The last few weeks have brought hard times for the barrio San Pablo, and likewise for many parts of Buenos Aires. Three weeks ago the water pump that fills San Pablo’s water tank broke, and the barrio has been without water since then. The municipality has put out large movable tanks of water for the barrio, and the families come out with buckets and pots to bring water back to their house for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and for the bathroom. The residents were finally able to get support from the municipality to help cover the cost of replacing the pump, but now that the new pump has been installed the power company has cut power to the whole barrio. Without power the pump can’t work, nor can the electric heaters that keep the vast majority of the families there warm during the night. The weather is getting colder now, and many people, especially the kids, are getting sick.

Beyond that many schools in El Talar haven’t had classes this week because the rooms lack window panes, and because in various cases they are without electricity or water or gas. Groups of students in the Capital have started protesting because they’re required to go to schools where the temperature inside is just as cold or colder (because the buildings are all concrete) than it is outside.

On top of all of that, the increase in natural gas usage with the cold weather has caused a shortage, and the price of natural gas tanks used for cooking in homes has gone up 20% in the last couple days. Many of the cars in Buenos Aires and the surrounding province use natural gas as their primary fuel source (which, on an environmental level I was really excited to find out), but with the gas shortage and the threat of lines being cut-off many gas stations have closed all but one or two pumps. I walked home a couple days ago past a line of 30 cars outside the gas station, and it’s worse in the capital. Taxis are left sitting in the middle of the street because they run out of gas and have nowhere to refill. The taxi drivers are scrambling to find places to refuel, because without gas they can’t work and won’t be paid.

Though this may all sound pretty dismal (and believe me — it felt that way talking to some of the teachers at La Lechería on Friday), I believe things will get better. I wanted to write about all of this that’s happening now because it’s current and relevant, but also to share a little bit about what the not-often-seen impacts can be of these kinds of things on the poor and marginalized. It’s interesting for me to think that, for as present as all of this has been in my mind the last few days, there are people in the more upper-class barrios of the capital that might not know anything about all this. Please keep the people in the barrio San Pablo and all those that are struggling with these recent events in your prayers.

More Than Accustomed
Winter has come here in Buenos Aires. Even though the still-changing leaves seem to say its fall (and I think technically Winter starts with the solstice on the 21st), the cold each day is a sharp contradiction. The cold for me is also a reminder. It reminds me of September and October when we first arrived here. Of the distinct sensual impressions of Argentina that came during that time — all associated with a persistent cold. This “clima” is also a reminder to me of what part or stage of my year here I’m in — namely the last part. In two months I’ll be boarding a plane to go home, which is an intense and exciting and scary and foreign thought to me, all at once. In September here I learned to expect the cultural and daily parts of my life. I remember thinking one day as I had coffee with Pedro, “I could get used to this place. I could learn to love this place.” In November and December, I was becoming accustomed to the things here. I had routines here, and I knew what to expect during my day. I could ride the buses. I hung out with friends. I drank mate.

In January and February I saw this country in a different way as I traveled alone and later with our country group to the south. I found myself in different ways. I found some peace, and an intense appreciation for this place, and for the parts of this country that aren’t The Capital.

But now I feel myself as more than accustomed — as more than blending in to the daily flow of things. I feel sadness here. I feel tiredness and idleness. I feel happiness in daily and weekly swings. I have a distinct sense of home. I have a distinct sense of friends, of faith, of work. I experience everyday joys, and I experience everyday frustrations. I think in some ways I have only now finally started living here. In the absence of novelty and a certain degree of fascination, and in the absence of a powerful momentum filled with idealism that came from catapulting from college and the discernment weekend, to orientation, to the first weeks and months here, I feel a simple honesty with this country, with this culture, with my friends and my volunteer work, with my church, and most of all with myself. My being in Argentina has become not a distinct part of my identity, but a indistinct part of my identity. It is part of who I am — inseparable from any of the other fundamental parts of my life.

So as I think about going to the airport I’m filled with unclear feelings. I don’t feel a simple and strong desire to go home, because on an unconscious level the home I’ve known for nine months (nine months that could easily be 5 years with the density of my thoughts and experiences throughout) is here. I don’t know who I’ll be when I go back. I don’t know yet how to be one person having been so intensely formed by two distinct worlds.

