Dear Friends,
Three weeks ago yesterday (Saturday), the final two busses rumbled off into the night, taking with them the last moments and participants of Congreso Nacional 2008: Prueba de Fuego (National Conference 2008: Trial of Fire). I have sat down at least four times since then to try and write this letter, but every time the words either do not seem to come out right, or I end up otherwise occupied with other tasks. So at last, I hope to not only share about the conference, but about the busy weeks since. It’s enough that I need two pages…
CONGRESO FIRSTHAND:
From my perspective, Congreso is pretty well hyped by staff and students that have been before, and I think I went in subconsciously expecting to have an amazing ‘Congreso Experience,’ essentially to witness God work mightily in students lives and learn something profound myself alongside them. However, being there to help run it instead of just attending it (I was pretty much in charge of setting up the stage and supervising the technical aspects of the main program), I felt like did not have the chance to take in much of the content or do much interacting with the students. It actually left me a little frustrated, feeling like it had been busy and stressful work instead of the rewarding, inspiring time I had expected.
Since I knew that Congreso was much more than how I experienced it, I asked two guys in my bible study to share their experiences. Both wrote in English since they study foreign languages, but please forgive the grammatical errors as both are fairly early in their studies :
“In my opinion, I think that Congreso was WONDERFUL, AMAZING, MARVELOUS. I mean, it's an experience I'd never known before. I really, REALLY loved it. I must confess that, in the beginning, I was like "ok, I have NO idea of how it's gonna be like", and I actually got to think it was gonna be a little boring. But WOW! I couldn't ever imagine that it would be so great, even though the trip wasn't good at all, it worthed it! I never knew how really wonderful God was until that Congreso. The workshops, the talks, the time sharing with our friends, and of course, the praising time (that was the thing I LOVED the most).” - Leonardo
"I really learnt how to keep a good communication with God, how trust him. 
One of the most activities that I loved more was the [main sessions]”... “I really liked it because while we were singing those songs we could felt like God's love through us. I also like when we went to the beach to share with other people our faith. At the beginning I was really nervous and worried at the same time because I had not done that before. I mean, I had shared before but not like by myself , I always were the translator so it's easier”… “But when you trust in God you never are going to feel afraid of anything. 
Fortunately, with the guys that I was sharing, they were really good doing it, but I [prayed] and I talked to God in order to he could helped me of not feel any [fear] or insecurity of myself while I was sharing with other people. After I [prayed], I really felt good”… “I did it really natural. I could not believe that I had shared and I was not scared of it. But now I feel confident about share my faith with someone else. I really like that conference. I hope the next year I can go to the following one.”
– Neuro (slightly condensed, some spelling corrected)
THIRDHAND CONGRESO: During our staff retreat after Congreso, I learned that over 20 students had attended a lunch for those interested in either a 4 month or year long full-time ministry commitment. At church the following Sunday, one student, Jesús, talked about personally seeing 15 people make decisions to follow Christ during the 2 hours of sharing on the beach Friday of Congreso. Waleska shared about having her perspectives changed on missions, Yuliana shared how God established the path He wants her on in the future, and Angela shared that it was simply impactful to her that God provided to take her there and that she’d really been ministered to by a staff couple there. Saturday of that week we had time for students to share about Congreso, in which Darwin talked about being challenged to please God in the little things, Leonel said he was able to see how much he’s grown since last year’s Congreso, and Jatniel explained how a workshop helped him see how he can be distinct from the crowd to reflect Christ to them.
BY THE NUMBERS:
4 days, 3 nights (Mar 19-22)
180 Students
-30 from Merida
-9 from Santa Barbara
20 Ohio State Spring Breakers
26 National Staff (e.g. me)
9 Cities represented
SINCE CONGRESO: So even though I didn’t necessarily enjoy my own experience at Congreso, in light of so many positive testimonies, I’m really beginning to see how much God used it. Even for myself, I’m seeing how He’s been leading me to scripture (like Psalm 91) about taking refuge in Him and His sufficiency, and as I consider how little I did so at Congreso, I’m relearning how vital it is. It is definitely a learning process, especially in the craziness of the past two weeks.
In three concepts, the last two weeks have been servant team, finances, and moving. As a team, we created a new model for our team of student leaders (aka servant team). Instead of the current model of a group of core students helping plan all aspects of ministry together, the new model has core students in smaller groups, each focused on a particular aspect of the ministry. It’s been a process of trying to specify those key aspects of ministry and trying to figure out what core students we should invite into the leadership roles. Please pray for the process as we are hoping to finalize who to ask this week and ask them for a decision by the beginning of May. In the finances department, Congreso costs along with upcoming events(including a trip next week to help jumpstart a movement in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital), made for enough financial details that I took all day last Thursday in my role as team administrator to organize them. Please pray for clarity and accuracy in that department as there is a lot to track, especially with the new apartment. Speaking of moving, our money exchange contact has an apartment we can use temporarily while we keep looking for something longer term. So Tuesday and Wednesday we spent the afternoons packing, and moved here to the new apartment Wednesday night. It is not close to the girl’s apartment and is a little on the expensive side, but it is a Godsend to have a comfortable apartment in a nice part of town in the timeline we needed that even includes good relations with the landlord. Please keep praying for long-term housing solutions for our whole team, seeing as I was told Friday that the girls need to move before the team ends its year here in July.
Finally, thank you for your prayers. I recently looked at last month’s letter and realized that God provided a bus the same day as bus details appeared on the calendar. Your prayers are powerful and effective, and I love that I get to see Him answer them specifically. ~In his hands, Eben
