Good Morning everyone,
Well, I’ve been promising for several days to sit down and tell you all about things here in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I’m not very good in details, but I’ll do what I can!
Norah and I are staying here in a house rented by some friends that we have. There are 3 girls from our church there in Sucre that moved here at the beginning of this year, are studying and working here, and we are staying with them so that we don’t have to pay for a Hotel for 2 weeks, which would totally run us into the ground. The place is definitely not very nice, with no air-conditioning, Television, Refrigerator or anything, but it’s better than nothing. Buenos Aires is so big, and we live about an hour and 15 minutes away from the center of the city. To get to the center of the city, we have to walk 4 blocks and take a train. On the train, we ALWAYS have to stand up, and during rush hour we are crammed in there like pickles in a jar. After about 40 minutes on the train, we get off and go to the Subway, and after making several connections there we get off. The worst part of it all is that we have to stand the whole time, so we are always so tired. They say that 15 million people live here in Buenos Aires. That´s about twice the size of all of Bolivia!
Buenos Aires is a pretty modern city, at least compared to Latin American standards. It’s totally different than Bolivia, where almost everyone is dark skinned and dark haired. Here almost all people are descendants from Europeans. From what I understand, during world war II, Hundreds of Thousands, if not millions of people migrated from Europe to Buenos Aires to escape the war. Well, it shows.
The food here is generally Italian. It´s hard to find other things than Pizza and Pastas, Bread Rolls, etc. The price of living is much more expensive here than in Bolivia, but it is a little lower than in the states.
For a year now, Norah and I have been counseled by a pastor here in the Church that we are visiting. As I mentioned before, this church has over 20,000 members now. The pastor that is monitoring us is not the main pastor, but he is part of the core group of the main pastor. This pastor and his wife now have 1,300 cell groups under them. We are and will be visiting with them, visiting cell groups, the School of Leaders, an Encounter Retreat, etc. Things in our church are going very well, but we have a lot of small things that need to get fixed. We still are very unorganized in the church also. So our hope is to find ways to fix that.
We’ve been calling Sucre daily, and the kids are fine. We are really missing them. At the same time, we really needed this trip, and know that it’s worth it.
I’ll try to keep you up to date with all that is happening here. We miss hearing from you all, and it sure would be nice to receive a small letter letting us know that you are reading this!
May God bless you richly… Love,
Jason & Norah