Day 3: Cancha Huinganco

  So, as I was saying about that pastor's conference we attended... [Day 1, Day 2]

Day 3, of the four we spent in Chos Malal, was a particularly blessed day. Sunday morning service lasted at least three hours... worship and prayer just went on and on and on... a sweet time. Hearts softened, cleansed, healed, renewed, strengthened for things ahead.



camping out in the van



Then... chivo patagonico was on the menu. Free-roaming goat cooked over burning embers for lunch, the big meal of the day.

The dead goat sat out on a table all weekend, under a sheet (notice fly). One just begins to shrug at some point on the relaxed food preservation thing. Ya have to.



Cost of food for the weekend?


US$12 per person, for two days. At least something is cheap here, the food was at least this weekend. (It certainly isn't in the city.)

We had to all pitch in with preparing what we ate. No catering here. Here is Tony acting like he always helps out in the kitchen.

"Oh yeah, I do this all the time...!"

suuure ya do

After lunch and saying goodbyes to old friends and new contacts, everyone left. But we headed back to the to church in Cancha with the local missionaries who have worked here for 10 years - they have discovered a place in the hills where you can find fossils. Tons of fossils.

church

"You're the one that likes rocks, right?" they had asked me earlier. I don't admit my passion for rocks often because it's just, well, weird. But they soon discovered that yes, indeed, I do love me some good rocks. So off we set, across a field of boulders and up a ridge in search of fossils - a motley crew of adults and children.


looking back down the field of boulders towards the church (in the upper right grove of trees)



looking up towards the ridge

No one had water but us. We soon discovered there is no need to carry water. Just drink from the mountain-fed streams. (Um, they did. I didn't. Too chicken. No upset tummies though, so I guess it's fine.)
 

Tony sucking up some water

I enjoyed sharing my geologic observations as we hiked up the foothills, explaining the possible causes of the field of boulders, gullies, ridges, streams, and various striations in the rocks along the way. Everyone seemed interested as we talked about the layers of sedimentary rocks, the fossils we soon found imbedded within, and Noah's Flood versus millions of years. Fascinating stuff.

searching in a fossiliferous gully

We had hiked several miles, up, up, up. Then we headed down, down, down with pocketsful of fossils.


bingo

I was so thankful for this fun little reprieve for the kids. They, too, have sacrificed everything to come here. We try, when we can, to make living here fun for them. They loved fossil hunting so much that we decided to make it a tradition every time we come back to this place. 

We then stopped back in at the rural church for a potty break. There is no running water, so you have to dump a bucketful of water down the toilet to flush. The bucket fills up slowly outside under the trickle of water that drips from the spigot. The water supply is low at this time of year, having dried up considerably after a long, hot summer in the dry mountains. We set up the projector and showed a few more movies to our tired gang, had a snack, then went to visit the neighbors: Dona Luisa and her man (that's supposed to be an n with a little squiggly over it, but my computer acts funny sometimes here in Argentina and won't let me do it).

Dona Luisa was born and raised in this remote place. 77 years she lived in a primitive little house with the outhouse located a few steps further down towards the river. Her chickens and geese and dogs and horse and cows all share her yard. Two years ago the government built her a new house. She now "lives well". She has two bare bulbs and no other bills to pay but the electricity, which is about five dollars a month. I envy her life - so simple, so healthy, so quiet. Visiting her was one of the highlights of the whole weekend for me. As we sat in her little kitchen, her man smelling of horse and earth and well, dirty feet... I thought, "This is it. This is what we came here to do. I love this." It helped that I left the kids with Tony and went with the missionary's wife... just the ladies, a real treat. Wish it could have lasted longer. We emerged from Luisa's little house, the stars stretching as far as the eye could see, and walked contented back to the church in the cool air, a night as black as I've ever seen.

My Best Bread Machine Bread

I recently pulled my bread machine out. The like-new Williams-Sonoma one I accidentally stumbled upon in the thrift store last year. I don't think we had the twenty bucks at the time, but I wrote a check anyway, recognizing my find. I never regretted spending the money we didn't have. Sometimes, you just gotta do it. It has more than paid for itself. Besides, I was just getting tired of hand kneeding homemade bread.

