More Creative Car Repair

Here are some more Do-It-Yourself Creative Car Repair photos for your viewing pleasure. I meant to post them here, but was unable to download them from Tony's cell at the time.
 

the cracked radiator (although you can't see the crack here)

 

draining antifreeze from the leaking radiator

   

new radiator in - thanks, Dani (AKA Rick Astley. I mean, you should see this boy's hair...!)

 

See what I mean? LOL

{Photos courtesy: Tony's cell phone}

So, thank you, Dani, our car is now fixed and my kids are hooked on Rick Astley videos. [We had to look it up for them on YouTube since, naturally, 80s has-beens were a little before their time].

:)

we're back

....from the middle of nowhere. It was amazing.

When I'm done playing catch up, I'll get a decent post, or two or three (pictures at the very least), up.

small homeschooling update and a field trip

For six months now I've wanted to write an update on homeschooling here - how it's been going, what we've been doing, how we do it, etc.. But I can't seem to find the time.

I really should have set up the computer in Mommy's room so I could blog in peace - because everytime I sit down to write something, someone starts talking to me, asking me questions, needs something, starts whining or fighting, or someone rings the doorbell (unexpected, as always). Our house has turned into an revolving door. I can't seem to finish a thought, let alone a post. Forget about being alone.

I haven't found a balance yet between being a homeschooling mom, a wife, and now missionary. It's too much most days and something usually gives. Right now it's the bathroom, it hasn't been cleaned in weeks, and I'm not sure when I'll get to it. Someone said they are surprised I post as much as I do. I try to post as much as I can because, selfishly, it's fun - and, in my "free time" (haha, whatever) I'd much rather write and play with pictures than clean the bathroom. So the bathroom will remain dirty for a bit longer.

Crocheting I gave up on. Reading, too. Blogging is my only poison now. Don't judge.

This week, now that our car is fixed, and after a long day (all days seems long), we took the kids on a field trip to the Observatory overlooking the city. Another benefit of living in the largest city in Patagonia: a Ford Dealer AND an Observatory. Sweet. There is even a Museum of Fine Arts here, and the Patagonia Symphonic Orchestra. The circus is also in town. Who knew?

Through the Observatory telescope we were able to gaze upon three planets: Jupiter, Venus, and Mars.

We could see Jupiter and the four largest of its 64 moons; even the colored bands on Jupiter were visible.

We saw Venus in it's blue and orange, crescent glory. {Venus waxes and wanes like the moon. The cooler gases in the southern hemisphere are blue right now, indicating it is in winter; the northern hemisphere is orange, indicating summer}.

When we gazed upon a glowing red Mars, we could also clearly see both of its moons.

It was awesome awesome.

When I feel like I'm failing my kids in their home education, unable to get to all the things I want to do with them due to being pulled in so many different directions, I try to remember that they are doing a lot of amazing things. They are also learning Spanish and doing missions with us along the way.

Here in our neighborhood we've been dubbed the the "weird Americans" that teach our kids at home {Tony is quick to point out, "Hey! I'm not American! I'm from here.}. We are also the only homeschoolers I know of within a 10 hour radius. To our friends back home, we're probably weird, too: our homeschooling probably  doesn't look anything like theirs, at least not as of late. We are weird here, there, and everywhere. I didn't expect that to be challenging to me, what others think of us, but it has a little bit. Sometimes I deal with it well, sometimes I don't. Most days I just pray God will pick up the pieces I drop.

It's a hard life, a crazy life - but a good one, a blessed one. Even amidst the seeming chaos of our days, as we still struggle to find normal and firm up what we are actually doing and where we are going missions-wise, I don't know that I'd want it any other way. My prayer is that this life and path we have chosen in obedience to God's Word, He will use for good. Not just in the lives we hope to reach for Christ, but in our own children's lives. We often pray that this crazy missions life we live will draw our kids closer to their Creator and Savior, not push them away. It is a delicate balance I can't say I can even pinpoint most days. Sometimes I feel only God's grace can push us off the fence upon which we teeter daily, push us from the side of crazy over onto the side of safe and sane and saved.

gearing up part two

test driving it on our new living room/dining room walls

My baby, the projector, has been sitting all alone and forlorn in a corner since we unpacked our beautifully donated JESUS Film equipment back in November.

This has frustrated me to no end. I want to use it.

Yesterday. 

