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Sunday, 4 December, 2011

It’s almost impossible to conceive, for a girl who’s lived most of her life in Illinois, that this can be December, wearing tees and capris and fighting off mosquitos…

Monday was an Argentine holiday, so we didn’t go to work and we had scheduled an online language lesson, recommended by some missionary friends who know Spanish well, Joel and Pam Tooley! We’re working with people at the Nazarene Seminary in Costa Rica to experience CALL (computer-assisted language learning) by Skype. We spent almost 2 hours with a neat lady named Gaby, getting to know each other so she can know at what levels we are in our Spanish comprehension. It was a answer to prayer. A little later, we Skyped with our Missions Coaching leader, Hal, and caught up with him.

The Rojas Family

That evening, we walked down to see Wilmar and Jessica Rojas and their 2 boys. They’ll be leaving in a few days for Home Assignment, based in Austin, Texas. I had asked Jessica when she could teach me how to make corn tortillas and she offered to have us over! We hope that our Missouri District friends will get to know them too; they are fun, generous and dedicated!

Tuesday, Josh Williams and his dad Freddy arrived – the first of a Work and Witness tech team coming for a time of running network wiring and computer  software upgrades at the seminary and preparations for a move, in a few months, of the SAM Regional Office to the seminary grounds.

Janet loves shopping but . . .

Josh is the IT director for this region and works out of his home in Idaho.  It was great to meet them, after emails. Dan will be working with them over the next two weeks! Wednesday, I worked ahead in publication shipments and was invited to join the guys on Thursday to visit a 3-story shopping area in downtown Buenos Aires – it’s all computer stores!! Not being as interested as the guys in computer stuff, I followed them around and people-watched until we took an afternoon coffee break on Florida Street, a very famous shopping area. The coffee and medialunes (Argentine croissants) were wonderful and it was great to be off our feet for a little while! Josh walked us down a couple of blocks of Florida Street (it’s pedestrian traffic only) and we saw more side streets full of huge malls and shops. We’ve got to go back sometime soon!

The ride back to Pilar was even more interesting for Janet as she was trapped in the back seat with network rack we purchased for the team to install.

Saturday morning, we rode with Josh “downtown” to Pilar Computacion, a store he was familiar with from his missionary time here a few years ago.We made a stop for medialunes at Panaderia del abuelo (Grandpa’s Bakery), then on to Jumbo for groceries. Three more computer guys will arrive Sunday morning for a week of work!

Sunday morning, we took the bus to Escuela Domenical (Sunday School) where the lesson was about the body of Christ and how we all need to work together for a healthy church. We got in small groups and made different parts of a body out of a sheet of newspaper, then taped them up on a board to see what a weird body it would look like if we were in charge instead of God! Thea suggested going out for lunch afterwards, so we walked to a parrilla (grill) near the Seminary and ordered, then (not really surprisingly) Josh and all his techies joined us for what turned out to be a 3 hour lunch!

Sunday afternoon was spent reading, knitting, resting, listening to Pastor Rick’s (back home) sermon from last week… until it was time to get back on the bus for church. I’ve got to be honest; just the thought of Sundays lately can be depressing. It’s the hardest day of the week because we’re at church where we’d really like to be enjoying the service and getting to know the people. But we can’t because of the language barrier. It seemed like fewer people were greeting us and even trying to make any contact. This week I was determined to stay focused and understand the service as much as possible. During the greeting time, several ladies made a point to give me really good hugs and it was encouraging. Toward the end of the two-hour service, we had communion. God is good!