So, now that we are feeling a bit more settled here into our new life, I pulled my bread machine out, plugged it into our mega 220V to 120V transformer (lest we burn out another appliance), and started experimenting with the flour and yeast here. It took about a dozen loaves to get it right.



oops



better

 I make two loaves a day. We eat one, and I give away the other. Even giving half of them away, we are still saving tons of money just by making our own bread. Love it.



My Best Bread Machine Bread

1 1/2 cups water

1 1/2 t salt

4 T honey or brown sugar

3 T dried milk powder

3 T oil (or melted butter)

4 1/3 cups flour (2 1/3C whole wheat, 2C white)*

4t yeast

*you can use more or less until you find the right consistency for your bread machine

Tea Break

Tony and a few other guys have been working on a farm lately, disassembling the bricks to an old barn. The bricks are being given to a family in humble circumstances, so that they may rebuild their house, which recently burned to the ground.

Mid-day, even in temperatures above 90 degrees, they insist on stopping for a mate (hot tea) break. I find the Argentine custom of drinking hot tea in the summer odd at best, but there are serious, die-hard, hot-mate-in-the-summer fans out there.

There is no electricity or way to heat their water on site, so here is how they prepared the hot water for their mate one sultry afternoon.

1. Search for high tree in which parrots make their huge meter-wide nests.

2. Gather several parrot nests that have fallen from the trees due to the blustery Patagonian winds.

3. Pile several nests and random pieces of wood in a little pyre.

4. Light fire.

5. Place plastic bottle filled with water close to fire, heating until very warm.

Lastly, show your wife the pictures so she can pray you don't get cancer from the toxins leached into the water from the plastic.

Dumb Missionary Moment

I love that Tony asked upon seeing what was forgotten, "Who unloaded the stuff?"

Uh... The men.

Mental Note When Delivering Supplies to Those in Need: CHECK THE TRUNK.

Oh, well. Good thing they were non-perishable food items.

We are heading back today to deliver what was forgotten. I guess God wants us to go back after all.

:)

beating the heat

How do you beat the heat (that is, manage to not just lie around like a useless slug) when it hits 102, 104, 108, day, after day, after day, NO AC?

To stay cool, we play with water. In any form: washing the car, watering the grass, jumping in the above ground WalMart special, drinking lots of cold beverages. Wearing your bathing suit all day long, splashing water on your extremities and forehead and standing in front of the fan, or dousing yourself with the hose just to hang some clothes out under the penetrating sun. This is how we manage. I'm sure there are other ways, like air conditioning - but we left those luxuries behind us in the First World. 

 

Little Chunkies making "birthday soup" for Bear, Bear, and Wow-wow - and using the container designated for watering our favorite street dog



Negrito - our favorite street dog



terere: South American loose green tea leaves steeped in cold pink grapefruit juice - I'm addicted to this

Or we homeschool, looking for any excuse to not go outside. 88 inside is better than 108 outside. Today we found my girl's computer math program. It got packed away almost six months ago. She was actually excited to see it and asked to do math on a Saturday.

Maybe one day we'll get AC here. For now, the four window units we brought are useless. We have bars on our windows - not conducive to popping in a window unit. AC is ridiculously expensive here. $1000 a unit and up. Sha! I don't think we'll be getting one soon.


the bars on our windows (on a very ashy day with, incidentally, a lot of desert dust plastered to the window)

Tonight, after hitting 102F again today, God had mercy and sent some rain. And an electrical storm. And another beautiful sunset. Times of refreshing, albeit brief.

He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters,

Who makes the clouds His chariot,

Who walks on the wings of the wind

~Psalm 104:3

random day, random night

Found this post in Drafts. lol This is a random day and peek into my Mommy life and brain, and attempt at stream of consciousness writing...? Bored with the way I write lately, so not creative. I was probably bumped off the internet signal mid-write or something, so forgot this was there. No days are typical here yet; this was just one. Follows is a random night, tonight.

