Been a long time.... I've been continuing helping my coordinator some with things to do with the crisis in Haiti as well as planning my upcoming trips to Nicaragua, the United States, and Bolivia. Hopefully next week I'll be back with pictures and details, including my itinerary!

I'll leave you with some interesting links about the recent flooding in Buenos Aires. On Monday it rained and there was flooding in several parts of the city which resolved. Then yesterday it rained heavily and within minutes it seemed that the city was flooding again. They cut off power to part of the city to avoid accidental electrocutions. In my part of town it wasn't so bad, and I also live on the second floor. There is a video at the end of this article.

Haiti

There are several CHE (Community Health Evangelism) programs in Haiti, some of which are in the Port-au-Prince area. Over the next weeks, months, and years they will continue work for the holistic, sustainable transformation of their villages. Networking with churches and organizations, they have hope for a new Haiti.

Bibiana Pinto de MacLeod is a physician and the regional coordinator of CHE programs in South America and the Caribbean. Today she hopes to be able to arrive in Port-au-Prince to provide medical care and perhaps meet with the CHE teams. Bibiana has 20 years’ experience in Haiti and recently wrote, “CHE is the tool that will bring these people back on their feet, through long-term commitment. I hope our teams will be able to continue to serve and expand so these men and women who are in such distress will know that God has a plan in spite of what we see today. Would you participate as a long-term partner in this venture? It would be impossible to do accomplish all of this with just relief funds. Long-term goals must be put in place. People will forget once CNN, Fox News, and other news anchors leave the scene, but the Haitian people will still need us.”

To donate to CHE programs in Haiti go to:

• LifeWind International

• or to the CHE Network home page or directly to their donations page:

• Canadians:

MACA ***Designate Fund: Haiti Reconstruction

Box 4390

Edmonton AB

T6E 4T5

The above organizations will use the funds for:

1. Immediate relief will be distributed by trusted CHE groups who work in the earthquake zone.
2. During the recovery period, LifeWind will empower further work of CHE in the area around the earthquake zone.
3. Across Haiti, we will empower CHE teams. They help community members work together to address the key issues of poverty, disease, and infrastructure, bringing resilience through community organization when facing disaster. And as the message of CHE is taught, participants hear and receive the good news of Jesus Christ, the one who brings HOPE.

There are a lot of wonderful people working in Haiti. Messiah Episcopal Church, my Minnesota church home, has a sister parish in Leogane, not far from Port-au-Prince. News reports indicate that up to 90% of the buildings in Leogane were destroyed. Here is a site that will enable you to donate to Messiah’s various partnerships in Haiti.

Nicaise and Madeleine Avignon, a Haitian couple that attended Messiah Episcopal Church now run an NGO in Lougou in southern Haiti and are receiving donations at their website.

Steve Sethi is a physician from Oregon who works with the organization Haiti Foundation of Hope which has started a CHE program up in the north of Haiti and is also helping with disaster relief. I met Steve and his wife Beth when they were in Argentina two years ago.

Summer of Thanksgiving

My mom has been "swelling my kumquats" to put out another blog entry, so here it is. Seriously, though, I love my Mom, and she is a huge help to me: among other things she receives my mail in the States and follows up on everything I can't do from here. Last week she convinced the state of Ohio that I paid taxes in Arizona and so don't owe any to them. Thanks, Mom! I love you!

While in Brazil in November I found out how few missionaries have supportive parents. There is a lot of heartache out there. This year I was blessed to have both my Mom and my Dad visit me! I posted earlier about my Mom's October visit. In December my Dad and his wife Beverly came for three weeks and they took me down south to see the incredible sites (see more photos on Facebook).

We also got to spend Christmas together, what a joy to have family visiting during the holidays!

The past few weeks I have been doing office work -- part of the reason I didn't feel as motivated to blog, since it doesn't sound all that exciting! I took the below picture of my workspace today. I was working from the kitchen on my quarterly report, and you can see my mate gourd on the left from earlier plus my cup of tereré on the right (as it got hotter I switched to the cool drink).

Despite people's best intentions to continue with trainings and site visits throughout the summer I've noticed that things really slow down here in January and February. So what am I doing besides quarterly reports? My organization declares a day of prayer for CHE programs throughout the world and I translated the prayer guide into Spanish. It had to be corrected of course, since among other things I can't seem to get straight the use of the prepositions por and para. Let me know if you want a copy!

New Year's Eve

Here are pictures from our New Year's Eve celebration:

Above is the dinner table filled with typical Argentine food, such as cow tongue (with vinegar and onion) and Waldorf salad. I'm not much of a cook so I supplied the ice cream, which was served at 2 am with fruit salad. Earlier we had the traditional sparkling wine toast at midnight, then went out to watch the fireworks up and down the street, followed by SALSA!

Oh, yeah, they tried to teach this señorita how to salsa and above you can see the result. Wow. I might have made more of an effort if I had realized that was my camera that Hugo was taking pictures with!

Above you can see me laughing on the side, probably at myself!



Sorry this video is on its side but I couldn't figure out how to right it. It's pretty fun, so I decided to add it to this posting anyway.



I feel pretty much at home here, but have noticed that one of the times I most feel like an outsider is at weddings. While they play a lot of the standard American and British pop songs at wedding receptions the songs that really get people out on the dance floor are the Latino ones (that I don't know).

That's one really fun thing about the majority of the Western hemisphere: while there are lots of different countries and cultures, having a common language (Spanish) helps people to share things. Salsa comes mostly from Cuba and the cumbia we also listened to that night came from Colombia, yet the room was filled with Argentines and Uruguayans (plus yours truly). Here's a link to one of the songs that you can hear on the my videos: Celia Cruz' La vida es un carnaval.

Thanksgiving

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....

Visit from my coordinator

My coordinator, Bibiana, came for a site visit a few weeks ago. What a wonderful opportunity to learn from her! Above you see three Brazilians from a group working in Berisso expanding on their vision of community transformation and where they see CHE fitting in with that. One of the challenges of this bright, dedicated group is that almost all of them are studying at university and/or employed, leaving them less time for ministry in the community.

Bibiana is my "coordinator" rather than my "supervisor" since LifeWind has a non-hierarchical organizational structure. In turn I "coordinate" CHE ministry in Argentina, working alongside of (not over) local teams. Here we are listening to Horacio describe his vision and passion for Baradero. A great discussion followed about how CHE and church-planting/growth can actually be one thing (not two) if a vision for holistic transformation, multiplication, and development -- rather than relief -- is adopted by the church. Very exciting!

Above you see Bibiana with the Baradero team: Silvia and Horacio, Nora, Marisa and Alejandro.

La Pampa

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.