The unclarity of my feelings has contributed to a greater unclarity for me recently. I’m realizing now looking back that I’ve been suffering from mild depression for months now, which has reached into many different aspects of my life to affect my well-being, my motivation, my sense of purpose and orientation, and my faith. I think only now am I making progress to overcome that depression having come to new terms with the violence that came at its beginning, and having gained new perspectives on some self-deprecating attitudes. Unfortunately I still haven’t re-found much of my conviction and purpose and orientation, nor have I felt particularly connected to my faith in recent weeks.

I’ve thought a lot recently that the emotional and personal place I’m in right now may have something to do with an unconscious ambiguity about what kind of service commitment this is. I’ve thought often about what it would be like if this were my life, or at least if this life and type of service were my commitment for the foreseeable future. Frequently the next thought is that I simply couldn’t do it, but as I explore that more I see that having to do with the pretenses under which I came here in the first place — namely of *leaving things*. In August I left my family, Dorea, friends, going to weddings, Gustavus, Minnesota, music, and our U.S. culture among other things to come here, and I left them with a clear sense of returning (leaving family, Dorea and friends of course in the physical sense, because I still keep in regular contact with them). That is to say that I very intentionally didn’t let go of them, but now as I’m entering the tenth month here I feel an internal tension. As a short-term missionary I had clearly defined for myself a notion of leaving and coming back, but I think that this amount of time abroad is long enough to begin to engender feelings of permanence and of staying. The changes I’m going through now are ones that I see as being some of the big and final steps to adaptation for the long term. From that I feel a clash with my sense of leaving and coming back — of short-termness. It’s as if part of me is saying, “but you’ve finally started to find your place here. You’re going so soon?” It’s part of the unclarity that’s dominating my thoughts these days.

(p.s. I know unclarity isn’t a word, but it seems to work, doesn’t it?)

Cariño (Caring)
Despite these long-lasting and general feelings I’ve had a number of moments of happiness here, of orientation and of purpose. I’ve felt the healing power of, and as Chaplain Brian once put it “the Christ presence in each child of God”, in the kids at the orphanage “La Casita”. A couple Mondays ago on my way to the “hogar” I had kind of a breakdown owing to lots of stress, frustration about my lack of progress on a number of different ideas I have, and upsetteddness with myself for being late to “La Casita” and not making my time there more of a priority. I felt out of control of myself and my thoughts, which is a relatively new feeling to me this year, and I kind of mentally drove myself into the ground. After a little while of just standing, frustrated and broken, I picked myself up and continued on to the “hogar”. Without really knowing what was happening I left there a few hours later feeling refreshed and renewed. From a group of kids who some might say have little to offer, I received unwittingly a precious gift: healing, and a better sense of wholeness.

This last Tuesday I had another really beautiful moment. I left La Lechería in the afternoon with a couple other volunteers to walk with a small group of kids from La Lechería to a nearby community center for some game-time. As we walked out of the door (feeling as I usually do when I leave: on-guard, and somewhat alienated and distant from the people in the barrio — especially the young males) three of the young girls who were coming with surrounded me and grabbed onto me excitedly. They shouted, “I want to walk with Shasti (Justin)!” They were looking up to me. They cared about me. I felt an unbelievable sense of being appreciated during the walk, which I think is a sign of both how sweet and important these kids are to me, and of how deprived I am of feeling appreciated. For as much as I sense or infer gratitude occasionally for my presence and my efforts, I very rarely receive concrete gestures of gratitude and appreciation, which I think was one of the things that slowly led me into depression in the last few months. If only those few girls knew how much their little hands in mine and their unqualified “cariño” (caring) meant to me — how much it sustains me and brings me happiness.

With all that said things are quite honestly going well for me here. My volunteer work at La Lechería is meaningful to me, even though to this day I still haven’t been able to put together some of my own bigger projects. I have been hoping since really some of my first weeks there to find some way to share my musical talents with the kids. The idea took shape early on to try to put together a band (with guitar, bass, drums, singer, etc) of kids at La Lechería, but this has proven to be aggravatingly slow and difficult. Carlos, a friend who plays guitar, was going to be one of the main members of the group, but he’s now going full-time to a technical school. Very few other kids his age have any sort of passable guitar skills, and the one promising other kid that I knew through a friend at La Lechería has yet to show up. In the meantime, I’m left feeling frustrated and on some level like I’ve failed.