RANDOM DAY

Woke up by barking dogs and sun streaming in windows, chatting over coffee about the previous night's fledgling Bible study we began in our living room, quick showers, reveling in the peace and quiet left in the wake of the holiday departure of the live-on-site construction guys next door (I can't go outside without having 8-10 eyes on me and without getting annoyed at having to talk over the fence every single time: does that make me very American? a bad Christian? a terrible missionary? I wonder), a repeat half-day long visit to Gendarmeria to register the van only to find out it's another week's wait to get it registered [UPDATE: make that a month, at least] and no we can't drive it yet after all surprise, surprise, half-hearted attempt to homeschool in rising heat before lunch, received some good news from Immigration Office: we don't have to go to Chile to renew tourist visas afterall yay (just can't leave the country until we begin residency papers), sent pre-adolescent out to water our dirt to coax random tufts of grass to root, ended up watering it myself since boy forgot and so did I, flooded dirt after 10 minutes due to compact desert sand, lunch, struggled as usual with intermittent internet reception, ignored laundry deciding it's too hot to hang clothes and it can wait until tomorrow, read board books to almost 3 year-old, scolded 3 year old for screaming and older kids for fighting, received response of "Okay, Ms. Tony", laugh instead of getting mad, checked email with the memory of it taking only 5 mintues once upon a time with high-speed internet as opposed to now when it takes one hour, sidetracked by the frustration of trying to read other things with a lousy connection, bagged it all and decided to distract cranky 3 year-old by making Christmas cookies, mildy noted to self that to do that in this heat means I must really love my kids and Jesus, Tony came home from Gendarmeria visit with milk before car goes into lock-down again, sat and discussed Christmas plans with husband while drinking terere, informed by son that I'm being "first class" (as in on the Titanic) by not wanting to turn on the oven to bake said cookies in 91 degree heat no air conditioning, further reminded by 11 year-old that "this is South America, you know", broke down and turned the oven on, almost 3 year-old burns herself on hot cookie sheet immediately after clear admonition to "Be careful, it's hot!", smoothed some antibiotic ointment on crying child and administered half shot of bubble gum flavored Ibuprofen, attempt to distract crying child again by frosting cookies, it works yay, it's now 8:00 and wondering what to make for dinner, momentarily annoyed upon remembering that we still hear from the natives, "You eat this early?" um yeah, 8, real early..., facing doubts about ability to handle Saturday's forcast of 99, youth group leaders pop in to pick Tony up to film skit for Christmas presentation, we drink more terere and hot mate, decide family will have to survive on hot dogs and left over pasta because it's just not right to cook in this heat, realize not for the first time that I suck at self control so let's just eat more cookies, bored and increasingly frustrated at the thought of being housebound one more day and not having our car ready to do anything mission-y for Christmas. Sigh.

Time for another cookie. The end.


RANDOM NIGHT

I pop some meat in the oven at 7, hoping to eat by 8. It was 100 today, and we lost electricity. Meaning we lost use of our fans, too. But light is back and it has cooled down to 90. Visitors drop in at 8 so dinner is postponed til whenever they leave. It is Marcelo and his wife and family. They walk over from the neighborhood next door. Some call it a slum. Some are nicer and call it a "needy neighborhood". We have to drive through it to get to our neighborhood. Tony says it's not a place you want to be at night. Argentines here have said to me, "You (looking at me), don't even show your face there after dark".

Marcelo works construction next door, they are building an apartment building there. Marcelo's wife, Yoli, stopped by last week wanting to talk to Tony. I had given Yoli some kitchen stuff weeks before, of which she was very appreciative since they have very little. She asked Tony, somewhat embarrased and not wanting to bother us, if I had any work for her: cleaning, ironing, taking caring of the kids. Tony said no, we didn't, why? She explains that they returned to Patagonia from their hometown to continue work, but his boss hadn't shown up. Now they are jobless until the site manager returns. He is a week late. A week Marcelo doesn't get paid. They had 50 pesos ($12)  in their pocket, no food, and no news about when Marcelo's boss would be coming back so he could begin work again and earn money an income. Tony said not to worry, we will help them in what we can.

