Meet the ‘Rosarinos’

 

…that’s what you call someone from Rosario.  Rosario is part of our field, and once a month we go for a visit with the handful of friends there.  We stay a night in each home and have the Sunday morning and a gospel meeting with them, before going back to Paraná.  Rosario is 300kms south of Paraná, and we travel there by bus, it takes three hours on the motorway.  Here they are…

Nestor and Virginia have three children who unfortunately for us, have all gone to live in Canada.  Their daughter Griselda was the first to go, she went to study English in the USA, fell in love with a Canadian, and they married.  Then her two younger brothers went, learned English, got jobs…and also fell in love!  Damian got married last year, and now Dario has just announced his engagement.  Tough on the parents…they face it bravely, but it’s hard on them, especially now the grandchildren are coming.  They stay in Argentina because their home is so useful.

In the dining room.  Virigina often makes us pancakes for breakfast!  To be eaten with Canadian maple syrup brought back from one of their trips…

Looking from the front door to the little park.  Note the dog kennel set up for a couple of street dogs! 

This is the home where we have special meetings in July.  The meetings are held in the basement garage you can see Nestor climbing up from down there. 

Patricia is the only one in her family professing.  Her parents were too (now died).  Her husband and three sons are very nice and welcome us into the home…maybe one day!  Her father was in the military during the time of the repression, they lived in a military camp, and she tells stories of terrible things that used to happen when the guerrillas would get in.

Mario is the elder of the little meeting in Rosario.  He and Pocha were Pentecostals until they met Donald Campbell and his companion in the late 70s – early 80s.

After lunch in their home, with Steve and Amy, and the del Curto’s two grandchildren (sadly none of their three children so far are interested in the meetings, even though they were just little when the parents began)

Oh….I mustn’t forget Delfi…close your eyes cat-haters!!!

Now Don Ale and Susana…Ale is 85, and has had numerous bowel ops, but still manages to keep going.  He was born in Italy, and emigrated to Argentina as a little boy with his parents.  He was a widower and Susana a widow when they met about 25 years ago.  He had known nothing about truth, but professed a few years after they married.

Emilio and Marta Seguer and four-year-old Valentina.  Emilio came to meetings through Marta about seven years ago, and professed, then they married.  Marta is one of the Cioppi family, her parents have now died (their mother died of cancer 2003, their father a few years later).  She has 5 brothers and sisters, whose names all begin with M.  Two of her sisters also live in Rosario, Mabel is single, and Miriam is married.  When they were little kids they were all little terrors, according to what everybody (including themselves) tells!!  It was their cat that bit Donald and gave him rabies…he was in this field in his first years in Argentina and (very patiently) would take the kids on the back of his bike and play with them.  Now that they are big, there’s noone quite like ‘Tio Pato’ (Uncle Duck), and he is putty in their hands!!! Just ask him!!

Here’s Mabel…

We have the gospel meeting straight after the morning meeting (with an half-hour interval).  This is because it’s too much for people to come and go twice in one day.  Some have to travel in a taxi, and it would be very expensive for them.

With Steve and Amy after the meeting.

Amy’s hungry…Mabel’s dining room (also the meeting room)

Yummy strawberry shortcake made by Mabel (she is the cook in a daycare centre for handicapped people.

Oh no..it wasn’t just Amy that was hungry!! 

The three sisters Cioppi, Marta, Miriam and Mabel (the fourth lives in another town, and the two boys aren’t professing)

Here’s Miriam with her husband Mariano who also came to meetings and made his choice through her. They have three little boys, who are worth 10 each! 

Last Sunday they had a kind of house-warming lunch after the meeting and invited the church.  They’ve just finished building their house.  Mariano runs his own business designing and making machines that make things like stickers, transfers, fridge-magnets, things like those mementoes that have a resiny finish…know what I mean??  Here are some photos from Sunday.

Since they have their new house, we’ve been able to start staying the night with them.  The kids love it, because there’s someone to cart off hunting bird’s nests/referee their running races/play soccer with (well, I try!)/play whatever game they invent in general.

