across the river/cruzar el río

well, about a week ago I arrived in the home of the lovely Richline family to begin what is officially called working as a Missionary Associate through the OPC church. Reflecting on how I ended up in this place at this time shows me God´s providence and planning. In this post I hope to give a little context on how I ended up here in Uruguay and what I hope to be doing here.

The Background: I had run into a scheduling conflict sometime last fall while planning my study abroad time and found a way to spend as much time in South America as possible following a suggestion from the lovely French professor at Grace to start looking for some sort of internship during the summer break. The subject came up at church and my pastor suggested applying to work as a missionary associate in Montevideo, Uruguay, right across the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires.

map credits:
south america: http://espanol.vacationstogo.com/cruise_port/Isla_de_la_Plata__Ecuador.cfm
rio de la plata: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%ADo_de_la_Plata



Soooo, I applied for the position and by the grace of God, the Richline family and the OPC Foreign Missions Committee, was accepted.

I had the opportunity to visit the family for a weekend around the end of October, and this just fed even more my excitement for living with them. You can read more about that in previous posts.

The Characters with whom I will be working: (pictures to come)
-The Richline's (American Missionaries - OPC): Mark and Jeni and their kids Sabrina, Josh, Julia and Isaiah
-The Call's (American Missionaries - PCA): Ray and Michelle and the kids Rebekah, Jeremiah, Ana Grace, John, Daniel, Christina, Peter
-The Rolim's (Brazilian Missionaries) : Mauricio and Sandra and the kids Calebe and Ana Tereza
-And finally, the members of La Iglesia Presbiteriana del Uruguay or, the Presbyterian Church of Uruguay.

The Job:
To give a broad idea... I will will be attending the church functions, possibly teaching a few Sunday school classes in Spanish, house and dog-sitting for the Richlines with Rebekah Call my awesome roomie while they are on vacation in the US for four weeks, celebrating Christmas with the Calls and helping them settle in as they just moved into a new house, tutoring the Call kids in Spanish, doing some basic cultural observation and processing that information, and helping plan VBS which is in February, among whatever other odd jobs my bosses give me. It will be a workload, but I am pumped to have the opportunity to be of use here in Montevideo. I'm really hoping for a few solid beach days thrown in there too, as the city is surrounded by playa (beach).

Prayer Requests:
- for safety in many travels, the Richlines in the US for a month and the Rolims going back to Brasil on furlough until March.
-for safety, wisdom, responsibility and trust in God for Rebekah and I as we learn how to clean, cook and shop for ourselves and basically take care of a house and dog, thankfully we have Flechita (the dog) to scare off any potential trespassers.
-for the growth of a sister church plant in Mercedes, about a 3 hour drive from Montevideo
-for the church members here in Montevideo, for their growth in the knowledge and grace of God, their kindness has already made a huge impression on me!
-for me, that I would learn dependence on God conducting a lot of stuff in a second language and in doing some things I have never done before, as well as continual perseverance in learning the language.
-for the Calls as they settle in, that they would quickly learn the culture and how to get around and how to speak the new accent
-for the future church plant in Montevideo that the Call's and Richline's will be starting, and trust that this is the plan of God.
-for two things that I am learning to be very important in the church and am excited to see taking place here: humility and unity. (John 17, Jesus prayed that the church may be one so that the world would recognize that Jesus was sent by God - vs. 20-23 and Philippians 2 putting others needs before ourselves following the humility of Christ)

La Comida

                                                             

This entry is going to be solely dedicated to one of my favorite things: food. Since I don't really know how to describe or share the smells of every amazing food I have tasted I figured I would just share a bunch of pictures and a few short descriptions with you all.

I already told you a little about mate in the first entry, but here is something new! Tereré. It is a Paraguayan drink. The real stuff is the mate yerba (tea leaves) with ice cold water and a little bit of mint leaf. My host mom showed me a new way to do it that I cannot get enough of on hot days: with juice. so refreshing!

with medialunas 

Milanesa, something very porteño-thankfully it exists in Uruguay too. Milanesa a la napolitana is the best, it has ham, cheese and a tomato sauce. riquisima! I actually did learn the story behind this one in school the first week I was here. Apparently a man at a restaurant ordered a regular milanesa and the chef´s assistant burned it, so he covered the mistake by adding the toppings and served it to the costumer, who loved it! (photo credit: google images - http://ar.letsbonus.com/buenos-aires-centro/milanesa-napolitana-fugazzetta-o-capresse-p-2-213789)

Medialunas, aka sweet crescent rolls, perfect for any time of day, but i have them every single day for breakfast with dulce de leche (a wonderful concoction, like the south american version of nutella or peanut butter but with a flavor of its own)

the cafe´s here are beautiful, there are so many and each one is unique if you get outside of the chain one´s like Havannah, Cafe Martinez and Starbucks. 