Only A Path To Walk On
I continue to believe in the importance of simply my presence at La Lechería — a ministry of presence. I’ve stopped myself many times from worrying about what things I’ve done or haven’t done, what things I’m doing, and what I have to show for all of that. Nevertheless, I feel myself daily yearning to have something to hold onto. A product. A program. A band. I get so tired and frustrated making the excuses and explaining to people why there isn’t a band yet. Why there might not be one. So even though I know that a band as I had conceived it may not be a reasonable possibility anymore, I still am filled daily with an urge to have something to point to and say “there! That’s what I’ve done! Judge me on that!” Grade me on that. Let that be what justifies my presence here. Let that be what justifies the efforts and the money spent for my sake so that I can be here now. But the truth is that a music program or an English program or whatever is not what justifies my being here. I continue to believe that this time is about so much more than that.

I think I’ve finally articulated for myself why I shouldn’t think of my service this year as a job, and hence, why I should not judge myself (or be judged) on what I have *done*. It’s because this year is about discernment. It’s about seeing new things and learning new ways of living. It’s about sharing myself with people here, but even more about receiving the gifts of the kids in the barrio San Pablo, about receiving Jesus through the kids at the orphanage “La Casita”. It’s about, as Henri Nouwen puts it, “learning what I must have forgotten somewhere in my busy, well-planned, and very ‘useful’ life… that everything that is, is freely given by the God of love. All is grace.” As I think about the times here when I’ve felt like I’m going to any other job, I feel scared that I could’ve lost sight of the precious gifts I receive here. My tutoring English is only a path to walk on. My days with the kids in Shirley’s class nudging them along on their homework are only the steps I take. What is infinitely more important is what I see and feel when I pick my head up and don’t worry about the steps, about how fast I’m going, or even about where I’m going. Only with my head up and my eyes open can I begin to see the great spiritual and personal gift that the barrio San Pablo, the orphanage La Casita, Argentina, and Latin America have to give to me: the gift of being witness to those without power, and of finding myself at times without power. The gift of being with the marginalized, the discriminated, and the voiceless and feeling some intense truth about humanity in them. The gift of receiving their gifts, their hospitality and their love. The gift of finding myself with those in the shadows of this world and seeing a holy light burning within them.

Thanks be to God.

Pictures from my time here in Argentina. My newsletter Google-group website with copies of my previous newsletters. ELCA website with information on my program. And my photoblog: Light-on

Dear Friends and Family,
Happy Easter! I hope you’re well, and I hope you’ve had a good day today with your own friends or family. I’m fortunate to have been able to spend a week in the end of March with my older brother Jason who came down to attend a friend’s wedding. It was really good to see him, and good to have someone close to me down here to see where I call home.

One of the things I really value about these newsletters is the ability to be frank and honest about my feelings and experiences. That rawness, as I write about both the really fulfilling and the really emptying moments here, is something that I think has helped me to be honest with myself, too, and through that to feel more centered — even in the rough times. That said, I’d like to write this months newsletter in two pieces representing two forces that I feel have been really stretching me this month — not always for the better.

Violence
In all places. In objects. In systems. In people. In myself. Violence has dominated a lot of my thoughts in the last month. The violation of being mugged at knife-point last month has made me kind of sick with a mix of fear and anger in a way I definitely didn’t expect. I think if you had asked me beforehand, I would’ve said that being robbed would be frustrating and saddening, but something that in the end I would move on from when I got over not having the material things that I lost. But the truth of it is that the much greater impact to me has been what has come days and weeks afterwards. I guess I never anticipated psychological repercussions of what in some ways doesn’t seem like THAT violent of an event, but since then I feel like I see through this lens of violence. I think about it, and I anticipate it. I walk through Retiro where I was robbed and I half clench my fists. I walk by people on the street that dress or look or talk like the people that robbed me, and I imagine how they’ll rob me. I imagine fighting back. I walk through the barrio San Pablo to La Lechería feeling the weight of all the people looking at me. Sometimes I just want to scream back at the eyes that watch me — that always seem on the verge of tearing me down. I want to scream that I’m tired of being singled out, I’m tired of expecting violence, and I’m tired of my own violence. Maybe more than anything, this is scary to me because I never thought I had this kind of violence in me. It reminds me again that I am broken. I am not the invulnerable person I thought I was. I am not cool and forgiving like I imagined being.

