Personal blood drive

Recoleta Cemetery in downtown Buenos Aires -- I spent the national holiday two weeks ago being a "tourist" with my house guests.

Interesting e-mail I got from my local church last week: one of the church members was in the hospital and they were requesting blood donors. After donating you would get a piece of paper that showed you had donated for the patient. I don't know how this works, perhaps you can't receive blood without having donors replace it for you?

The requirements are listed below in Spanish. It says that you must have fasted from food and milk for eight hours prior to donation. They do recommend that you drink water, pop, juice, coffee, tee, or mate with sugar before donating. It sounds like they're thinking you might throw up during donation?

It also says you must be between 18- and 65-years-old. For the American Red Cross you must be at least 17, but some states will let you donate at 16. There is no upper age limit as long as you are healthy.

Los requisitos son:

Mayores de 18 y menores de 65 Años.
Peso Superior a 50 Kg.
Sin fiebre, resfrio, tos, etc. al momento de dar.
No haber sufrido Hepatitis, Paludismo, Sífilis, Brucelosis, Tuberculosis o inyecciones de vacunas en los últimos 2 meces.
No estar embarazada. Estando con período menstrual se puede donar sangre.

Se deben presentar con 8Hs. De ayuno de sólidos y Leche.
Se Recomienda tomar agua, bebidas gaseosas, jugos de frutas, café, té, mate, con azúcar antes de dar

The police prepare to protect the Casa Rosada, the presidential building, in downtown Buenos Aires. A protest march about the farm crisis passed by the square as we were there. Thankfully there was no violence and we saw the police pack up to leave.

Women and Men

Carol and Chris, two of my recent house guests, riding a beautiful ancient-looking subway car in Buenos Aires as we toured the city on the recent national holiday.

Women and Men: remember the They Might be Giants song?

I've read some great books on women and the church in the past 15 years, including Gilbert Bilezikian's Beyond Sex Roles: What the Bible says about a Women's Place in Church and Family, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis' Good News for Women: A Biblical Picture of Gender Equality, and Kari Torjesen Malcolm's Women at the Crossroads: A Path Beyond Feminism and Traditionalism which makes the point that as Christians we should not be concerned about our rights to any church office but rather should be focused on completing God's call in our lives.

I recently had the privilege of hosting two women who are working in different capacities on the next Lausanne Congress which will take place in Cape Town, South Africa in 2010. I met a few of the attendees of a planning conference in Buenos Aires, and was struck by the near-complete absence of women there. This event, combined with the fact that I currently attend a church where I am served communion each Sunday by men only and where I hear frequently about the husband being the "priest" of the home led me to search for Christians for Biblical Equality on the web and become a member. Their recent e-publication mentioned Lausanne, and so I looked into their papers.

There is an excellent, thorough, Lausanne "occasional paper" that addresses this issue. Among other things it states,

"The question of women being empowered along with men to minister to the whole church is an issue of church governance and an assessment of the Biblical stance. It is not an issue which reduces in any way the gospel message and those who take one view or another cannot be criticised on the grounds that Biblical authority has been ignored. Rather, it is a matter of interpretation of the passages that leads us in different directions. Both those who take the position that women should not be in a leadership role and those who grant women leadership respect the authority of the Scriptures and yet both groups advance the gospel message with great passion and devotion."

To me that is critical, and in some e-mails I exchanged recently with a friend on this topic I realized that this is why I almost never engage in discussion with other Christians on this topic and many political subjects . I hide behind not wanting to cause "my brother to stumble" or not wanting to engage in "useless arguments" and shift the focus off of our unity in Christ, when the real reason is that it is so hurtful to have it assumed (as when political subjects are discussed) that my understanding of Scripture reflects less of a reverence and belief for the Bible being the inspired word of God.

Unrelated fun facts:

• Did you know that Tropicana makes orange juice with added sugar? I don't usually drink juice, preferring to eat fruit instead. For some reason today I decided to buy juice and when I tasted it thought that it was rather sweet -- yup, the ingredients are orange juice and sugar. Who would have thought?