 

Pastafrola and Sopaparaguaya, two Marí specialties that get me drooling. Pastafrola is a sweet pastry that you can fill with plum, apple, or sweet potato type fruits. We eat this for breakfast or Merienda. Sopaparaguaya is made with eggs, vegetables, cheese and flour. I really can´t compare it to anything in the US, but she taught me the recipe so hopefully I can do it justice when I return! 

Here´s a fun fact: apparently Buenos Aires has the only Kosher Mcdonald's outside of Israel. I don't know if that's true or not, but after passing three Mcdonald's and eating at one of them plus a kilo of ice cream for four, we didn't have room for another meal once we finally found this hidden treasure. I plan to return and actually eat something that follows all the dietary rules of the Torah just to say I did it.

welp, that is all i got for now! there will probably be more to come...

parent's visit

hey everyone!

I guess its about time to update this thing....

This is the last week in Buenos Aires before stage two of this adventuring thing. Tomorrow (Friday) is my last day of class, an oral final that will only last about 4 minutes, Saturday is a ballet performance by Gulia, José and Marí´s grandaughter, Monday night I take an overnight bus for Montevideo, Wednesday night Laura and Victoria fly back to the US. It really doesn't seem real. The truth is I spent the entire afternoon practicing for the final and watching Spanish youtube videos to practice my pronunciation and learn what the youth are saying these days, It was kind of pathetic.

OH! One pretty sweet thing, my parents visited last weekend for a few days. Dad was only able to stay for the weekend, but Mom and I enjoyed the easy life sitting by the hotel pool and walking around and just catching up on life and being friends. That's one thing I like about growing up. The first night we went to a wonderful restaurant called El Establo and my parents got to experience the inconsistency of nighttime public transportation matched with my lack of any sense of direction, but, in the end, we made it there and enjoyed wonderful food and probably the best service I've had at a restaurant. The waiter was actually from my neighborhood, which was kinda cool. (Ever since serving this summer I evaluate every restaurant I go to... watch out world. :)

Saturday we went to La Boca, one of my favorite neighborhoods and actually quite touristy where we went which is called El Camino.  It is full of colors and art and has a really relaxed atmosphere. We enjoyed our time chatting with Laura and Victoria. La Boca has a history of Italian immigrants and one of the two opposing soccer teams (River and Boca are the two mortal enemies of Buenos Aires futbol.) Because of this, you can just taste the passion in the air <- how poetic. But its true. I want to get to know better the people that live and work there, what life is like outside of the touristy hours.
 

One of my favorite parts about their visit was Sunday night when they came to the apartment to have dinner and I got to play the part of translator. I LOVED doing this. Something about helping people understand each other, who wouldn't be really able to know much about each other's lives otherwise is freakin' awesome. I loved having the chance to explain cultural things to both sides and practicing thinking on the spot of translations. this also showed me how much more I have to learn in Spanish. It was  a lot easier to take the Spanish idea and turn it into English than the other way around. The other thing about translating that I realized is the responsibility to do it correctly, to get across exactly what someone wants to say. You are influencing one person's perception of another based on what they say. This is crazy to think about. It inspires me to want to improve my Spanish even more. Besides this, it was also sweet to be able to see the love and respect that both sets of parents had for each other without really saying it. My parents left a little more assured that I was in a good place and my host parents got to know a huge part of my life at home.

 

The whole idea of this thing we call FAMILY is actually pretty special. Nothing is perfect but I am SO thankful for what I have.

Amigas

Sorry it has been forever folks!

I will try to write about a few different things in the next few days to give you all an idea of what has been going on.