As a result, we try to convince Son that he does not need his bureau. Son insists that he is saving it to take back to the United States to sell at a yard sale and make money. We have a very long discussion about why it is not worth shipping it back to the US only to sell it at a yard sale (not touching on the fact that we do not know if we even will be moving back). We try to convince son to give bureau to this family who had very very little, no luck. We buy bureau off son for $40. Son happy. We happy. We give bureau to family in need, stuffing with random pieces of clothing. A win, win. Tony also leaves them $50 for food. Yoli is interested in a Bible, but we don't have one at the moment. Maybe the Gideons can hook us up.

Still standing there outside while meat is cooking in oven, it is now 9 o'clock. I ask Yoli if the furniture we gave her came in handy and she is visibly pleased and says, "Oh, yes." She half smiles and says glancing up, "I thank God above for all of the help you have given us." She then explains that they didn't come to spend New Year's Eve with us because she felt bad that they couldn't afford even a cider to bring over. So they didn't come. It was a bare year for them.

Marcelo and Yoli and family leave. We sit down to juicy meat dinner, slicing into the most amazing beef I think I have ever had, and I think of Yoli and her family. Tony says, "We need to do something for them." We grab our cooler (they do not have a refrigerator) and fill it with yogurt and cans of tuna and juice and Christmas fruit bread, and a tract or two. We pile the kids in the car at 11pm, and slowly drive over dirt and pebble roads to the neighborhood next door.

As we drive, I roll up the windows. It is still almost 90 out, but the kids here are setting off fireworks, the kind that should be set off pointing up, but they point straight across the street. Bright flashes of green and red fly across the street, horizontal, and die in the dry grass beyond.

As we drive, Tony points and says, "See those guys over there? Sitting on the wall? Those are the kind you have to watch out for."

"When we get there, roll up the windows all the way, turn the air conditioning on, and turn off the cell phone. Anyone outside the van can see in and see you have a cell phone and might want to steal it from you."

I repeat the last part about the cell phone back to the kids, one of which is playing something on mine that makes the screen light up bright.

We get there, deliver the cooler stuffed with food. We feel good, not scared, God is with us.

It is more blessed to give than to receive. It is.

Tony says goodbye, I am bummed a little. I wanted to go inside and see where they live. It is very, very small, two kids sleep on a mattress in the kitchen. I remind Tony we have an extra box spring and a flimsy mattress we save for guests. I wonder if they can use it.

We drive slowly, slowly back through their neighborhood to ours. We see young kids running around at midnight alone. The youth gathered in a park void of grass, just dirt. On motorcycles, a four wheeler, walking. Lounging. Some drinking. Some on drugs. Tony beeps and waves and says hi. You need to be friendly here. You hit a child or kill a dog here, you're gone. They'll just lynch you. Residents of the neighborhood nod that, yes, this is true. Drive very slowly here, and smile. Make friends.

One street over and back in our neck of the woods, we take a detour down the diagonal that borders our neighborhood, looking for the dog-sized hares that come out at night to hop down the street that runs along a field. We don't see any. We talk about how it has quickly become completely normal for us to go out for a drive at midnight with our kids, who are, we notice, still wide awake.

These are the days of small beginnings.

life in car purgatory & Christmas in Patagonia

Our first Christmas in Patagonia didn't look like what we thought it would, or what we (okay, I ) wanted it to look like, but life and plans and many other things have come to an unbelievable screeching halt with our moved-to-the-third-world car issues.

Since our car has been released from Customs prison paperwork, it has entered Car Purgatory. It occupies this nebulous, undefinable place between Customs and not-actually-registered yet. Apparently, registration is not so quick and simple a task here. Nothing is, really. Silly me for thinking we were home free once we got through Customs. Ah-ha, not so fast there, gringita.

It may be another month before it's actually registered here in country. No one seems to know how long it may take. For now, we drive around town, we think legally {I mean, they did give us a paper that says the ban on driving it has been lifted... so, that means we can drive it, right? Even though it's doesn't have plates or registration yet... right?}.

