A plateau in life is not somewhere anyone wants to be. A “plateau” is a relatively level high ground. A plateau in life is exactly that, a position in which you are no longer growing, increasing, or developing and where things start to seem flat and stagnant. I read a book about the plateau in learning a language. As you start to learn the language, you start growing immediately and drastically, but at some point it seems that you have hit a “ceiling” in your learning (or a “plateau”) and you seem to take a detour from the road to fluency. There are plateaus in life too, it is just a part of it. So how do we push through the plateaus? I can think of a few thing I have learned and am learning to help us through these hard times.

• Don’t quit. Sometimes when we think we are in a “plateau”, we are just in times where things are going slower. We shouldn’t give up, on the contrary we should push harder, trusting Jesus as we continue on.
• Read books. I am in the middle of a book now and it is challenging me. It is addressing things that are lacking in my life, things I often don’t give attention. Now that I am reading about it, I am confronted with a topic in which I must make changes. This type of challenge helps me to grow. Read books often that will help you grow.
• Spend time with strong Christians. The past few days I have had the opportunity to spend time with a friend of mine. My fiend is an influence in my life (as all friends, good and bad, are). But this friend is a positive influence. He is always growing, always serving others, always ready to help, always reading books to grow (see above about reading books), always challenging me to live more for Jesus. He is humble and builds others up instead of trying to build himself up by putting others down. The truth is this type of influence is a needed influence. We all need friends like this to help us push ahead. The man who doesn’t have Christian friends who are growing and challenging others to grow is a man that is on the verge of a large, never-ending plateau.

There are many other things that can be said about this topic. I think these three things will help us to push on through and break out of the plateau.

This Sunday there are elections in Argentina. On election days, everyone is required to vote. Because of this all gatherings (including night clubs, etc.) are suspended for the day. We had elections a few months back and had a special 9:00 AM service. This Sunday Faith Baptist Church will have a special 6:00 PM service. We are hoping for a wonderful day! As we continue our short furlough, we will be in Vidalia, GA this Sunday.

It has been a while since we have posted anything from the series “adjustments” but we are back at it with this one. Cultural adjustments must be made by missionaries. The culture of a country is beautiful but can be quite difficult to understand. As I work on this post, we have a new missionary family in Argentina. They are going through language school and are doing a great job. They have been in country for over 5 weeks now. We communicate by phone often. It is humorous at times to hear his frustrations or lack of understandings, or sometimes confusion because I was having those same feelings not so long ago. Please don’t get me wrong, he is not having these times very often, but every once and again something takes place and he doesn’t quite understand. That is exactly why we must make these adjustments.

Holidays. Don’t you love holidays? I do! I remember being in school and looking forward to the holidays that would come up so that we could have the day off. Holidays are special. As I got older, I began to understand the purpose behind each holiday. As a child I didn’t care, as an adult I have grown to understand and appreciate each holiday. We arrived in Argentina and found that there were a whole new list of holidays! Not knowing the language made this difficult, because we would wake up, go about our day only to find out that some stores were closed because of the “feriado” (holiday). “What holiday?” I would ask. Most of the time people would know, there were a few times the Argentines I spoke to did not know exactly which holiday it was. On the other side, the day before a holiday brings long crowded lines at stores. I went into a large supermarket the day before “Kid’s Day” to buy one item and found lines 30+ people deep waiting to check out! The most frustrating time for me was when we tried to go to a store and found every single store closed. It was not Christmas. I believe it was September. All of the stores were closed! We were trying to buy milk, bread, and a few other things but we could not find anywhere that was open and it blew my mind! I was so aggravated! After some time, we learned that this holiday was the “holiday of the commercial worker”. What?!?!? What is that? We don’t have that in the States? (that statement is one of the worst you can make on the mission field).

If we are not careful, we see these holidays more has hindrances than celebrations. This is another cultural adjustment that must be made.

We are on a quick furlough but the church continues on! This Sunday is Mother’s Day in Argentina. I have already been in contact with a few key families in the church. They are anticipating a great Sunday! We are praying for it to be a special day at Faith Baptist Church. Each mother present in one of our services will receive a gift and of course the Bible will be preached! Please pray with us that God will work in each person for His glory!