of sharing the Message through music and had a great time together along the way. I found that, like band trips back home in the States, much of the same things are experienced. On the road trip there´s games and songs, snacks, funny pictures of people who have fallen asleep, and DJ critics. During the stay, we laugh and talk over meals at the corps, stay up too late talking only to wake up dead the next morning, and just plain ol´ goof around in our free time. But there are some cultural differences, for example the culture of sharing is very strong here. In a way, everything you own also belongs to everyone else. Everything is shared—food, cups, clothes, money, testimonies, responsibility, etc. These things are shared in the states too, but it´s on a much stronger level here, and I think it makes our goal as a Christian community, a Christian Family, much easier to reach.
In all, I really enjoyed spending time with everyone on the trip and I´m glad to have been able to share an evangelical purpose with them.