Since we're not sure of the actual status of our vehicle (no one else seems to be either), we keep a look out for the police. Everytime we see one, we sound the alarm, "POLICIA!", and Tony takes a sharp left or right before we get too close to them. Sometimes there's no avoiding it, though. They've been doing a lot of check point stops over the holidays. In cases like that, we just pray, Corrie Ten Boom style - "Lord, make us invisible" - and drive right through the check point with our unregistered van, no license plates, waving and smiling as if all is as it should be. Christmas Eve, as we slowed through a checkpoint, the policeman looked after us as we passed him. We not sure if he was reading the verse on the back of the van, or wondering why we didn't have plates. Or he just thought our 99 Ford Econoline was the coolest thing he's seen since sliced bread. He didn't flag us down or do anything, though.

"Welcome to Argentina" Tony and I say to each other, smiling, as we speed away.

But this car paperwork business has seriously cramped our (okay, my - I'm impatient) style. We wanted to travel to Bariloche and do a Christmas outreach, but that, and most other mission-y plans we have, have been put on the back burner until the car is actually registered here in Argentina. We are still mostly stuck in town, treading water, waiting, waiting, waiting. It's frustrating. Very frustrating. Sometimes we make plans, but God has His own timetable.

(But, there are many other things we have been doing. Remember, I'm married to Mr. Social. More on that later, I'm kind of wiped out at the moment... over-socialized. must. be. alone...)

Christmas week I had a migraine, four days of a headache. I was in bed, out of bed, back in bed. In between nursing my head, we had a lot of people over. We are really enjoying getting to know the people (finally) at church. They are wonderful and awesome and we adore them already.

Tito and his family came over for dinner. Tito told me they are waiting for me to come to practice so that they can teach me the panflute. He and Tony have become friendly already (but no surprise, Tony's friendly with everybody). As we sat at the table eating tarta de humita and pascualina, our kids playing together nearby, Gladys, his wife, told me how her baby had Scarlet Fever a few months ago. These are normal converstation here these days. After Christmas we are going to get together to talk seriously about putting their music group and our projector together to do some evangelistic mission trips. I already have plans to drag Keren the Mime along with us, too.

Jorge and Monica, who do the Hora Feliz , came over, as well. They need help and a break from their every single Saturday outreach. They have been trained in some degree by Child Evangelism Fellowship, which is one of the ministries I've always wanted to get hooked up with. Our daughters have hit it off and are great friends already. They hold hands and run and giggle and ask when they can play again.

Keren and her sweet and adorable family also came over. Keren said the first time we came to church, she took one look at Tony and said, "There! There is our new Youth Leader!" She is a trip. No one seems to want to lead up the Young Adults for some reason. I don't know why, they're an amazing and talented and warm group of kids. We talked about taking her Mime act outside of just church performances and doing more evangelism. Friday we spent the afternoon at the river with her, her mime buddy in crime, and some of the youth. What a great group of kids, we had so much fun, drinking terere and listening to Tony cracking jokes. Tony and I agree that, even though we miss the States and our family and friends and life there, if we left here, we would miss the people here, too, and a lot. They have opened up their lives to us and welcomed us with such open arms, calling us friends.

By Saturday, Christmas Eve day, my headache was finally gone, and we took off to spend Christmas with Edgardo and his family. His sister has a chacra [farm] in a town an hour away. We prayed our way through several police check points, and spent a nice afternoon and evening with their extended family. They were so kind to think of us, with no family here, and to invite us to spend Christmas with their extended family. We drank mate, the kids played in the little pool, they played soccer and badminton and volleyball, we had dinner (again, at 10pm - ack! I was out back by the grill stealing food in an attempt to avoid another four day long hunger-induced migraine. I hate that, always scrounging food before anyone else has eaten, it looks bad and maybe rude - but I can't help it!). They even gave us gifts. So sweet. We made the hour-long drive back at 1:30am, praying for safety as other cars sped past us at 80 miles and hour, no shoulder, no lighting on the two-lane highway, sharing it with big trucks speeding by the other way with no lights on. Crazy.