In this section I want to share how thankful I am for my fellow adventurers Laura Dewlen and Victoria Gimben. We are the three musketeers from Grace College in Buenos Aires. Experiencing life here with them has been an incredible blessing. We are sharing similar struggles as well as similar joys. It's amazing what relationships form simply from sharing the same moments. There are feelings and experiences and language/translation jokes that few people here or at home would understand, and their support and friendship has been irreplaceable.

Victoria has been here about 3 months longer than Laura and I. Seeing where she has been in language learning and how she has grown and what she has experienced in the 2 months we have been together has helped me a ton. She is so transparent with her life and language learning struggles, and that has been a huge blessing to me. I know when I feel depressed or like I have not learned anything that she went through the same thing, and she survived. Seeing how far she has come gives me hope when I feel down. Besides this she has been a huge help in the student visa process, as well as much needed comic relief. :)

Laura has been my classroom buddy through all of this. We have been going through intensive grammar courses, 3 hours a day 5 days a week, along with our class of 10 other Americans. This girl has been with me step by step, studying and helping and pushing and watching over me, basically being responsible in all the areas where I am not. I would have been quite lost without her many times, literally. Thank the Lord she has a better sense of direction than I do. As part of our requirement for being students for Grace we are supposed to be speaking only Spanish all the time, and Laura is a pro at being disciplined and keeping our conversations in Spanish.

Vic and Lau, you are so loved I could not have made it this far without you.

Weekend in Montevideo

Last weekend I made a visit to Montevideo, Uruguay to meet the family that I will be staying with during the upcoming summer break (or winter break up north). This was a wonderful experience. For one, it was my first time really traveling alone internationally. I took an omnibus from Retiro, BA in an 8 hour overnight drive to Montevideo, the capital of neighboring Uruguay. I had been emailing pastor Mark for a few months before this weekend but had not actually met the Richline family. I had no idea before coming just how good and how eye-opening it was going to be.

I arrived smelly and exhausted Friday morning at the bus station and the first thing I saw was Jeni with a sign with my name on it and welcoming hug. Accompanying her were the two youngest kids Julia (12) and Isaiah (10). There had been a little confusion about the time difference (Argentina doesn't have a time change, as opposed to the majority of the world) and they had been waiting there and hour extra without any contact information or knowledge of what I even looked like. As she was recounting to me all that she had done to find out about where the bus, I knew it was going to be a good weekend.

Because it was reformation day and the kids all go to a christian school, they had the day off and I was able to spend Friday getting to know them a little bit. Sabrina (16) and Josh (14) are the other two. Sabrina and I hit it off pretty quick and I soon began learning about some of the struggles and joys of being a missionary family completely removed from a normal suburban life in California and transplanted 6400 miles south to what has been called the most secular country in the world. To read a little bit about their story in more detail you can find their blog here: richlinesrock.blogspot.com

One of the things that amazes me the most about this family is how united they are in their purpose of being in Uruguay. They know that they were called to give up their life in the US and as a family they serve God in their church in Uruguay. Another thing that really made me happy to be with this family was when I heard about their method of getting involved in the culture change. When they first arrived it would have been very easy for them to be comfortable, live in a more wealthy, American-like neighborhood and get help from other expatriates from the US. Instead, they chose to rely on the family of the other pastor of the Presbyterian church in which they would be working. Mauricio and Sandra are Brazilian and speak Portuguese and Spanish, but little or no English that I know of. Mark and Jeni decided to take the harder route and live in a Uruguayan house and neighborhood instead of an expat neighborhood and got to build a strong bond with Mauricio and Sandra by asking them for help in the new culture, despite only a year in Costa Rica of Spanish language training. This amazes me. It also lines up with so much that I have learned in my intercultural studies classes at Grace about how to immerse oneself in the culture of the people with whom you are working and serving. When in a new culture it is so important to identify oneself with people so better feelings of trust and codependency can be established. This kind of immersion is also the goal of Grace's study abroad program. As students we live with only Spanish speaking host families and try to only speak Spanish with each other, as well as eat and do other daily life things with and like our host families.