Connection
Last month I started volunteering at an orphanage called “La Casita” in a near-suburb of the capital, and if violence is one force that’s overwhelmed me in the last few weeks, connection with the kids from the orphanage and powerful amounts of love and affection are the opposing ones. The orphanage is one of the many in the Greater Buenos Aires area that struggles to stay afloat financially, but it’s something I’m prone to forget as I spend time with those kids. Money or not, what they really need is love. They need people to care for them. When I walked in the door the first day one of the boys (they’re all boys) came up to me and wrapped his arms around my waist, burying his head in my shirt. He’s a kid that is actually pretty alpha-maleish and kind of a “tremendo” (rascal), but he still periodically comes back for hugs — just to wrap himself around someone. It’s a powerful sign to me of how much he and the other kids just need attention.

Really, I feel like they just need someone more to *be* there with them. Initially we had talked about me doing some teaching or tutoring or formal music-type things, but after spending my first week there I requested with the administrators there that I just stay kind of “unassigned”. I want to be able to be for those kids whatever they need me to be.

Volunteering at the orphanage has been a pretty significant contrast for me from my volunteering at La Lechería. While I’ve enjoyed my roles at La Lecheria and my relationships with the people there, my experiences at the orphanage have made me realize how task-oriented my volunteering at La Lechería has become. One of the fundamental principles of the ELCA’s idea of being a missionary (which they call “accompaniment”) is that your presence wherever you are should be just that — a presence. While it’s true that on some level being present and “accompanying” still involves doing things, the problem is that when we become too oriented towards *doing* we lose our sense of being, and that above all things is something we have to hold on to. My time with the kids at the orphanage has reminded me that I am enough just as I come to them — without projects or programs. I don’t feel evaluated or validated there based on anything but my presence. I’m really thankful for the chance to volunteer there, and I’m grateful that I can be something to those kids and give them what they so desparately need not by any convoluted effort on my part to fix what’s wrong in their lives, but just by being me.

It’s a beautiful, fall Easter Day here in Buenos Aires. Pedro tells me there’s a “viento sur” (south wind) that’s cooling things off. He told me this morning about how one tree out in front of our house will start to lose its leaves in 2 or 3 weeks, but how the other won’t lose its leaves for a full 2 months. I’m happy to be here.

Still, the last four or five weeks have been hard for me — even beyond the violence in and around me. A couple of new incidents of being verbally and physically harassed (kids getting in my face and threatening me, grabbing my arm, etc. — I’m still ok) as I walked to La Lechería crossed a line for me and have kept me from going there until I can find a safer way to get there. I’ve been trying to keep busy with things at church and some of my own things (reading, practicing music, etc), but having so little stability in my day-to-day life here brought me to kind of a break-down point a few days ago.

For a little while now I’ve thought about sending out prayer requests with my newsletters for the people and situations in my life here, and I’d like to start this month. I hope these will be a meaningful way (for whoever wants to) to focus your thoughts and prayers for my time down here. Let me know.

For me, I’d ask for support for my own prayers: I pray for stability and for healing in my life. I pray that, as the season of Lent seemed to come with violence, frustration and disorientation for me, that now in Easter I might find peace, renewed relationships with my friends and places where I volunteer, and a healthier relationship with the violence that remains around me.

As another request, please pray for the kids at the orphanage “La Casita” — that they may get the care and attention they need and deserve.

Finally for the last prayer request, a little story:
Last night I watched “The Passion of the Christ” at a church in the capital, and was pretty subdued as I walked to the bus stop to head home. I decided, inspired by the movie, to look for a cross or cross necklace to get from the street vendors along Avenida Cabildo. I saw that one guy had a few on his blanket on the sidewalk and started asking him how much they were. The guy stood up and started talking to me in English, which I usually resist (for practice, and since a lot of times their English isn’t very good), but he actually spoke really well and with this great Irish accent. We ended up getting into almost an hour long conversation where we talked about our respective lives, work, politics, movies, etc. He told me about growing up in Uruguay, and about traveling to Brazil with his family. He asked me about where I’m from and what I’m doing here.