But we're on Latin time now. No one's in that great of a rush round these here parts. And we arrived at a "bad" time of year anyway- the beginning of summer. We were overwhelmed with simply getting healthy, beating 105 degree heat, and getting acclimated. Besides, starting up a ministry takes time.

If you were to ask me what it is I want to do here, it would be this: showing the Jesus Film, travelling around, and evangelizing by showing all these amazing movies we have been given, entrusted with. That is what I want to do.

Up until now Tony has done most of the evangelizing and ministry. That's fine for now, but I'm getting rather antsy. God called me, too. And I will not feel fulfilled if it's just to wash dishes and serve meals and raise my kids (although good and important things). I just won't. But that is me. I can do all that in the US. If all I wanted to do was wash dishes and serve meals and raise my kids (which are good things), I would have stayed nice and comfy at home in the US. But reaching the lost with the message of hope we have in Christ is what I really want to do. If you were to ask. Going to where the Good News has not reached, that is where I want to be. Whether that be here in the city, or six hours up in the mountains out in the middle of nowhere Patagonia, that's where I want to be. That is what I want to be doing.

In all my free time, of course. I have a lot of that, you know.

So lately I've been asking Tony when we are going to show some movies in the slums. His response? With winter coming, it is more important that the families we are working with build a house to live in so they don't freeze to death in the dropping temperatures, than seeing a movie.

Oh. Okay. Touché.

We took our projector on our first mission trip to Bariloche. We didn't end up showing any movies. The trip was a disaster in many ways (I never did get around to expounding on all that went wrong, but let's just say the trip didn't work out or look like I had imagined in my fantastically imaginative, incredibly creative, always dreamily positive visionary mind). We learned a lot on that trip. We plan to not repeat a lot of our mistakes. We're novices, you know. Never done this before. We're learning a los golpes as they say.

So, we're taking our projector again on this upcoming trip to Nowhere Patagonia. I'm serious. It's not even on the map. I checked Google Earth, trust me, it's not there. Let's just say remote. It's a pastor's conference/meeting thingy/visit some isolated families in the mountains type thing of all the pastors in Patagonia. I think. Planning and information are not posted on the church's website here. Because they don't have a website. And everyone is working and hard to get ahold of, including the pastor who has a day job. So all the information we have is that it's very primitive, it gets VERY cold at night, it's 40 km of gravel road once the paved road runs out, we may have to walk two hours to visit some of the families who live there, and yes bringing our projector is a good idea.

Therefore I pulled the projector out again, started connecting and disconnecting wires, and had a jolly good time of it I have to say. We later prayed mightily for open doors in our Bible study tonight, safety on the roads, health, and connections. Hook us up, Lord. We hope to show movies there, but I have to learn to stop saying, "We will do this, we will do that" because half of our plans don't seem to work out when or how we plan them to. But this is a beginning. And we all have to start somewhere.

Another great tidbit is that this will be our first contact with a Mapuche community. We will be staying in a school way up in a remote mountain village (thus the precarious and primitive conditions) in an area where most of the population are Mapuche. Or so they say. You have to ride your horse two hours to get to church, or something like that.

Okay, I'm rambling. It's late. We'll see how it goes...

:)

fixed, finally

"And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work..." 2 Cor. 9:8

The car is FIXED! After almost a month, we have wheels again. I drove yesterday - it felt good. We had to return the borrowed wheels, so I had to follow Tony in the other truck in ours. Had to, you see. Technically I'm not supposed to drive our van (it is being registered in Tony's name, therefore, according to Customs and Registration, Tony is the only one who can legally drive it for the first year)... anyway. I drove it yesterday. It was heaven. Driving is the only time I feel like I'm in any sort of control over anything in my life here. A glorious feeling.


Dani installing the new radiator (in the foreground on the right), and Tony acting as if he's actually helping.


One of the things we are learning here (besides patience) is Creative Car Repair. If it can't be fixed, it can be made. Or ordered from Miami.

The car had two problems: a leaking power steering hose and a cracked and leaking radiator.

For the power steering hose, after talking to about half a dozen locals, we first checked out the local Ford dealer (surprising benefit of living in a city - a Ford dealer). They only carry the hose for the Ford Ranger, not the Econoline. The hose we needed can not, in fact, be purchased here in Argentina. No fear, we went ahead and bought the hose for the Ford Ranger. We took it somewhere else (don't ask where, I hardly know, we went so different many places), and had the ends adapted to fit our car. No problemo. Dani popped it in and it works great.