• Most Argentines I know get their deodorant from a giant aerosol bottle, not a solid or roll-on. I just bought one just for fun, especially since I couldn't find any solids and the roll-on I bought here wasn't terribly effective. The aerosol says that it doesn't contribute to the destruction of the ozone layer, so it must be aerosolized without CFCs?

• Kumquats are a common fruit around here. My colleagues, Horacio and Silvia, have a kumquat tree in their yard and I've picked off the fruit and eaten just the skin (the inside is very bitter). Last week Silvia made a dessert with syrup and kumquats -- yummy and not too sweet! Click on the picture to see the beautiful fruit.
  

Visa

This sign, seen at Iguazu Falls, means that you should stay on the path because there are snakes off the path. I just hoped the snakes knew to stay off the path!

Well, I've been in the process of applying for a religious visa for almost a year now, and it's been very interesting. It looks like the process is stalled indefinitely since the Ministry of Religion refuses to grant me a letter requesting the visa. Bummer, since I just finished getting two documents officially re-translated the-special-way-they-have-to-be-when-requesting-a-visa-from-in-country and had the translations legalized.

The good news is that according to friend of mine who's a lawyer and has experience with visas I should be able to continue to get my tourist visa renewed without difficulty. They expire after 90 days, but Uruguay is just across the Rio de la Plata and a day trip is sufficient to renew the visa (a $60 round-trip ferry ride). She actually suggests that I just let it lapse and pay the $15 fine before leaving the country, but that makes me nervous. Of course, this is the same person who told me in September that the easiest way to stay in the country indefinitely would be to get married. She recently reminded me of that, and now adds that since that clearly hasn't worked out for me, I could also just have a baby in Argentina, which would also allow me to stay here. Hmm, I think I'll be on that boat to Uruguay next month. After all, even if I pursue the baby option, that won't help me until about, oh, nine months from now (just kidding!).

The great news is that this has been a good "trusting God" experience. I am really privileged to be surrounded by people of great faith, and the day I found out that it might be "all over" in the visa process both my supervisor (who has lived through coups in Haiti) and my lawyer friend (who mixed her crazy sense of humor with encouragement from Ezra, "keep building") helped me to have perspective and to stay trusting in God. It's also been good to see the need to just keep working, not to lament all of the time and money spent in the past eleven months on something that might not ever work out, but to just keep doing the work at hand every day. That lesson is helpful in so many other areas when I don't always see fruit from my work or understand what will come of it. Today's trouble is enough for today.

Below is some beautiful sateen in our room in the hostel in Puerto Iguazu.

Miscellaneous

Beautiful golden leaves on a sunny day last week.

I only have a few moments between picking up my laundry and going to a colleague's for dinner (Gaby, she's one of our team members for Baradero), but I had planned to blog today since it's been so long. She's invited a couple who are originally from Rosario and have taken our training. They now live in Buenos Aires. It will be interesting to talk with them, and perhaps some of their Rosario contacts will be interested (we need to expand our team there from one to, well, more than one!). I'm also going to help her download Skype -- I've become the resident expert in Skype, scary for those of you who know my computer skills!

A burning bush in my neighborhood.

It's still fall weather, and this morning it was 50 and cloudy as I ran some errands. There are still some leaves on the deciduous trees, and the hibiscus and bougainvillea continue to bloom. I only seem them close to my house, though, the rest of the way is all concrete, but the people-watching makes up for it. This evening as I went to get my laundry I saw lots of uniformed schoolchildren being walked home by their parents or grandparents. Very sweet!

The grill where we picked up some chicken a few weeks ago in Baradero.

Miscellaneous thoughts about Argentina: I have heard from several people here (all Argentines, the one American I knew here has left the country), including an accountant, that one can't trust Argentine statistics. I was skeptical, and it took the BBC to convince me. In a recent BBC article about the farm crisis they note:

"In January 2007, the head of the consumer price index office at the INDEC national statistics agency was replaced, in what was widely seen as a politically motivated decision. Since then, leading economists, consumers' groups and even INDEC's own employees have regularly accused the government of manipulating the inflation figures. Officially, prices in Argentina rose by 8.5% in 2007. But at a demonstration two months ago in Buenos Aires, INDEC staff brandished placards alleging that the true inflation rate for the year was more than 22%. "

Here are links to some BBC articles about Argentina: This first article is a general overview of the country. In this beautiful city of Buenos Aires there really seem to be two cultures living side by side: here is the article. And here is an article on the Toba Indians, which is very similar information to what I hear about the Wichi, with whom I eventually hope to work.