At one point he said to me as if it were a bit of trivia, “You know what, man? There are only two kings in the world. In all of history, only two kings in the whole world. Elvis Presley. And Lance Armstrong.” He told me about how he had read Lance’s autobiography, and told me stories from it about Lance’s training. I told him about Lance’s cameo in the movie “Dodgeball”. Later he talked about his wife and daughter. I talked about my family, and about Minnesota and the US. It was honestly a really great conversation, and I was really glad to laugh so much after being so down from the movie. After I had paid for the necklace and started to walk away, I asked his name. He turned and said, “Martin, man. Martin Lance Armstrong!” We laughed again, and I headed on my way. One more on the prayer request list would be Martin and his family who are obviously struggling financially (he told me that they’re sleeping on the street), but still have amazingly high spirits — high enough to brighten my whole evening.

I think I’ll leave you with that for this month. Martin Lance Armstrong.

May you have a happy and fulfilling Easter season. May God bless you and keep you. Keep in touch.
Much love,
Justin

Pictures from my time here in Argentina.
My newsletter Google-group website with copies of my previous newsletters.
ELCA website with information on my program.
And my photoblog: Light-on

Dear Friends and Family,
Warm and loving greetings. I hope this newsletter finds you well. It’s been a while since you last heard from me, and so much has happened since my December newsletter.

In the end of December, Dorea (my girlfriend) came down to spend Christmas and New Years here and spend a little while getting to know the places and people with whom I’ve spend almost 6 months now. Her visit was a blessing, and was a really important time for us to remember what it’s like to be together, to talk face to face, and to share experiences together. We spent Christmas with my friend and pastor Alan and did some sight-seeing around Buenos Aires (which was really interesting and fun for me. I think, being here in a kind of un-touristy capacity, I had kind of neglected the need to tour around and appreciate the sights of the place I’m living. I definitely saw a new side of BA while Dorea was here). After that we traveled to Patagonia and spent 7 days in a smallish touristy town called San Martín de los Andes doing some hiking and backpacking, relaxing, and walking around the town holding hands (gross, I know). A long bus ride brought us back to Buenos Aires for a final day and a half of sight-seeing, including a tango show at the famed Café Tortoni, before a sad goodbye back at Ezeiza international airport. Though it was only two weeks, I’m really grateful that she was able to come and connect with the people and places here that I find sometimes so unconveyable.

January was both a hard and easy month. As it turns out, in Argentina there’s something akin to a synchronized mass exodus in the beginning of January which they call “vacaciónes” (”vacation”), which means that just about anyone you might possibly need in order to get anything done during the month will likely be in Cordoba, Bariloche, or Mar del Plata. And even though the families of my friends from the barrio San Pablo (where I work) aren’t usually able to get out on vacations as extravagant as those, even some of them left for relatives’ houses out in the Buenos Aires province. As a result of all of this, the volunteer work that my coordinator and I had talked about for the month was largely un-doable. This ended up being a mixed blessing, with the laid-back schedule and me participating mostly in church activities giving me plenty of time to work on applications.

“Applications?”, you ask. (I’ve enjoyed thinking about telling you all about this, because I know for some of you this will kind of make sense, and for others this will be kind of a surprise.) Yup, applications. In the end of January I finished applications to the Yale Divinity School and separately to a joint program of the Divinity School and Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music, both to study theology. For those that have been closer to me during these last few years as my faith has grown, it probably won’t be much of a shock that my continuously growing interest in faith and religion has formed into a concrete interest in studying theology, in particular due to a number of the people I’ve talked with and the experiences I’ve had here in Argentina. All of this compelled me to start these application processes in early January, which themselves actually helped to deepen my interest even more in studying at divinity school. I should point out that I’ve only applied, and that I’m glad I won’t have to make a decision until April if I get accepted because studying theology is still more of an interest than a vocational conviction. I’m also not sure yet whether I’d pursue ordained ministry or instead use my education to find other ways of serving the church. We’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.

