The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, not in that order

Check this out! I was so impressed with my new bug bites and foot swelling that you get three pictures. I have no reaction at all to mosquitoes in the States, and perhaps was a bit too smug about this for too long? I got bitten pretty badly two weeks earlier in Misiones and last year in Salta, but this was the worst so far.

Here you can see some of the foot swelling. I used a lot of bug repellent with DEET but they tell me that the mbarigüí (local small insects) are not as impressed with that. A friend who is a retired nurse and worked for years in Misiones Province tells me that a lot of the bites are also from "chicken bugs." The family did allow chickens to run freely through the home and she says the bed I slept in was probably filled with these bugs -- which makes sense since upon lying down the night I slept in the country my legs started itching!

I had the worst time sleeping that night, what with the itching and the bizarro bed and the crazy dogs barking (there was a full moon that night and apparently they see much more to bark at on those nights). So I spent a lot of the night praying, asking for alertness the next morning for my training and being thankful that I don't normally sleep places like this, as some missionaries -- and lots and lots of poor people -- do.

A close-up of a particularly itchy area several days on.

BUT, this is what I woke up to the next day: I stayed at my nurse-friend's home in Misiones before and after going to the rural area. Actually, the night before this was beautiful, complete with a hot shower, calamine and antishistamine lotion, and clean sheets! Above is where I sat during my devotional in the morning, complete with mate.

And this is the scene the following day at the start of a three-night, all-expenses-paid stay at a hotel in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil! This is the view from my hammock! More pictures are forthcoming.

Trip to Misiones -- Travel part Deux

Ah, tereré! How refreshing when one is boiling hot to drink cold water (or juice, or water with flavored herbs) over mate. I had this picture taken because I remembered being here in May drinking mate (in the same outfit!). After lunch and the vision seminar we came back to Emilia and Ricardo's to await a ride back to town: no one ventures out at siesta time so we had a few hours to kill.

Here we are hitching. Ricardo and Emilia know how to do this, so I just hung back.

I wish I had a picture of this truck that offered us a ride -- it was huge! Thankfully there was a ladder on the side for us to climb up on. Emilia tried to sit at first, with her egg basket. However, the swirling red dirt made that impossible and we took up the typical position you'll have seen in everyone's third-world photos: standing facing forward holding on to the cab.

You can't tell it here, but we were getting covered in red dirt. Covered.

Stunning views of the countryside from high up on the truck! Can you spot Ricardo on his motorbike?

Trip to Misiones - Training and Eating

The church where the vision seminar was held on Sunday morning. We had been planning on doing it the night before but the pastor was busy all evening putting back together the bridge you see that was destroyed by recent heavy rains.

Here's a close-up of the church. We had participants from three different denominations but segregated the small groups by gender due to the hosting pastor's preference. Gender and faith issues have been coming up a lot recently. I won't get into a lot here, but I will just note that women preach in this Pentecostal church, although men and women sit on different sides of the aisle -- or different sides of the circle, with the set-up we use in our trainings -- and all women have to wear skirts (I have now added one to my travel list, I had to borrow one this visit).

In several Brethren churches I have been to here women are not permitted to preach or teach adult men and they often wear head coverings. However they do sit mixed together with the men!

Ah, an idyllic scene. While I've grown accustomed to chickens entering buildings where we were doing trainings, on this day one of these cows tried to come in the front door! Thankfully one of the participants got up and shooed her away.

Here's most of the group that came to the seminar. In addition to talking about what is involved in starting a CHE program we discussed "The Great Commandment and the Great Commission," or God's plan for us to love God with all our being and love our neighbor. I also gave a lesson on relief vs. development.

Yum! They invited me to stay for lunch afterwards: chicken with pasta -- in the big bowl -- and a funky side dish from Misiones, flour mixed with grease (I swear those are the two ingredients I remember! I'll update this when I can think of the name)

Trip to Misiones --Travel

This is the first in a series of picture-dense postings about my trip last week to Misiones Province (Argentina) and Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.

I stayed in Puerto Esperanza some of the nights and this is a restaurant I passed on my walk to the bus station. I want to know if that DiscoChef can dance?


This is my bus arriving to take me to the nearby town of Wanda, where my contact Ricardo lives during the week. He had scheduled a meeting with some people from his church who were interested in CHE.

I'm really glad the windows are open, it's HOT!

Above is the bus terminal in Wanda.

It's Saturday morning and we're ready to go to Colonia Lanusse, a rural area, so that I can give a vision seminar to people interested in CHE. This is Carlitos' truck. He drove really quickly on the dirt roads that were heavily rutted by the recent rains. I'm glad I didn't come back with him that day: he opened up the oil tank (?) on his car and they had to walk a ways and hitch a ride back to town.


We pulled over to the side of the road to let this truck go by. In this picture you can sort of see how rutted the road is, since at this point the cab is leaning one way and the trailer another. Pine trees are not native to the area but have become a big crop in the past few years.

How beautiful is this?


Carlitos, Ricardo, and Emilia sharing tereré on the porch of Ricardo and Emilia's country home.

Above is Emilia's wood-fired stove. She'd made a yummy soup for lunch, which (of course) included manioc/cassava, very popular in this part of the country.