Visitors

Above and below are two views of the "Devil's Throat." No zoom used, I was actually standing right on top of it.

I've mentioned recently that there have been a lot of visitors. Last week I met Steph, a Canadian microbiologist who is now doing trainings at a hospital in Ontario. She's also involved in development work in the Dominican Republic and is working to change her church's relief approach to a holistic, transformational approach. She also has a great sense of humor, and introduced me to Flight of the Conchords.

Another breathtaking view at the Iguazu Falls park. The white glow at the left is due to spray from the falls, we were getting really wet at this outlook.

She invited me up to Iguazu Falls, which is on the Brazilian/Argentine border, normally a 16-hour bus trip from here. Add four hours to that because of the farmers' road blocks due to the still-unresolved farm crisis (and thanks to a very patient Steph for waiting at the bus terminal). We spent the night at a hostel and had a really fun conversation over dinner with an Israeli-Argentine couple and another Israeli guy who was traveling by himself. The next day we spent six hours at the falls, and they are stunning. We decided to return to Buenos Aires that same night, since the only other thing to do was to go to the Brazilian side but I can't leave the country while in the process of getting a visa.

Steph enjoying the boat ride! The land you see is Brazil.

Me at the "Two Sisters" falls. You can kind of tell by my hair that I'm soaking wet from the boat trip we took.

Vision Seminar

Reberson and Silvia in Berisso

Well, I've facilitated my first Vision Seminar, and I hope they're all like this one! A Brazilian mission agency, Proyecto Puente had made contact with us a few months ago. Reberson had taken a TOT in Brazil and had been spreading the word about CHE. Paulinho is a Brazilian missionary with Proyecto Puente who has been helping people fix up their precarious housing, helping individuals get treatment for alcohol abuse, and working with teenagers and youth at an open-air church in the slum of Berisso, the city his wife comes from. Berisso is just outside of La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires (the city of Buenos Aires itself is autonomous).

Horacio and Silvia and I drove down to La Plata on Saturday to find a room full of 28 people from nine organizations, including three pastors from different churches and several mission and development organizations. Some are doing relief work with feeding centers or construction, others are working with refugees and immigrants, others church-planting, still others doing betterment work like school tutoring. All of them want to see lasting change in their communities. It was so exciting, because most of them didn't know each other before Saturday, and yet they engaged really quickly. I love the participatory, fun learning style we use!
The above picture is an exercise we did to introduce the topic of worldview. We talk about how the importance of recognizing our own worldview, the worldview of the people we serve, and also the Biblical worldview. It's crucial to not impose our own worldview as if it's God's, but we can't refrain from doing so if we're not in tune with the differences. (This teaching comes from Darrow Miller of Harvest International.)

This picture is one of the groups explaining the difference between relief and development. Relief is necessary in crisis situations, but is dangerous when done outside of a crisis. Development involves local resources and leads to empowerment, maintains people's dignity, and brings lasting change.

We were asked to come and facilitate a Training of Trainers there, "as soon as possible but when the weather gets better so that people will come, like September." Several of the organizations committed to sending people to the TOT. Very fun!

Choripan

Hot dog, it's been a long time since my last blog. I've been meeting lots of new people (none of whom live in Argentina), receiving various house guests, traveling, and facilitating a very exciting vision seminar.

Today was spent going downtown for some more visa documentation and also sitting at my computer revising my first quarter's reports (yet again -- very steep learning curve here). Unfortunately, I'm still at that latter task and I've got to get them in tonight, so I'm not going to post any more today. Just wanted to let you know I'm still here.

Fun fact: this post is titled "choripan," which is one of my favorite words here. It is a sausage sandwich that I've never tried, but I do like the name. Other great words are "Jujuy" -- a province and capital city of same, and "cucurucho" -- ice cream cone. Come on, try saying them out loud!