Day 3….

Another AWESOME day with team La Plata.  Today we walked the neighborhood near Rich and Jill’s home.  This area was a little “rougher” than yesterday.  (Although Rich & Jill have a VERY nice home!) Near their home is what is called a Villa (Veesha) Miseria or “Village of Misery” (Villa for short).  In these areas displaced people, many immigrants, have built temporary dwellings, shacks really, on a plot of land.  Obviously these people do not own the land where there village is erested, and the rightful owners will “evict” them once they discover the people living there.   Many times, we are told, these villas will appear nearly overnight, and disappear even more quickly. The level of poverty in the villa, as you can imagine, is EXTREME.   An interesting note: If the people in the villa manage to stay put long enough, the Argentine law begins to protect them from being displaced again, and the village becomes more and more permanent.

Tomorrow we will be returning to the villa we visited today in order to kick off the team’s Hora Feliz (Happy hour) where we will be attempting to help the team attract children to a short period of singing and games.  I get to dress up like a clown, and maybe provide a few balloon animals too.  I have actually been somewhat anxious about this day, not really certain what was to be expected of a clown in Argentina.  After our planning meeting this evening though, the anxiety just dropped away, and amazingly (particularly considering I have been anxious about this since several weeks before departing the states) tonight I am looking somewhat forward to tomorrow!  Praise God!

This afternoon we had a unique opportunity to travel with Rich about 45 minutes closer to Buenos Aries in order to give our cooks a ride home.  We actually took them to the church we will be attending Sunday morning and had a chance to go in and see the church.  It is interesting that the wall of the church displayed several American missionaries who clearly had influenced the church in that area, and some of the folks actually looked familiar.  Even more interesting was the display of the Argentine missionaries this church had sentoi Chad and who, you guessed it, are on the team with Kirk and Kay Carver!  Small world!

Also, the ladies gave us a tour of the new sections of the church which had just been built by another American team.  The wonderful news is the church is growing and expanding.  They are adding a library, nursery and classrooms, as well as two restrooms and will soon be expanding the kitchen facilities (they feed quite a few of the local people on Wednesday evenings).

Argentines apparently love to joke, so while we were preparing to leave and chatting for a moment with Anna and Norma (our WONDERFUL cooks), Anna mentioned that they would not be preparing our food on Wednesday (they are the cooks at the church for the food ministry on Wednesdays in their neighborhood).  Of course after telling her how wonderful her food has been (I am trying to convince her to write the “Argentina I-Go Team Cookbook”), I indicated how sad it will be that we will by necessity miss her cooking on Wednesday.  I am not positive, since my Spanish is not great and my Italian does not translate perfectly, but I am pretty sure she was teasing me and telling me it was OK cuz I could stand to miss a meal! Too funny.  It is a true blessing to have Anna and Norma available to prepare our meals.  They are wonderfully kind, sweet ladies, and Anna also gives fantastic hugs!

Finally, this evening we all had a walk up the street to the ice cream parlor, wow do they make good ice cream here! And I am coming to the realization that it is my custom to experience a country through my mouth (the food)…I will be gratefully blessed if I return home not weighing far more than I did when I arrived here.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

P.S. The meals are a little different here…no breakfast to speak of, nice big lunch and then at about 4 or 5 we have “Merienda” which amounts to a light snack late in the afternoon to hold you over till dinner which is at or after 8PM.  The picture today is of today’s Merienda.

Mmmmmmmmerienda!