Christmas and wells

Statue of General San Martin, "The Eternal Grandfather," in downtown Buenos Aires, seen on a tour yesterday.

I recently saw a great video about Advent and Christmas on my friend's pastor's blog. It makes some great points about relationships and crazy Christmas spending. I do feel compelled to make one observation, though, and that's about how much it would cost to supply the world with drinking water. I wonder if that takes into account getting community ownership of the wells? Not just training, which if it is head knowledge only is pretty useless. And not wells placed in locations which are too dangerous to get to, or too far away for children to go with heavy containers (not uncommon errors in well placement by outsiders) since then no one will use the well. I have some friends in Ghana who work with the CHE model as I do, and they wrote in one of their newsletters about the importance of taking the time to build relationships and allowing initiative to come from the communities:

"...there ha[ve] been a lot of clean water projects and funding that has come from outsiders. Locally, one project, implemented by the Peace Corps, dug a 400 foot deep well and provided a good pump. Then, the next day, after they left, someone stole the battery. Still to this day, it has never been used. Another project, funded by the American government, dug a well and, then, gave the property to the village leader. The next day, he built a wall around it and locked it. He now only allows his family and close friends to use the well."

Back to the season: Christmas in Argentina so far seems to be a quieter affair than in the States. There are Christmas decorations being sold in lots of stores, though, and a lot of "end of the year" activities are tied in with Christmas since this is also the start of summer and lots of things slow down after the holiday.

This was our tour guide yesterday. I loved how she was dressed -- reminds me of going "Italian" in Only You.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday -- being with family and remembering the gifts God has given us throughout the year, without the daily news reports of how the economy is doing based on spending patterns. I have a lot to be thankful for this year, not least of which is that being asked to state what I'm thankful for helped me to get over my most recent pity party! :-)

The above picture shows something I am incredibly grateful for. Silvia and Nora are two of my team members in Baradero and have become good friends. In this photo Nora and I have just arrived from Buenos Aires and we were greeted with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner (the day before the actual holiday). Silvia had downloaded recipes online -- she couldn't find any turkeys and doesn't have an oven, but she stuffed and cooked an entire chicken (for the first time) in the church oven. She even looked up traditional decorations online and you can see how pretty she made the table. We ended up having ice cream for dessert, a concession to the high-90s temperatures!


In the above picture is my cell group from church. I whined the week before about the holidays coming up and they immediately offered to come over for Thanksgiving supper and to bring most of the food since I would be traveling that day. Ask and you shall receive.... They said they were going to bring Argentine food and then surprised me with a turkey! They only American dessert they knew how to make was cheesecake which was incredibly satisfying on yet another hot and humid day.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18