The same day that I submitted my applications (all online), I hopped on a bus and headed southwest to Patagonia a few days early for our program’s mid-year retreat in Esquel. I took the bus to Bariloche — kind of a hub in northern Patagonia — and started planning a backpacking trip through the nearby stretch of the Andes mountains, which I left on a couple days later. The trip was outstanding for me. One of the most difficult hikes I’ve ever done, with some of the most beautiful and unbelievable scenery I’ve ever seen, and all the while a really thoroughly peaceful and refreshing experience. I was fortunate, too, to meet up on the second day with an Argentine named Sergio, who became my walking buddy for the rest of the day on the hardest part of the hike. It made me glad for my tendency to approach and talk with random strangers. I’ve posted pictures from the trek on my picture website, but I also wanted to point you to a few special things I put together:

-A time lapse video of the clouds over the “Cathedral Mountains” at sunset, made from about 70 individual pictures taken at 3 second intervals.

-A panorama of the view from the top of the Paso Brecha Negra (Brecha Negra mountain pass) on my second day. As you scroll from left to right on the picture, you can see the various mountain ranges and valleys that made up other parts of the trek, and in the distance just to the left of the rock pile in the middle you can see “Volcán Lanín” (Volcano Lanin) almost 200 miles away.

I made it back safe (and exceedingly sore) from the hike, and then the next day took the bus the rest of the way south to Esquel for the mid-year retreat with our coordinator, her husband, their two (adorable) kids, and the other volunteers. The retreat was good and another source of refreshment for me, but also challenging in a number of ways. Questions filled my journaling during those days, asking What does my time here in Argentina mean? What will this time mean for my life when I return? What would a ’successful’ year be, if I can even think about it that way? What am I giving? How am I giving, and am I giving enough? Whom am I serving? Am I serving myself?

These questions have continued with me during this month, pushing me to wonder about if my work here is enough. I’m tempted at first to answer myself and say to not worry: that “enough” is an arbitrary term, and what’s important is that I’m here and *being* with the people whom I seek to serve. But when it comes to a very personal level, I think “enough” is more about honesty than anything else. It’s about being with God in the quiet places of my mind and confessing my sin, and about taking strength from his quieting answer of grace. In the freedom of his grace I must find myself each day and ask myself who is seeing the light of God working through me. “Enough” for me isn’t about reaching some arbitrary point, nor is it about a dichotomy between good and bad where doing enough is good. Enough is something I can know according to the gifts I know I have, and in these last weeks I know I haven’t been giving enough.

Ash Wednesday and the beginning of lent hit me really hard this year. It was in this feeling of knowing that I’m not giving enough here that I listened to Claudio’s “Miércoles de Cenizas” (Ash Wednesday) sermon as he talked about fasting, about taking things out of our life, and about preparing in a deeply personal and spiritual way for the celebration of Christ’s resurrection on Easter. I’m never sure how much I believe that God answers us in concrete, tangible ways, but the “Miércoles de Cenizas” service at Martin Lutero hit me like an answer to a question that I hadn’t asked anyone yet — like a light shone on my thoughts illuminating both the rest of the question and at least some of the answer for me.

It sounds simple, maybe, to say that I think I was serving myself, and that the answer I’ve found has been to let go of things in my life and focus myself on God. I don’t think it’s as simple as it seems though, both because seeing ourselves as too self-focused is always more complex than just that, and because the answer is one that takes lifetimes to figure out. Nevertheless, I was left Wednesday night with a sense of comfort (which for me is sometimes the most powerful sign that God has acted in my life), and a conviction to reorient myself both spiritually and in my work so that God’s work can take the place of the deceptively similar “my work”.

For me, Lent symbolizes a time of fasting — a concept that has taken on an important meaning for me beyond literal understandings of not eating meat or chocolate (or whatever) for 40 days. My reorientation and preparation during lent was inspired by Pastor Claudio’s message that lent is a time to live in God’s grace, and to remember the message of Ash Wednesday reminding us: “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It’s a message of emptiness, but in that emptiness in which we’re left we see all the beautiful ways that God fills us, or really all the ways that God was already in those spaces.

Last Friday I was robbed at knife-point outside the Retiro train station in the capital. I was surrounded as I waited for the bus to go home by three kids about my same age who grabbed me and bit by bit took almost everything I had. Some part of me would like to make this into something other than a terrible experience, but I can’t. It was a terrible experience. I was scared, and later I was either intensely sad or intensely angry.