The radiator was another story.

But, it all worked out. Miraculously. I can't believe the radiator we ordered from the States actually arrived. But it did. It came into town on the same busline we did, down below with all the luggage. Tony had to go to the bus station to pick it up. I also can't believe we didn't have the money to buy it, but then we did. I also think it's amazing that we even know someone that could install it for us (Dani deserves his own post, he really does. He is just amazing, and all he's done for us is just amazing.). God was in ALL the details. We're amazed, as usual.

Thank you to everybody that helped us fix our car. It's our only car. We don't have two like back in the States. It's this one or nothin'.

Next trip: remote mountain village!

So. excited.

fighting back the jungle

Jim Elliot, in his Journals, wrote about how nine-tenths of his daily life in the jungles of Ecuador seemed to be taken up with simply fighting back the jungle.

He spent a great deal of his time just working so that the jungle didn't literally take back the small clearing in which he lived. It was hot, sweaty, and time-consuming work that had little to do with the evangelism or teaching he had come to Ecuador to do.

I feel much the same way. And often.

Just fighting back the jungle.

I know Tony feels this way sometimes, too. Especially at times like these. The car is broken down, we are housebound by illness, the kids are now sick, too.

Treading water, focusing on the basics like health - just maintaining.

It's boring. And frustrating. I want to do, do, do. Didn't we come here to do?

This weekend we didn't do. Tony couldn't go to Bariloche to help continue building that church as planned. He had to give his place to someone else. The exchange? A shot in the butt-ocks, lots of meds, and a weekend in, hacking and blowing his nose, and being just generally high maintenance.

Adrian, a friend and doctor from church - when he heard of our recurrent woes - stopped in unexpectedly bearing a needle.
Thanks, Adrian! Payment? In heaven. We sent them off with many thanks and a loaf of bread.

Bend over, honey. Muahahahaha

Tomorrow we look forward to getting out and calling Miami to see where our radiator is. What if it doesn't arrive? I mean, who orders radiators from 4,000 miles away across the seas? And if you do, does it actually get to you? {Our cracked radiator can not be welded - the part that broke is a thick plastic piece on the head. We were advised by many not to let them "make" us a new one here... it's not worth the risk they mess something up, and it's also literally not worth it, more expensive ($1000). So here we are doing things we've never done before: ordering car parts from overseas. New normal. And New Normal is... weird.}

I love the bars on our windows. I don't love the dust.

I wasn't lying about the dirt here. I hate dirt just as much as I hate cleaning. This is two weeks worth of desert dust on the inside of my kitchen window (imagine what covers every flat surface, every day). It's still there. I have more pressing things to do at the moment. A perfectly clean house is the sign of a perfectly wasted (missionary) life.

sickies

Tony is very sick. Same thing he had when we got here. Hard core antibiotics, various analgesics, cough meds, nebulizer treatments.

Notice the shower curtain I hung (taped) as a temporary curtain - nice, don't you think? And Tony's lovely, red, sparkly necklace placed there by a certain three year-old playing princess.

Driving to the pharmacy in the church's truck... ours is only half-fixed.

The roads on the way back...

Just another day in paradise.

the strange dichotomy in which we live

I thought these two videos were interesting enough to share. They contrast the Argentina we used to live in, and the one we find ourselves in now. Unrest and chaos, peace and order, past and present.


BUENOS AIRES: December 20, 2001 - right after we moved back to the US from Argentina
                                (worth watching just for the images alone)

(changing government, collapse of the economy, insuing riots)

PATAGONIA, 2012: after returning to Argentina from the US

(a Friday night's drive through the neighborhood)*

*Don't let the peace transmitted by the last video fool you. It's not always so. In the last two weeks I've been attacked by three different dogs in this same neighborhood. Thankfully, they didn't bite. I screamed, yelled, threw rocks. Tony said I should carry a chain. One wack over the head and they'll never attack me again. I might give up exercizing all together instead.

end of summer sunrise

One of the benefits of getting up early here in Patagonia are the sunrises, sometimes as amazing as the sunsets.

Since my cell phone didn't pick up the amazing colors as they truly were, I pulled out the camera.

 This is what it really looked like.

Close-up.

