What a welcome to La Pampa Province! I went there last month with my friends Annie and Bill (pictured) and we were greeted with
mate on arrival (in one of the oh-so-interesting cow hoof mugs, yum!) by Annie and Bill's daughter Virginia, son-in-law Marcelo, and their seven children. Pictured here are Paula and Santiago.
What do you feed a family of nine? A great Argentine dessert is a mild cheese paired with an equal part of either quince jam or sweet potato. I've never seen the ingredients this big before, though.
This picture looks so much like Arizona, I just had to post it. Marcelo and Virginia have a dairy farm that has been seriously affected by the drought this year. Despite feeding the cows what they can at each milking they lost over 60 this year and had to sell off hundreds more.
Here are some bones seen along my running route.
Here I am along the road to their house. I got in some great runs out here! On one of those runs I was accompanied by a poodle the whole way (well, he took some detours to chase birds in the fields, but kept coming back to me).
I went to La Pampa because of the possibility of Virginia's church being interested in CHE. I met with her pastor and found that they are desperately interested in
any training! This is a sparsely populated province and the pastor noted that most of the pastors he works with have received very little training. Several have recently started a correspondence course and he was very grateful for this opportunity.
He is planning to talk with other pastors of his denomination and hopefully in a few months I will do vision seminars throughout the province as a precursor to a Training of Trainers (TOT1).
This is symbolic of our life in Christ to me today: a beautiful Siamese kitten. We took several to Buenos Aires to sell for Virginia, and I was hoping to keep two. Annie had offered to watch them while I travel (which is quite frequent, the reason I thought I could not have cats before). However, it was not to be, as my landlord does not allow cats.
Why is this symbolic of life in Christ? We begin to really live as we "trust God and not our own understanding," and yet this new life also involves a lot of "dying." I have died to my own desires: moving away -- many times -- from friends and family, a difficult profession, staying single, not getting to have cuddly house pets to keep me company at home. And yet along with all of those things I have received: the excitement of making a difference in people's lives, the joy of having friends all over the world, a heart that is more and more open to others, purpose and opportunities to serve, and passion and peace and comfort and joy along with the tears.
Well, I nearly forgot it was Thanksgiving what with the temperatures warming up and all! Thankfully my cell group from last year remembered and we decided to have dinner at my house again, this time with husbands included. I suggested we all bring season-appropriate food, but you can see that Beba (above) made another delicious turkey! (Her first turkey was last year's, since it's not a common food here or in her native Uruguay.) And yes, those are strips of some sort of bacon/ham on the turkey!
Here is her niece and my friend Gaby getting out the pate (very Argentine) and the hearts of palm. Yum!
And here we are eating away! I made the salads, does that shock anyone?
And just the ladies....
