Two months ago I went up north to the province of Salta. As usual, I stayed with Sulma and her delightful family in the small town of Apolinario Saravia. Because I was there during winter vacation, several of Sulma's family members were in town, including her adorable niece you see in the above picture.
Above you see Doña Lidia, Sulma's mom, making the dough for empanadas. The filling is in the pot in the foreground. They have a gas stovetop but their only oven is wood-fired.Sulma is an elementary school teacher and has received extensive training in CHE -- she even completed the internship in Nicaragua last year. Sadly, a local group of CHE trainers has not been able to form yet. Her sister Lucrecia and brother-in-law Gabriel have also been trained, but they moved to a different province last year due to an illness in the family. Gabriel had been the pastor of the church plant in Burela, where the CHE program was started. He and his family were also in town for the winter vacation and we discussed their plans which don't currently involve moving back to Saravia. While a group from the province of Cordoba (the Jesucristo Rey church) is still interested in helping them, without a local team CHE can't continue.
CHE consists of three basic elements: a local team of trainers, community health evangelists (CHEs), who go house-to-house to teach their neighbors, and a committee made up of locally-recognized leaders that plans big projects for the community and also selects the CHEs . The team of trainers, as the name implies, train the committee and the CHEs.
I'm not much of a baker but this year I've been making lemon bars. The wood-fired oven was a little too hot and the egg in the lemon portion did not cook evenly. They tasted good, though!
On my last day there I took a walk with Sulma and her mom. Sulma's Dad, Don Alfredo, joined us on his motorbike.
Above you see Sulma as we wait for my bus a few blocks from her house. I don't know when I'll go back there. Neither Sulma, nor the group in Cordoba, nor I have given up hope that we might be able to establish a program in Burela, but for now things are on hold.
I had a few layovers on my trip back to Buenos Aires, and spent hours at a bus station in Metan. Above you see the room I waited in -- there are shrines to the Virgin Mary at most bus and train stations. The poster in orange is informing passengers about swine flu.Salta is a northern province, which in the southern hemisphere means that it's warmer than the rest of the country. This week was unusually cold, and it had actually snowed in several parts of the province! The Metan station is not enclosed on all sides, and since I was waiting at night -- my bus arrived around midnight-- it was really chilly. After whining to my friends in text messages, I got out my IPod and listened to some great sermons from Rob Bell.
