February in Argentina

 Once Argentina finishes conventions, they start in Uruguay and South Brazil (Gus’s field).  So while she was busy with all that (in 40°C) I “chilled out” in 40°C around the Buenos Aires area.  This had been my field for 3 years before returning to NZ in 2020, so it was a pleasure to visit everyone again.  It’s been unseasonably hot and dry, the farmers are fast losing crops and animals through a prolonged drought.  

There were two funerals during my month here! We’re losing them faster than gaining them I tell ya.  

Funerals here are way less ceremony than NZ.  Basically, the person dies, the same day the wake begins which entails an open casket in a funeral parlour.  All the bereaved gather there to pay their last respects to the dead, and give condolences to the family.  Sometimes these affairs go on all night, but you usually only stay a few hours.  If the family wish, we workers have a little service, ie you get everyone together and go and stand up by the head of the open casket.  Everyone’s standing around and you have a hymn, a prayer, a little say each, then another hymn and that’s it!  At this point, the funeral men come and shoo everyone out so they can nail the coffin lid closed.  At the last funeral, we arived at the cemetery and the men hadn’t yet finished digging the grave! 😱 So the pall bearers put the coffin on the ground and we all stood around and watched as the diggers sweated and dug furiously, shovelling earth out and flinging it up at ground level.  To make things worse there’s been a drought and the earth was dry as chips and hard as rock!! After about 10 minutes of staring at them and at each other uncomfortably, they deemed it deep enough, found the ropes, hauled the casket up and shoved it into the hole…then we sang a hymn. 🤨

The Sunday morning meeting the day after burying one of their members, Dario Salazar, aged 61.  Got cancer and it advanced very rapidly.  

Dario’s son Martin, and daughter Clevia.  Clevia is a very special young lady.  She was about 12 when her mum suddenly left and went back to her native Chile.  Clevia and Martin stayed with their dad, and she suddenly had to become a mother to her little brother.  Eventually the mum came and got them and took them both to Chile, but Clevia returned to Argentina and lived with her dad.  By this stage he had stopped going to mtgs, and she would go along all on her own.  Going without food sometimes so she had enough money to get to the meeting.  Her mother died a couple of years ago, and her dad came straight back to mtgs, and renewed his vows.  Clevia married and has two adorable little girls that she faithfully takes along with her to the meeting, even though her husband doesn’t accompany her.  It’s really nice to see him taking an interest now though.  He was close to his father-in-law, and has felt his sudden passing very much.  Here’s hoping he may one day take his place in that meeting!

Ricardo Diaz frying potato chips

Ricardo, Teresa and their only son Mauro.  Teresa crouching behind me so noone can see her old clothes 😆.  They are a very dear, hearty family.  Their house is pretty small, so they curtain the lounge off and put beds in there when we go to stay. 

Some random photos of Buenos Aires looking her beautiful best… the pink trees are called Drunken Trees, due to their wonky, bulbous trunks I presume.

These public squares, or plazas, are an essential part of European cityscape.

The historic Colombus Theatre - has the best acoustics in the world apparently.  This was built by the European immigrants who wanted to prove to Europe that South America also has a cultured society!

Yet another dog walker with his charges.  Not doing much walking mind!

Pizza downtown Buenos Aires with Edgar dela Fuente.  His daughter Valentina is in the work in Colombia.  He is a retired judge, but at the age of 85 still lectures at university! and visits a daughter in the USA.  His wife is in a home with dementia.

Pizza is one of the most common foods in Argentina due to their Italian heritage.

And speaking of Italian…here’s a spaghetti team on the job.  Rossy and Florencia with Edgar making red capsicum pasta.  Yummy!

Florencia teasing her cousin Karen about how she’ll be speaking English in NZ soon!  They grew up next door to each other and are a year apart in age.

Argentina comes alive at night.  It’s funny coming back to this lifestyle after 3 years of NZ when everyone is tucked up in bed at 10:30 pm, NOT out in the street eating icecream! It’s only just starting to cool down at this hour.  I’ve heard that Uruguayans are not night owls like the Argentinians.  Phew!

 Nice sunset sky over the town square at “Los Cardales” where the Olmos family now live.  This photo was taken at about 9pm.

A little outing to the nieghbouring town Capilla del Señor (translated Chapel of the Lord!)

Argentina is full of these little historic townships, built by the European settlers.  They’re really neat, some of them have retained their old worldliness and it’s like walking into a living museum.  The towns built by the Catholics all have the same design - a central plaza surrounded by all the main buildings you require for daily life.  The church, the bank and the municipal buildings.  The German-built towns don’t have this design, they tend to be big wide boulevards with many plazas all over the town.  

The Europeans didn’t  like to live on their farms.  So they have their house in town, and travel to their farm every day.  Hence these little towns eveywhere.

