• Peanut Butter – This first comes to my head because my uncle, aunt, and cousins used to be in Chile and they didn’t have any either (just a childhood memory)
• Marshmallows – I guess that means no smores and Hannah will have to make fondant with something else or make her own marshmallows
• Inexpensive technology – it’s true. I priced a Motorola Xoom before I left the USA. It was around $347. In Argentina it was around $800. I’ll surely be missing this.
• Mustard
• Salty (non-sweet) ketchup

To begin, this trip wasn’t just a little venture trip down to South America for the fun of exploration. To us this was a trip to see the country where we might spend the rest of our lives. David, the missionary who we went with, tried to make sure that we were able to see what it is like to live there. This meant that we shopped for food and supplies ourselves. We cooked our own meals. We did most of things that we would do if we were living there instead of having everything done for us. Besides this, there were many other things that we were trying to absorb like the cost of living, cost of food, cost of gas, culture differences, language differences, and other factors of life that would be very different for us. To say the least it was mostly a very emotional trip than anything. I wouldn’t say that this means that we were ready to come back to the USA though. Although it is good to be back to be able to think about everything we saw. Now we are excited to head to Buenos Aires (BA) in two months from now.

There will be more next time…

Chau,
Josué

For now, here are a few cool things that I’ve noticed about Córdoba so far

• The police cars are red and white – with weird shapes
• There is a cool green tree (the bark is actually green) here with thorns called the arbol borracho – or the drunk tree. Look it up!
• There are hardly ever stop signs to be found and there are a ton of one-way streets. Oh yeah, 7 people can make the same turn at the same time
• Lots of people ride motorcycles here – most of them are 150cc
• There are dogs…EVERYWHERE!
• Using a bidet is certainly a different experience if you’ve never used one before
• The mountains seen from the city here in Córdoba are gorgeous!
• There is construction areas taped off everywhere…but there are never any construction workers
• People here seem to dress up everywhere…makes me feel a little like I’m dressing down everywhere
• If you hear the sound of bombs going off…it’s just protests. We would never get away with that in the US
• The homes in the older parts of Córdoba are awesome! Most of them have wooden exteriors with super cool staircases or wooden doors.
• The keys literally open the doors. There are no door knobs. (Card swipes to open doors originated here)

I’ll be writing more as I can, but this is all for now!

Josh

Photo taken by calflier001

So, Hannah and I are on our way to Argentina…if we aren’t there already by the time you read this. I suppose there are several posts that I could have written as a prelude to this post, but I was not able to get around to those. So, to catch you up briefly here’s what has happened in the past couple weeks. God has allowed Hannah and I to get in touch with some missionaries (David and Kristen Fulfer) from Argentina who are here in town for furlough. A couple of weeks ago David asked if I would join him in a trip down to Argentina to finish up some stuff there that he needed to take care of. While I was not sure because of my PTO, we checked it out and found out that we could go. So, David and I planned the dates, purchased the tickets, and put a schedule together. (Well, he put the schedule together.) Now we are just hours away from taking off!

I’m going to share with you the itinerary that we have. It includes our agenda and things that you can be praying for each day for us. You will notice that in each date cell, there is some text in the top and text in the bottom. The text in the top area is our agenda and the text in the bottom part is what you can be praying for. Click here for a copy of the calendar in PDF.

Ministry in Rafaela
As you will notice in the calendar, our first weekend will be spent at an outreach in a town called Rafaela. The town has a population of almost 100k. It is nowhere near the size of Córdoba (1.3 million). However, Rafaela is more receptive to the gospel than Córdoba. We will be partnering with a local church to share the gospel. This is the first outreach that the church in Córdoba has taken upon itself which shows growth in the body.

A Week in Córdoba
Once we return to Córdoba, David thought it would be good for us to see what a normal week is like. So, we will spending evenings with the university students, going to English Talk on Tuesday night, seeing the sights on Wednesday, participating in English Talk – Logos Edition, and Friday night at the Bible study, Ekklesia.

I’ll explain some about the city, English Talk, and Ekklesia to you for some background. As I mentioned before, the city of Córdoba has 1.3 million in population. It’s one huge university town (if it helps you think about it that way). Some of the departments are so large in the university that they are actually their own universities. For instance, the portion of the university for technology is called Universidad Tecnológica Nacional – Facultad Regional Córdoba. So, it is like having several universities in one area which are all part of one university. The linguistics department is even world-renowned. So, this is a great location for one of the ministries that David and Kristen have which is called English Talk. They facilitate one evening a week for students to come practice their English. This is appealing to a lot of the students since there are not that many native English speakers in the area. As mentioned before, there is English Talk – Logos Edition also. This is on Thursday nights. This is almost the same thing only it is about God and Biblical topics. So, for those who are interested in practicing their English, this provides one more opportunity. It also gives the Fulfers a great opportunity to share the gospel to the students, some of whom have never even heard the gospel. Finally, Friday evening will include a weekly Bible study with many of the believers in the area that David and Kristen have been able to minister to.