It wasn't the way I wanted to spend Christmas, but we were thankful for the blessings of God's kindness and goodness to us, even if it didn't look like what we had planned. I told Tony today what I wanted was to... and he finished the sentence for me, "Be with the kids at the children's home." We're tired of the same old same old. Then he reminded me this is not a game, some of these kids could pull a knife on you. Keren, who has been visiting the home for two years now, was telling us about each one when they were over for dinner. Some are jealous of little Dani, the youngest in the home. One of the 9 year old boys said he's going to kill her. He has such hate and anger inside from abuse and the life he has endured, that it comes out in hatred towards others. These kids need a lot of prayer, and so do we, she reminded us, if we want to go in there. Tony reminded me that we do have to be careful and think twice about where we take our own kids. It's okay to put the brakes on and take this slow. Without properly registered wheels, we are are in a holding pattern anyway. *sigh*

So, yes, even though we wanted to do something different perhaps, like last year, we are thankful for friends and family, near and far. But more and more, with each passing year, we think of all the people that don't have anyone to spend Christmas with, all the kids that won't even get one gift. But next year, I imagine, we'll probably be so busy, busier than we want to be, and begging for mercy and actually hoping to just sit around with nothing to do.

:)

how to indentify volcanic ash in the sky

The volcanic ash has been pretty good lately - meaning there hasn't been much for weeks.

But yesterday it blew in rather quickly. The skies here are bright blue, so when it gets hazy, it's usually ash. I could tell it was blowing in because there are a few telltale signs.

ONE: Gray, Hazy Skies

This is what the sky looked like when I went out to hang up some clothes...

sky still mostly blue, but telltale hazy gray circle around the sun (some ash)

This was the sky a half hour later when I went back out to take them off the line (yes, sometimes they dry that fast here in the blustery desert)...

obviously hazy gray sky (ashy)

TWO: Blustery Winds

When the clothes go horizontal on the line, this may be an indicator that ash is blowing in...

THREE: Gray Horizon

sky may be blue, but gets noticably grayer towards the horizon

FOUR: Completely Gray Skies

Within hours, the sky can turn almost completely gray - no blue left to be seen. This is ash.

And when the sun becomes one big, hazy gray orb....

...it's time to bring the kids in, shut the windows, and have some mate while remarking to one other, "Wow, did you see the ash today?"

The Famous Argentinian Asado

Today was Day 3 of family reunions/welcome home parties. Which means more food. A LOT more food.

People started arriving at 11 or so this morning to buy the food, prepare the grills, and make the salads. (UPDATE: It's 10:30, and the second round (dinner) has just begun. By God's grace, and only His grace, I'm doing okay with it all. I think am even enjoying myself. Probably having the nicest time I've ever had in Argentina. Tony's family is really very sweet, they have great hearts and are a lot of fun. I am feeling very comfortable here, the kids are, too; Tony's the one experiencing the culture shock for some reason. The kids were also having full on conversations in Spanish today- we couldn't believe it! FULL SENTENCES, all on their own. I teared up hearing them. It was amazing. Thanks for your prayers, we are feeling them!)

Right now I am sitting on the floor in the dining room, surrounding by about 30 adults and kids making all sorts of noise, the tables all having been moved outside for the traditional Argentine asado. Can't concentrate to write much, so here are some pics...

Breakfast: mate (MAH-tay, Argentine green tea) and toast with butter and dulce de leche (caramel spread)



the back patio where we had the asado (Argentine BBQ) -
we took the clothes off the clothes line (no dryers here) before starting the fire
 so they wouldn't get all smokey smelling

it was a beautiful spring day

the view over the wall into the neighbors' yard (most houses have iron fences or walls around them)

appetizers

the meat

more meat

herbed provolone for the grill

mustard oregano lemon oil dressing for chicken

homemade chimichurri, a dressing/sauce to drizzle over your meat

making a makeshift grill: placing the bricks and wetting the grass

next, placing the tin base and the grill

preparing the coals (the main grill is in the background)

placing the meat on the grill

grill #2: the main grill

shoveling the coal to feed both the grills

even the smoke smelled good

the finished product

For a more enjoyable stay for visitors to Argentina, make sure you bring your favorite stool softener or a box of Ex-lax. Just trying to be helpful. Your intestines will thank you for it.

:)