Life in a different culture
Multitudes of church members are satisfied with giving their minimum to God, not their maximum. I’ve watched men and women during offering time in church. They open their fat wallets and search for the smallest amount they can give. This type of attitude will never do! Jesus gave his whole life for us, and we give as little of our lives, time, and money as we can give back to God. What a disgrace! Repent!
From Brother Yun’s book ‘THE HEAVENLY MAN‘.
Heading to work in Virasoro, Corrientes.
Ever since I arrived in the YWAM base in Ituzaingo, I have enjoyed the use of these wonderful outdoor tables for everything from chatting with friends and eating lunch to working with my computer using the wireless Internet that you can access from there.
There are five of these awesome tables here.
One of the things that became very obvious to me quickly was during the National Conferences where everyone was crowded around the tables with their laptops, all plugged into the few outlets that were available to them for power. Most had extension leads and power-boards and there were always people that had to give up because of an exhausted battery and no place to plug-in.
So it seemed to me that the best thing we could do was sort this problem out and fix up the tables with lights for night time and power outlets for computers, chargers, CD-Players and what-nots that people want to use them for. With this in mind, we set to work and came up with this result.
Nico and Ramon preparing the gear to put on the tables.
The finished product, with one light and two power outlets.
Finally I have caught up. After two and a half weeks absent from my computer and a massive build up of emails, I can finally say that I am there. I have arrived. My inbox is empty. Yeeha.
It is such a good feeling, and so many other things had been suffering until I had done this, that I thought it significant enough to announce to the world.
Right. Now that I have done this, it is time to go and do some significant things with my time.
The other week the art students were being taught how to juggle and walk on stilts. Starting with balls they moved on to the bowling pins and then, to everybody’s surprise, to balls of fire and fire sticks. This was a challenge for each of them to overcome different fears or concerns that they had about working with fire.
Finally it came to the main act, of breathing fire. Practicing first with water, they all perfected their technique and then one by one, the boldest first, they had a go at breathing fire from their mouths. It was an amazing spectacle and many of the staff stopped to watch the process. The end result was highly spectacular, as the photos show. I was even able to have a go at it all.
Everyone practising with water first.
Making fire. Billy showing the others how it is done.
Facundo trying his hand at it all.
Billy shows how it is done again.
One of the girls trying it out.
The crowd watching each attempt.
Billy showing me how it is done.
Here is my attempt at breathing fire.
Gaston preparing to juggle with fire.
Gaston juggling his firesticks.
The students practising walking with stilts.
When I first arrived in Buenos Aires and visited YWAM in the city, it happened to be a Friday. Every Friday evening the people in the city centre bases travelled out to the Ituzaingo base for a “Buenos Aires” meeting, and I was invited. This meeting involved a lot of fun activities, sharing the things that had happened during the week, and eating together afterwards. It was a lot of fun.
Arriving at 5pm, I waited another hour before we were all ready to leave. Our transport… an old bus. This old bus has been a part of YWAM in Buenos Aires for quite some time now, and after reconditioning the motor it goes very smoothly. Unfortunately the bodywork of this beast is in great need of repair.
The old bus as it looks today.
Large sections of paint flaking off, rust holes showing up in the floor, broken indicators and windows, and other bits and pieces tell you that this bus has seen a lot of work. For Argentina it is old, but not down and out. When I first saw it however, it was quite a shock to the system.
Sitting on the bus, there were more of us than the seats could manage, and we then jammed a whole bunch of bags and equipment in amongst us all. My seat, like all of the seats in this bus, was super tight on the knees. It was kind of like a top level basketball player trying to sit in the economy class section of an airplane. It didn’t quite work.
Parked under a tree to try and protect the remaining paint.
So with knees up around the shoulders, I fit myself in and the journey began. Others, shorter than I was, managed to make themselves comfortable in this old bus. But not so for me. The discomfort and lack of room only served to etch this journey indelibly into my mind forever. That and the heat.
In Buenos Aires in the summer it is very hot. Sitting cramped amongst dozens of other people equally cramped, while stuck inside a tin roof with the sun beating harshly upon it, using tiny window openings for ventilation while inching forward in traffic turns a bus into a sauna.
Perspiration rolled down my face and back as I sat on my pre-heated vinyl seat. Enjoying the moments that a break in the traffic gave us opportunity to generate a breeze through the windows. It was never enough however, but it felt great.
Arriving was a great experience, and after stumbling off the old bus and teaching my legs how to walk again, it was great to stretch and feel the blood in my feet once more. That old bus had done a wonderful job and gotten us here. How wonderful it is to have something like that to help us in our transporting of people all over the city and further.
Looking at the old thing today, I can see that there is still a lot of life left in the beast, and was glad to hear that there is now a project underway to repair it. Removing and replacing rusted metal sections, repainting it, and fixing up the seating inside are all on the agenda. Already the original seats that I experienced have been removed and a handful of better seats have taken their place in the back section.
The newer seats that have replaced the old ones.
There is a lot of work to get it into good condition, but this is the goal. I look forward to seeing the finished job, once they get there, and just so I would not forget what it was like beforehand, I snapped off a few shots of the precious Mercedes Benz bus that created such a clear memory of my first moments in YWAM Argentina.
The broken indicator.
Driving position.
The Argentine flag proudly displayed at the front.
Only two days ago there was a fierce storm come over our city. In the city centre trees had fallen over and roofs ripped off. There was a mess everywhere. Where we are, the core of the storm bypassed us, but the strength of the wind was massive at times. There were moments when I thought our little house would lose its roof. It didn’t, and we all survived, but power went out until the next day.
The approaching storm.
Trees bending under the fierce winds.
I found a scorpion under our door stop yesterday. It is the first one that I have found since moving here and I was surprised at this little creature. When I disturbed it, it ran around inside my house with its tail elevated and looking very menacing. For all I know it is probably harmless, but based on my movie mentality, they are all deadly little creatures, so I killed it. Poor thing. Chose the wrong place to hide.
Before this event I always thought that scorpions were hard shelled little creatures that were pretty tough and hardy. My late-scorpion had a very soft shell on it, that seemed more leathery than like a shell. It also did not look like the sort of creature that would live very long in a dry environment. It certainly did not live very long in my house environment.
I have been reading a classic novel called Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. Written back in 1970, it is amazing how much of it applies so well to today. This writer had an uncanny ability to see what was happening around him back then, and these days it is only more obvious. There are a number of very interesting quotes from the book that describe many of the things that I have seen happening throughout my life. They all are surrounded in a much deeper explanation and exploration of the topic which has helped me to understand more about who I am in this day and age.
One of the more interesting side effects of reading this book has been that it has shown me that what happens today was not a normal experience for everyone. Not only this, but I have begun to see how much change has happened over just my lifetime and how only in the last 60 to 80 years has there been such a radical speeding up of change and events around us. This of course, is the topic of the book.
So before I ramble on, let me quote a few things from the book:
On Life With Friends…
Each time a family moves it tends to slough off a certain number of just plain friends and acquaintances. Left behind, they are eventually all but forgotten. Separation does not end all relationships. We maintain contact with, perhaps, one or two friends from the old location, and we tend to keep in sporadic touch with relatives. But with each move there is a deadly attrition. At first there is an eager flurry of letters back and forth. There may be occasional visits or telephone calls. But gradually these decrease in frequency. Finally, they stop coming.
The current today [talking of 1970] is picking up speed. Friendship increasingly resembles a canoe shooting the rapids of change. “Pretty soon… we’re all going to be metropolitan-type people in this country without ties or commitments to long time friends and neighbors.”