I’m sad for having lost a notebook with journal entries, my “Gracias” book with lots of notes in the margins, a jacket, a camera, my wallet, my glasses, and among other things a new mate, a bombilla and a prayer candle I got on my day trip to Uruguay to renew my visa. In spite of my sadness, though, this “experience” has put me in a place where I’m very conscious about what I have and don’t have — something that, in the context of the beginning of Lent and God’s call to empty ourselves, I’m in a strange way thankful for. I don’t really believe being robbed was an act of God to set me on the right track, but there’s a part of me that can’t help but see this as a powerful (albeit violent) arrival into the fast of lent — a kind of mandatory renunciation of things that on some level or other tempt a distance from God. At least for now I’m not going to try to replace what I lost mostly as a symbol of the Lenten fast I aspire to continue, and of the small peace I’ve found in the space this experience has cleared.

I’m grateful today to be ok. I’m grateful that out of an act of violation and violence I’ve been able to find connectedness with God. I pray that during Lent this year you may find some measure of peace of your own in a setting-aside of things in your life, and in focusing on what you know in your heart matters most to you.

May God bless you, and may God order our days and our deeds in peace.

With much love,
Justin

Pictures from my time here in Argentina.
My newsletter Google-group website with copies of my previous newsletters.
ELCA website with information on my program.
And my new photoblog: Light-on

Dear Friends and Family,
Les mando besos y abrazos fuertes de Argentina. Warm greetings to you all. I hope that this Christmas season is rich with happiness for you, and that you are uplifted by the presence of good friends and loving family.

Far away as I am, I too am blessed to be able to have loved ones to spend Christmas and New Years with. Dorea, my girlfriend, is coming soon on a trip that I think we’ve been planning since May when I first accepted to do this program here. She and I will be spending Christmas with Alan Eldrid, a good friend and pastor in the Lutheran Church, at his house. For New Years, Dorea and I will be traveling south to an area in Northern Patagonia called the “Lake District” to do some hiking and sight-seeing. Now that I think about it, between Dorea being around, the cooler temperatures, and an abundance of lakes, things might actually start to seem like Minnesota!

…Yeah, I’m homesick. I guess my homesickness hasn’t been exactly what I expected, because I don’t feel so much that I want to *go* home. I had a dream the other night in which I had traveled home for a few weeks, but for as nice as it was to be back I had this feeling like I wasn’t where I supposed to be. It’s kind of hard to explain, but I just know that I’m in the right place right now. Nevertheless, I find myself really missing things like Minnesota winter and snow (I know, it sounds crazy), Gustavus, Christmas lights, Christmas carols in English, my mom’s brownies and cranberry bread, the occasional Chipotle burrito, and of course most of all, family and friends.

Christmas is certainly upon us, though, here in Argentina. On Avenida Corrientes, one of the big streets in the capital, they’ve hung star decorations and garlands on the light posts. There are also a number of big Christmas-tree-shaped decorations near parts of the freeways around Buenos Aires made by hanging Christmas lights from big light poles. In church we’ve been lighting candles on our Advent Wreath for each week of Advent. And at Unicenter, the big shopping mall in the area, there’s a Santa Claus (”Papá Noel”) and a Nativity scene and Christmas music playing over the sound system (and a super-charged air conditioning system which, with the presence of some USey-type stores and the smattering of propaganda in English, makes me feel like I’ve walked out of Argentine summer and into a wintery Mall of America).

At La Lechería we’ve put up some Christmas decorations on the walls and a little Christmas tree in the corner, and I actually had kind of a fun exchange with a 6th grade English student of mine when they were decorating the Christmas tree a couple days ago. The English lesson was going really slowly, and the student was struggling a lot connecting concepts and keeping up his attention. In one moment, he looked outside the room we were in and saw them decorating the tree and observed:

“Están vistiendo el árbol.”
“They are decorating the Christmas tree.”

Except that for me the more common usage of the word for “decorating” (”vistiendo”) is “to dress”, as in “to dress yourself in the morning”, or “he dresses well”. Makes sense, but when I heard him say that I thought of them putting pants and a jacket and a little hat on the tree. I replied:

“Sí. Estaba todo desnudo.”
“Yeah. It used to be all naked.”

