Routine and surprise...

It seems that nothing has been routine for several weeks - with the holidays, filling in for coworkers on vacation, enjoying a retreat with visiting church leaders, not to mention a sweet new missionary! While all those things are interesting and fun, it’s good to get back to a regular schedule of expectations! That is, until my computer died!

My faithful notebook computer just quit, without warning. Dan’s diagnosis is that it shorted out inside somewhere. The good news is that my-husband-the-computer-guy has been able to retriever all my files from its hard drive! The bad news is that I’m going to have to wait until we return to the States to replace it. (This was the computer that I carried with me everywhere for work AND personal files AND communication!) More good news, though – Dan was able to piece together 2 computers for me to use, one in each office that I work in! And, since I can still read email at our house on my Kindle, life will go on!

Since I always have a good time creating something new in the kitchen, it was fun to make Pumpkin Overnight French Toast and have Cindy and Liliana (we sometimes call her ‘Lilita’ to distinguish her from the other Liliana, our boss) over for breakfast one Sunday morning. (Sundays still feel strange here when we don’t have a service until evening.) We talked the entire morning, thoroughly enjoying the company and conversation!

On Monday, we watched some of the Presidential Inauguration on Dan’s iPad when we went home for lunch, and watched the rest from the Internet news during dinner. As I get older, I think I’m more aware and more interested in current news and world events.

This week had very fluctuating weather – hot one day, then cold and windy and rainy the next! We were able to use the pool on a hot day and I baked banana bread on a cooler day! One hot day turned out to be an Argentine holiday and Cindy invited us to use the pool at the seminary. Work time has settled into something more predictable for me, although Dan is always busy with something computer-related and is never idle!

The next Monday, I took a plate of banana bread to the construction guys working on the new duplex on the Regional Office grounds that we’re hoping to live in soon! Most weeks, they work 6 days, and we are enjoying watching the progress!

We were contacted by Nicolas, an Argentine friend we met here, a few years ago, when we were here with Extreme Nazarene Ministries. Nico was a high school student then and subsequently attended Mount Vernon Nazarene University. He has a degree in music and, at Christmas, he assembled and led a choir singing “O Holy Night” at the Altos church. He has gathered the group again (choirs are very rare here) to sing a special piece for Easter and has asked us to join them too. We’re thrilled, as we’ve missed singing in a choir! Electronically, he sent us the sheet music and recordings of the song to become familiar with it. Our first rehearsal with the group was fun, as well as hard work. We’ll be singing in Spanish, of course, and it will be a capella and memorized! It’s so good to be included and connect with this church family!

God provides the social interaction we’ve been craving, as well as all the physical things we need! He continues to amaze us how he cares for our every need.