Also, during this week Hannah and I will be taking some intensive Spanish courses so help give Hannah a jump-start into Spanish and help give me some more understanding of Spanish. This will definitely help while we are down there and when we return in January.

Weekend Retreat and Flight Back
Next weekend we will be going with Ekklesia to an area outside of the city to spend some time in the Word and encouraging one another. I am expecting this to be a great time with them. I’m sure there will be many things that Hannah and I will learn from them. Hopefully, we will be an encouragement as well.

Sunday will be when Hannah and I fly back to the states while David stays for a few more days to work on things with the church. One cultural barrier that David and Kristen have is that the culture they live in has a strong cautious feeling towards organized religion and large groups of religious people in general. This may be something that I will save for a later post. It has a lot to do with some of the dark past that the country as a whole has so they tell me. So, one of the things that David is hoping for is that the group of believers might join with a local church and worship together. This is some of the reason why David will also be staying behind for a few more days. He is hoping to spend more time with the group and maybe help fuse the two groups of believers together. As noted, David will be flying back on November 2.

Prayer
I realize that this is a pretty long post. However, I didn’t want to leave anything out. I also tried to be brief. I’m not always the best at that. Hannah, David, and I would love to know that you are praying for us during this trip though. There is a lot to pray for. For Hannah and I, this is a HUGE step for us. While we have planned to eventually move to Argentina for the past several years, this will be our introduction to the country. We are glad that we will be able to be introduced with David who so graciously offered us the trip with him. God has blessed him greatly and has given him a great vision for the hearts of the people in Argentina to be turned toward our great God. We appreciate your thoughts and prayers as we go. We look forward to what God will be doing in our lives in the future…and especially in the next several days.

If everything goes smoothly, I hope to be posting updates throughout the trip to my Twitter account, @argblaja. These also will be posting to my Facebook page if you are my friend there. I also look forward to hearing back from you. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and video.

In His grip,
Josh, Hannah, and David

PS – I also got no sleep tonight, so it’s a good thing we have a long flight. haha

Also, while checking out the DNI cards I noticed that the Ceibo, the national flower, was on the card. This interested me so I looked it up for more information. In English it is called the Cockspur Coral Tree. I think I might get one.

(Thanks to Humberto Terenziani for the picture.)

- Josué

I personally feel like there is little that I can say or do when confronted with information like this. However, it softens my heart to people and makes me just want to love people as Christ loved me and gave himself for me. Maybe I can love someone like that so that they can see Christ in me.

Where Did I Come From? Some Stolen Children Don’t Want To Know : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR.

- Josué

I just ran across this article about protestants in Argentina and the major rise of them. I thought it was really insightful. Take a look for yourself.

Protestants: Conversion in Latin America – TIME.

Oh yeah, it was written in 1965. So, yeah, I’m not sure how true this is today, but it gives me some historical background.

Hasta luego,

- Josué

I am hesitant about posting anything about Yerba Mate just yet because there is a lot to be said about it. However, I felt that I needed to post something about it soon because so many people ask me about it. When people ask me what yerba mate is, I usually give them a short and sweet answer. Yerba mate is an herbal drink that originated in Argentina. You can find it in other South American countries, but it is most popular in Argentina. I can’t really explain the taste. When I first had some, it was bitter and very different. It really got a addicting and tastes great though. The leaves are from a yerba mate tree (names after the drink I am sure) grown in Argentina. They are dried and chopped up into small leaves. It is traditionally drank out of a gourd, but I have seen it drank out of wooden cups (kind of like cups) as well as cow feet. The bombilla (bombilla = bulb in Spanish – referring to the shape of the bottom) is a metal straw that you stick into the mate to drink from which filters out the leaves. You pour hot (not boiling – it ruins the taste and kills the nutrients) water into the mate and sip. You can put different stuff in there like orange peel. I have tried several different things but so far, I like it plain with bit of sweetener. There are many variations which I will post about later. If you want more information about it, just google “yerba mate”. There is plenty of information and pictures online about it. Hopefully, I’ll have time soon to write more about it.

Enjoy!

- Josué

- Josué

Icambio – The Study Abroad Specialists for South America

- Josué