The little guy is 6 but is he TOUGH.  He’s not scared of anything, and plays real rough.  Of course his bigger brothers get the better of him (for now), but he just will NOT cry when he’s stomped on/bashed/smashed/endures some major injury.  He braces himself for a few seconds then gets up intent on revenge! What these boys HAVEN’T had happen to them… the latest was a very gruesome injury on Caleb’s part, when he was doing some great tricks on his bike, came off and the handlebar ripped into his shin, causing a huge, gaping hole worthy of a horror movie (not that I watch them!).  !5 stiches and 2 weeks rest later…he’s still waiting for it to heal up properly so he can join his brothers in the pool…what suffering having to wait!

One day while we were there, the pool cleaners came. 

Our Wednesdays

Every Wednesday, we (usually) leave the bach at 6am, walk half an hour to the terminal and get the bus to begin a day of studies in some small towns about 60 kms from Parana.  It takes one and a half hours on the bus, so there’s always time for a little nap on the way to make up for the 4.30am alarm!!  The towns are called Crespo and Ramirez.  They each have around 10,000 inhabitants, Crespo a bit more.  Agricultural towns founded by mainly Germans from the Volga area (Russian Germans).

Our best interest in the whole field (and the whole country at the moment!) is a group of around 20 people (members of an extended family mostly).  This is how we came in touch with them:
One of our ‘hardy annual’ contacts is a lady called Raquel.  She has been in touch for years, but unfortunately hasn’t received a revelation…yet! She has a son called Mario, who was a drug-and-alcohol addict – until he turned religious and turned his life around.  He went to the Baptist church, and even studied to become a pastor, but they never accepted him in the church as a pastor.  He was friends with Fabian, a man who has had a pretty chequered career in life.  In his desperation to find help for his sick wife, he was looking in every ‘corner’ (spiritualism and witchcraft included), and Mario suggested he go to his church.  However, after about a year, he became disillusioned due to a variety of factors, and the straw that broke the camel’s back was when one day the pastor announced to everybody that if they emptied their wallets out, God would fill them twice over!  In disgust, he and his family left, and so did Mario, and a group of others.

At around about the same time, Fabian’s brother Nelson, who was a nominal Catholic, began to take an interest in the Bible, but not understanding anything about it, asked his religious brother Fabian to help him.  In 2009 they began to have meetings in Nelson’s home, that is, the two families, and Mario (the wannabe preacher being the leader of the band), and a few other dissatisfied religious people).
 
Special meetings 2009, Monica and I had arranged that two sister workers who had been in this field a few years ago, go and visit their old contacts in that town.  Yolanda Cicchini and Margaret Turkington.  They went and visited Raquel, and while there, went next door to greet her son Mario.  Right at that moment, Fabian was with Mario, and they were discussing John 10, asking themselves what did Jesus mean when he said ‘other sheep I have that are not of this fold, them must I also bring, and there will be one fold and one shepherd’.  In come Margaret and Yolanda, and without knowing what they had been talking about, quoted that same scripture and explained it to them!  This really made an impact on both men, and they began to ask lots of questions.  Yolanda and Margaret told them to get in touch with us when we returned to the field after specials.

So in August 2009, we went to have the study as usual with Raquel, and they had let Fabian know that we would be there.  He came to that study, with his wife Alicia and his two eldest daughters, Tania and Ana.  I’ll never forget how Tania listened, she hardly took her eyes off us the whole time we spoke.  Fabian said he was ‘hungry’ that he went to the church and never received anything to satisfy his hunger.  We offered to have gospel meetings in the home that they were used to meeting in, they accepted, and that’s how it all began.  Mario, by the way, lasted about 2 or 3 meetings!  His idea we figured out, was to start a new church, he would be the leader, but as he didn’t really know how to preach, wanted us to be the preachers.  Upon realising that it wasn’t OUR idea, he dropped off, and avoided us like the plague.  Of course he wasn’t at all happy, because we stole his flock off him, and when we went away for conventions that year, he tried to take hold of the reins again.  We were horrified on returning to the field in 2010, that he had taken them all off to a church to get baptised!  Had hunted around and found a church that would baptise them even though they didn’t attend… Anyway, they must have ended up realising it didn’t do them any good, because they’re still with us today, and Mario’s long disappeared off the screen.