It was almost like a vacation to spend a weekend with an American family like this. We spoke English (sorry Profe!) and reflected on and joked about all the cultural differences between life in the US and life around the Rio de la Plata. Saturday morning we also had waffles! (the first breakfast besides medialunas that I have had in months... they even had syrup that a new missionary family had brought!) The connection I felt with them was amazing. It was also indescribably awesome to have psuedo-siblings after spending 2 months as an only child living with grandparents. While I absolutely adore Maria and Jose, I didn't realize how much i missed sibling interaction. Two weeks before I visited the Call family had also arrived in Montevideo, They had spent a few years in Mexico and a southern California border town before coming south. I am looking forward to getting to know them better as well.

Sunday I was able to witness the baptism of one man and three people officially becoming members of the church. This was really cool to watch. I have no idea what my role will be in this church when I return, but I am pumped to have the opportunity to serve them.

Sunday night came around and I was not ready to leave this beautiful family yet. Thankfully, God had other plans as well, and because of a mistaken date on my bus ticket, I got to surprise the family and stay another day hanging out in their house doing homework that I would not have had time to do had the original plan happened. This extra day was such a huge blessing. I already love this family so much and feel so incredibly welcomed and loved by them too.

During the three months that I will be in Montevideo, the Richlines will be spending 4 weeks in the US (the first time in 2 years) and Mauricio and Sandra and their family will be leaving for furlough in Brasil. This leaves the members of the church in Montevideo, me and the recently arrived Call family. This is a huge prayer request, that God would make it clear what my role, and the role of the Call family is going to be in this church while they two original pastors are gone. Please pray for God's grace in giving us humility and clarity in this situation.

Thank you everyone for all of the little notes of encouragement, I even received a few birthday cards from halfway around the world! Your prayers and thoughts are so appreciated!

Besos,
Allison

Corrections:

to correct a few mistakes from the first entry...

The shoes that I am seeing everywhere are, in fact, platform shoes. They are all the rage here in the city. I have considered buying a pair... and then I remember all the heads I can already see over and think, eh, better not!

I just learned in class today that it is not "Ciao" but "Chau"
There may be great pizza here, but I am not actually in Italy.

the first couple of weeks

It has been about three weeks since I have arrived in Buenos Aires.

Since the last entry, classes have started. There are 12 students in Laura's and my class, all Americans, and a pretty awesome profesora. We call her by her first name, Silvana. She is great at turning any conversation into a learning experience, or learning experiences into conversations. The class that I am in is a little more than slightly beyond my level, especially when it comes to vocabulary and speaking. I could easily spend all of my free time studying, reviewing and doing homework, but the brain can only handle so much. Prayers for perseverance would be appreciated.

One of my favorite activities so far has been the weekend mornings spent at the park, Palermo, with Maria and Jose. Usually, after breakfast, we drive over to the packed park on Saturday or Sunday morning and I run a couple miles while they walk. After stretching, we find a bench to sit and just enjoy the sun, drinking mate and chatting. The atmosphere during these times is so relaxed, the sun warm and the company delightful. I absolutely adore living with Mari and Nacho. Its like living with grandparents who don't speak English! I love learning discovering more about their personalities and life every day. Some of the most memorable moments have been spent watching sports (usually futbol) or game shows, walking through the mall, eating deliciously home-prepared dinners, and drinking mate while trying to do homework. They have incredible patience and are always willing to help in explaining words or phrases. I feel so incredibly loved by them despite the countless "no entiendo"s, hours spent in my room recuperating, many mistakes and when I feel like I am coming across as selfish or demanding. I really do appreciate everything they do and the example of service they set. A few examples of their kindness have included doing my laundry, preparing me elaborate meals, packing a lunch, driving me to school in the rain, and walking through my homework sentence by sentence and word by word. I feel so incredibly undeserving of this service. It is a true living example of Christ.

To get a little deeper, I have been learning a little bit about identity lately. I do not think it is just an I'm-off-on-an-adventure-and-learning-a-lot thing but also part of being a 20 year old growing up in a world that tries to tell you who to be. When I first started thinking about coming to Argentina, I had it in mind that I would become Argentine, that I would try to act and dress and talk like a Porteno. And everybody would be amazed by my super intercultural ability to fit in. I am quickly coming to realize that is not going to happen. I am a foreigner. I grew up with a different world view and different experiences. Furthermore, no one here is expecting me to act like an Argentine. I'm growing more comfortable with being that weird, tall, blonde, lost, oblivious, American. I know this experience will change who I am and become a part of me, and I also am learning that God is present with every step.