...En la casa de Pablo

There´s this commercial that comes on every once in a while here that really catches my attention. I like it a lot. Here´s a link to it.

Nevada hístorica

Today in Buenos Aires it snowed. It was pretty cold in the morning, and eventually, early in the afternoon, as the snow started falling the people´s jaws started dropping. Apparently, as I heard on the radio in the bus, it hadn´t snowed here since 1928. Throughout the day, people were outside taking pictures, touching the snow, calling people to tell them about it, and sometimes just staring in awe.

I went bowling at Auchan this evening with the youth from Bernal (in Quilmes), and we had a lot of fun. We bowled two games each, ate some pizza, and had a Spanish bowling vocabulary lesson. Afterwards, as we were leaving, we saw that it was snowing pretty hard. It wasn´t sticking, but there was some on top of a few cars and some overhangs outside. So, I started a snowball fight. The Bernal people really enjoyed it. Really.
It was fun to watch in that they were a lot like little kids in the States: eating it, making tiny snowmen out of it, being surprised when it hurt their hands, etc.

Snow is always special (for me, at least), but it feels a bit more special at the moment.

Berazategui neighborhood ministry

Yesterday afternoon I assisted in a neighborhood ministry at the Berazategui church building for a couple hours.

Several people from the church came for the ministry, each person who came had a different job in it. As the people from the church worked, people from the neighborhood would come in to the building, check in at a main table, and sit down and wait. At the main table was a box for logging each person who had come to the church for this ministry in the past and logging what scriptures had been read with them in the past. The passages read with them are in Genesis, Luke, and John, and each time a person from the neighborhood comes, they read a new passage (a chapter, or half a chapter) until the book is finished. Then the person from the church who read with them prays with them for a minute or two. Next, the person from the neighborhood turns in a bag they've brought, along with an index card identifying who the bag belongs to, and get the bag back in a few minutes, full of food things.

So far, this has been one of the ministries that I´ve been most excited about. This is mostly because of the number of people who come to it. Most of them are genuinely interested in hearing what is read to them, once they sit down.

¿Te gusta pecar?

The accent used here is very different from the one used in Spain, and I am reminded of that every once in a while in some kind of funny ways. The other day a friend here asked me, "¿Te gusta pescar?"--Do you like to fish?

Unfortunately, I heard, "¿Te gusta pecar?"--Do you like to sin?

So, where does it itch?

Last Thursday I had my first meeting with Gary, and we discussed some characteristics of God that can be seen in the first two chapters of Genesis. Afterwards, as he was driving me home, we started talking about the studies he´s doing for his doctorate degree. The program he´s in has classes all over South America, and he´s going to Lima, Peru in August to take a class.

After talking about theology briefly, we got onto the subject of how much of an advantage it is for him to be studying theology within the Latin-American world. "What´s your theology regarding ancestor worship?" he asked me. I admitted that I didn´t have any, really, because in understanding God, I needed to think very little about worshipping my ancestors. It became very clear to me at that point how understanding the God who created a great variety of cultures could involve different things for people of different cultures.

Gary told me about a conversation that an American missionary had once with an Argentine citizen in a church up north somewhere (don´t quote me on the location) about the work the ministry his team as foreigners had within the national church.
"You do an excellent job of scratching," the local man said to him. "Just not where it itches."

Foreign missionaries coming into a country and culture they don´t know have a big job in front of them. The people will not ask the same questions or struggle with the same issues as the missionaries did when they were getting to know God, but the missionaries will tend to preach the same messages and teach the same lessons as they heard when they themselves were learning about God. In doing so, they will fail to address things the local people need to learn. God created all existing cultures, and in him are the answers to all their possible problems. In doing his job, though, the missionary´s difficulty is to ensure that he is addressing the right problems.

Ahorrando nafta

Around the Zona Sur where I live, it´s fairly common to find people driving around at night with just their parking lights on. Apparently, driving without headlights causes your car to run on less gas (nafta, as it´s called here) than if they´re on. Even the buses do it.
Of course, if you drive or walk by them, they´ll flash their lights at you just to let you know they´re there.

One imagines them singing to themselves as they drive along:
I´m saving gaaaaas...
I´m saving gaaaaas...
I´m saving gaaaaas...
I´m saving gaaaaas...
I´m saving gaaaaas...
I´m saving gaaaaas...
PLEASE DON´T HIT ME!!!
I´m saving gaaaaas...
I´m saving gaaaaas...
I´m saving gaaaaas...

Carne, pizza, y empanadas

If you sum up the number of meals I´ve eaten here that haven´t primarily consisted of beef, pizza, or empanadas--meat & cheese wrapped in bread--you will not come up with a very large number.

The meal closest to an Argentine´s heart is an asado. Asado is a fatty cut of beef slow-grilled over hot coals. It is usually eaten with bread, to make the fat go down more easily, and is sometimes accompanied by a small salad.

Pizza is a surprisingly popular. I attribute this to the large population with italian roots.

Mate

"Mate is not a drink that someone gives you; it is a shared experience." This is how the phenomenon of mate was explained to me.

Mate is a type of strong, bitter tea drunk originally out of a hollowed out gourd with a wooden straw, and now more often out of a metal or wooden cup with a metal straw. First, the mate, as the cup is called, is filled with herbs and perhaps some sugar. Then, the bombilla, a filtering straw, is inserted in the cup. Whoever is serving then pours enough water into the mate to fill it, and drinks it dry. He refills it with hot water and passes it to the next person, who drinks it dry and passes it back.
The mate is passed around like this to whoever desires it, continuing around the group as long as people want more. When someone has had enough, he thanks the server when he gives back the cup, and the server understands that he will not drink any more.

When you drink mate with someone, you are saying that you are willing to share with them. You are willing to share warmth on a cold day, to share conversation as you´re drinking it, and to share germs (yuck, but oh well).

The social aspect of mate is, to me, just as appealing as the drink itself. Be warned, dear Virginia Tech friends: if you come by my place any time in the fall, you will be offered mate.

The next few entries

In my next few blog entries, I will be telling about interesting and peculiar aspects of life here in Argentina. I will gradually move, however, toward more entries about the work I´m doing.

Inicios

¡Les saludo a todos desde el gran país de Argentina!

We arrived in Argentina Wednesday two weeks ago, and yesterday we finished our vacation in Buenos Aires, the capital city; we visited an art museum, walked through a famous graveyard, the Recoleta, toured a couple big soccer stadiums, and took a day-long trip to visit Colonia, Uruguay on the other side of the (quite large) Río de la Plata.

My sister and her student flew out yesterday to return to the States, and I said goodbye to Ricardo and Yolanda and to the capital city this morning before going to Wilde (weel-day), where I will most likely be living for the next 7 weeks. This marks the end of the vacation and the beginning of "work."

Steve Bailey, my boss, has shown me (and promised to give me) a schedule of what I will be doing weekly. It involves lots of youth meetings, children´s church meetings called horas felices, and early morning prayer meetings with missionaries here from the States. I will post about how they are going once I start them.

I am living in the house of a friend of Steve´s here in Wilde named Meche. Two Colombians, whose names I´ve forgotten, Meche´s uncle Carlos, his mother Mariela, and their dog Mateo are living in a smaller house behind the main house.

I will write later about my experiences with the people, with the food here, and some other things. For now, though, ¡ya está!