Hmmm… this looks like a nice café…

Yup! We made a good choice with this one!! The temp had dropped that day from 38°C to 16°C within hours… crazy.  And we were freezing ha. Great for a mocha

What’s at the top of every Argentinian’s shopping list? Go into the local store and you’ll see… a fridge full of fresh pasta…

And cheese and salami!

A trip to Ramirez - 400 kms north of Buenos Aires.  This is a small town where a lot of work has been done, and still in the process.  This group heard the gospel for first time in 2009 when Monica Wolf and I were in that field.  There were no established friends for 100s of kms so they’re all new.  13 years later there is a little church, and it’s so inspiring to see them all growing at different rates! A few months ago the first one amongst them was baptised.  Her name is Belen (means Bethlehem) and she is the mother of two little girls.  The 12 yr old said to her “mummy One day I’ll be baptised too”.  

Because I’ve been free-lancing without a co, Florencia kindly offered to take me for the few days.  She was quite a good co until the gospel mtg came…then she just went and sat in the congregation!😩

Nelson and Zulma, where the meeting home is

Belen and the two girls Eluney and Abril

Abril and her dad Jesus (Nelson and Zulma’s son)

Walking throught the village to Sunday am mtg

The little group after gospel meeting

In Jesus and Belen’s home where we stayed.

Arriving home after meeting

Scenes from around the countryside near Ramirez.  A lot of cropping and dairy 

Soy crop

Vats of milk at the farm where they sell cheese direct to the public

Buying cheese

A couple of Ferraris refueling

Flor and I with Mara.  Mara was brought up in a family that were the only non Catholic family in the small town where they lived.  They got called the Devil’s children at school as they hadn’t been christened!  The reason they weren’t Catholic was that her grandfather searched for what he read about in the Bible.  He would go from one church to another, and would always come home angry and frustrated.  One night after coming home from a particularly disappointing church, he was expressing his anger, and a few moments later, when alone heard a voice say to him to just continue doing what he was doing.  He never knew who that voice belonged to, but concluded it must have been an angel.  It was sufficient to convince him to never join any organised religion, and he drummed it into his family.  Mara used to talk to him a lot as a child, and often heard that story.  She would read the Bible and talk about it with her grandfather.  Later she left home, studied, married, but always with this quest to find what her grandfather had searched for.  She would also go from church to church, and said in the beginning things seemed right, but then she’d begin to see little things… she became so desperate and prayed to God that he would send her just one other person that she could talk to.  In her desperation, she became quite unwell emotionally and went to see a psychologist.  The psychologist was one of our contacts, Evelyn!  Evelyn was also desperately searching for truth at one point in her life.  She saw the sister workers in the town one day and felt it was the answer to her prayer.  She listened to the gospel for some time, but admitted that she wasn’t willing for it and drew away.  Anyway, she saw what Mara needed and put her in touch with us.  This was late 2019.  We hadn’t long met her really when because of the pandemic she wasn’t able to see any workers for about a year.  However, she is so overjoyed that while she asked God to send her just one person, he gave her whole gospel.  She can hardly take it in.  Her husband isn’t so enthused though it seems, so at the moment she’s on her own in her household.  She lives about 20 mins drive from the folk above, so when she can, and when workers are there she gets to the gospel meeting.  Unfortunately, the field is of such a size that they only see workers about once every 2 months if they’re lucky.  

With a vehicle it’s possible to do some off-roading… impossible with bus travel.  

Prickly pear

Nest of the “hornero”, oven bird.  It looks just like their mud pizza ovens!

Typical country scene

Gimber and Liz Olmos,on his 86th birthday with three of their four grandchildren, Kevin, Florencia and Priscilla.  The fourth, Karen was winging her way to NZ!  Liz is Yugoslav and emigrated to Argentina with her parents in the 1960s.  They were the first to be able to leave legally.  Her parents heard the gospel under communism through Jack Craig, Roy Price and Ralph Seyb.  When they left Yuglosavia they were really bound for NZ, but had to go via Argentina first.  Liz was young and beautiful and found an Argentine husband, so they ended up staying here.  She founded a school in Buenos Aires, which today has 1,000 pupils.

A tearful farewell for the siblings as Karen leaves for NZ for a year’s working holiday.  Huge thing for these close-knit Latin families to do something like this.  It’s been her dream, she missed out on the visa the first time she applied in 2019, as the 1,000 available visas are snapped up within half an hour of opening.  She miraculously got in this time, so will get to taste life in the country where her great grandparents nearly came to live.

Last day in Buenos Aires.  38°C, Flor took me to do a job in this suburb of San Isidro, where the very wealthy live.

 It was built by the English, who were here in the 1800s building the railway. They left quite a mark on the culture of some parts of this country…because of the English, Argentina has a rugby team for instance, and hockey, rowing and polo.  Not to mention and extensive railway all over the country, which has sadly been neglected, due to strong trucking unions.  We ate icecream, at one of the popular gelaterías… I’ve never seen such a tall icecream!  Quite a technique to get it like that