We began to realise that Tania was receiving real understanding.  She told us about a year later, that she began to go to the Baptist Church from 10 years of age, as it was the only place their father would allow them to go on their own.  She took her sisters, and her mother would go too.  However, by 16 she was no longer comfortable there, and stopped going, had a boyfriend and became pregnant with Tobias.  Obviously the situation was difficult, no money, and Mario encouraged her to go back to the church, because there she would receive financial blessing.  She admitted that the only reason why she started to go back was for that.  In that very first study, she realised it was all wrong, that everything about the church was false, and what we spoke was truth.  She went away and told Mario about what she felt, he wasn’t in agreement at all, but she wasn’t about to be persuaded against her conviction!  She said that in the 10 years that she went to the church, she never knew she had a soul, and that it needed salvation…she said she was always afraid to die, ‘but now’ she said, ‘if I die, I KNOW where I will go’.  She’s now 24, she married her boyfriend Samuel (one good thing the church did!), and has two little boys, Tobias and Alejo.  She has a very clear revelation of truth, and strong convictions of what’s right and wrong.

Fabian wasn’t so fast in understanding, we always felt that while he had a real desire to understand, and please God, he always remained ‘religious’.  Until this year.  One day just before the gospel meeting, he said that he had something to tell us.  He confessed that from the beginning he’d always had doubts about what we preached, as it was so different to what they’d learned in the church. ie the natural blessings of health, wealth and happiness!  We said it wasn’t that way at all!  (they are a poor family, and have received a lot of help from the church. He told that the rich people would bring things, put them all on a table, and it was for the poor people to help themselves).  So he began to pray with desperation that God would show him where he needed to be, who he had to listen to…and then while reading John 6, he got a very clear answer.  He saw it all in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and those same people who had benefited from the natural miracle, but turned aside at Jesus’ words.  He was SO happy as he told us, that God had given him an answer, and now he no longer had any doubts as where he should be.  He’s just gone from strength to strength, and it’s been an amazing experience for us to witness the spiritual birth of two people!  We still haven’t started a Sunday am fellowship meeting there yet, we’re working on it though.  Remember, these people live about 200kms from the nearest Sunday morning meeting (Rosario), have been twice to Special meetings now, and are hoping to go to convention in Buenos Aires.

OK, that’s enuff writing, here are some pictures:

This is one of the buses we travel on regularly.  They serve us sickly sweet coffee and ‘alfajores’ (a biscuit sandwiched together with dulce de leche usually and covered in meringue or chocolate.)

Some photos from Crespo…





                   She’s a cutie!  A little girl in Crespo, lots of blue-eyed blondes here


This is Carolina, a young woman who we study the Bible with in Crespo.  The sisters lived in Crespo for quite a few years.  So far the only one that came out of this town is a young man Federico Fuchs (now married to Stuart Cottee’s sister-in-law, Michelle), and living in Brazil.  He professed  and was baptised in 2005.


Now some shots of Ramirez. Norma has been a contact for a few years now, doesn't seem to get anywhere.

Tania Zapata

Tania is the eldest girl of 10 children, here are some of the others…























These little girls are cousins.  Rocio is the eldest although Camila looks like she is!  They stand and watch for us at the door, when they see us coming they have a race to see who gets to us first. Rocio always wins and Camila comes puffing along behind her!

Horacio began to attend the meetings this year.  He is a friend of one of Nelson and Zulma’s sons (who, by the way is the only one of their family who DOESN’T come to the meetings!).  They told Horacio about the meetings and he started coming…later he and Maria decided they quite liked each other…(Maria is one of Fabian’s daughters).