Scenes like this painted-by-God summer sky remind me of whom I believe, and why I am here. It's just the boost I need to start my day, lift my spirits, and keep on keeping on.

Venus and Jupiter

We've been wondering for months about those two bright lights in the western twilight.

They just seemed way too bright to be stars.

Now we know that they are not stars in fact, but Venus and Jupiter. Someone was over the other night and pointed out the red "star" off to the right of Venus and Jupiter... Mars! She also mentioned there is a Planetarium here in town.

Ding-dong, light goes on: Homeschool Field Trip! Can't wait to take the kids.

These planets can be seen right now from every corner of the earth. We can see them here in Patagonia. Friends in the northern hemisphere say they can also see them.




So, next time you look up into the sky at dusk, look due west and see if you can see them, too!

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

a crazy few days

This week was massively busy. That's what life is now: Busy. And since school has officially started here in the southern hemisphere, it's probably just going to get busier. Everything else is starting up here as well: Youth group meetings, mission trips, missions meetings, weekly Bible study (continues), sports for the kidlings, visits to the slums, outreach, discipleship, dinners, lunches, teas, leadership meetings (how we ended up here, I don't know), pastor's conferences (here either), homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, cleaningcleaningcleaning, car repairs, bills to pay, parenting (which really should be at the beginning of this list)... and on and on and on. It makes me feel like we've stepped on the crazy train and won't be able to get off for a while. But this is what we came here for - to do something, not just talk about doing something.

One thing I am very excited to do is to just be able to get up early again. We love getting up early. We've really missed that since we moved to Argentina five months ago. We arrived close to summer. Summer means late nights. Many. Okay, ev-er-y. Most people (including all kids) are up until 12, 1, 2am during the summer. It's just the way it is. People love late nights here. During the summer we could often hear neighbor kids running around screaming at midnight as if it were midday. So by default, it also became normal for us. Not that I liked it, but it did.

When in Rome and all that.

So, now we have to feel the pain as the late nights continue and we attempt to drag our sleep-deprived selves out of our cozy beds by a decent hour.

Thursday we hit the ground running. Breakfast, shower, no time to exercize, math, writing, clean rooms, tweenager insists on hanging up the clothes (I wonder what the men in the neighborhood think when they see my boy doing "women's work", a strange sight for them I'm sure), read-aloud from The Hobbit (loving it), mini-lecture to kids about how we are going to be adding subjects in a little every day so buckle up chilluns, Tony visits slums, ends up in a trip to the ER (for Ceferino, not Tony, verdict back pain), sign up the kidlings for sports (free here in our neck of the woods, smile), clean entire downstairs for Bible study which took all afternoon God save me from the torture of it, homemade bread, neighbor boy stops over to play (it's so cute to hear my girl speak Spanish with her little friends), sent some evangelistic DVDs over to the church's Christian school, third day now I haven't gotten to those personal thank you emails so kick myself again argh, bath for cranky three-year-old, dinner around 8, Tony heads out to pick up a few people who are coming to tonight's Bible study and bringing their guitar (finally, a guitar and music!), night ending well after midnight. Collapse in bed at 1am telling ourselves we will get up by six.

Miguel with his guitar (not our Bible study obviously, but a missions outreach they did for years)

Trying to reclaim control over our schedule is an uphill battle here. People trickled out around midnight after Bible study... meaning the kids were up that late, too. Getting them up before 9am, especially when one of them needs more sleep than that, is next to impossible. Frustrating.

Next day: Repeat. ADD: food shopping with three energetic kids who ask a million questions and want to touch everything,  trip to the gas station where all of us had to get out of the car in case the truck explodes from the natural gas it uses (the tank being under the hood),

an interesting trip with the three-year-old to supermarket bathroom where I was glad I brought my own toilet paper,

What's missing?

This (and the toilet seat).

then all night back-to-back meetings with the pastor (to firm up what ministry direction we are headed), another meeting with leaders/hosts of Bible study small groups,

Bible study

and another with the youth group leaders (postponed until next week) to begin officially working with the young adults with the goal of doing evangelism.

Days are long and full now. And, I suspect, only going to get fuller. I marvel how life back in the US used to be all about us. We didn't want it to be but, looking back, it really was. Someone said the US is one of the hardest places to be a Christian. What a difference a move to third world missions has made for us.

Busy redeeming the days.