He laughed, and then I laughed, and then we talked for a while about the idea of them putting clothes on the tree. Maybe it seems silly, but we kind of connected in that moment — something that I’ve learned to cherish here amongst the times of brokenness of communication, cultural understanding, and personal understanding. If this year is about accompaniment and “walking together”, then maybe I can see these moments of connection as a break in a current I feel like I walk against. I don’t have to ask “¿Que?”, I don’t have to find another way to say what I’m trying to say, I don’t have to be conscious about how I’m different, I don’t have to feel looked-at, I don’t have to find a way as I walk through the barrio to respond to shouts of insults and names, or to joking or serious pleas for money, I don’t have to worry about being messed around with or touched or grabbed, and I don’t have to walk away from those same moments with indignance and sadness and an anger I know I shouldn’t have for those people that seem to only want to tear me down. For a moment, there’s no current, and instead the peace of seeing some holy presence in what I’m doing, illuminated by the light of connection in a disconnected world.

I was really glad for that moment a couple days ago. I was going to write here that moments like that are redeeming for me, but I think in truth those moments don’t redeem my experience or my work. Day by day these kids show me the goodness that is always in the people around me, young and old, and even those people that make it their business to harass me. Before I started writing tonight I was listening to some of Gustavus’ Christmas in Christ Chapel service from 2003, listening to a part of the service where Chaplain Brian offers prayers between verses of “O God of Love” sung by the choir. He says: “Grant that as we see our brothers and sisters around the world, so may we greet the Christ presence in each child of God, and extend the peace which passes our human understanding.” Amen.

May you be blessed and filled with love this Christmas. “Felices fiestas.” Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Peace,
Justin

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/justin.haaheim
Google group site with my previous newsletter: http://groups.google.com/group/justins-yagm-friends
ELCA site with information on my program: http://www.elca.org/globalserve/youngadults

The days are passing both slowly and quickly here in Argentina. Sometimes I can hardly believe that I’ve been here almost three months now, but at the same time my memories from Minnesota in July and August seem like so long ago. Don’t worry, you still remain very much in my thoughts, but if we measure time by what has been seen then it really has been a long time — a time for me full of experiences that defy the kind of solidification and articulation that they warrant, because already I feel change and growth in Argentina by things I don’t understand and can’t always grab onto. I hope every month I can share some piece of all of this that is so important to me, and I hope that it takes on meaning for you too as someone close to me.

Death and Rebirth
Church began solemnly yesterday. Four weeks ago a member of the congregation at Martin Lutero (where I go to church) named Guillermo spoke beautifully during the service about a decision he had made: he wanted to be confirmed, and he wanted to do it in and with the support of the people he had come to love at Martin Lutero. He told us he was 33 and that he was battling cancer, and that he really valued this community of faith he had become a part of. About a week ago his health started deteriorating rapidly, and on Saturday night he passed away.

Church began solemnly, but it also took on a distinctly different tone as the service continued with the baptism of a beautiful baby girl. I couldn’t help but think about, in the midst of sadness for a person that I had begun to know and that had been part of our community, that there was kind of a beauty in what happened on Sunday. The juxtaposition of death and of rebirth as a child of God. The service was a powerful reminder for me of my own baptism and of my own recent steps in faith, and I came away with a kind of peace thinking about the continuity of one beautiful baby girl being embraced into the arms of God at the beginning of life as another beautiful child of God was embraced into the arms of God at the end. Please let Guillermo and his loved ones be in your thoughts and prayers.

The Last Months
For my part, I am doing really well here. I feel pretty blessed to be able to say that. Certainly the last couple months have come with many difficult times, many of which have been magnified for me by language and the many different ways that language barriers can lead to misunderstanding and judgment. But now as Thanksgiving quickly approaches, I give thanks for the many times when I have been treated with compassion and kindness instead of misunderstanding or judgment. I give thanks for grace and a love that has uplifted me here in Argentina.

Día del Pavo (Turkey Day)
Thanksgiving is approaching and the six of us volunteers plus Kate and David, our country coordinators, are preparing for the next of our monthly gatherings, which is in Uruguay next week. On Wednesday the 22nd, Lesley, Stacey, Carrie, Rachel and I will meet in Buenos Aires to take a boat across the Río de la Plata to eventually meet Meredith (who’s placement is in Uruguay) at a retreat center in Colonia Valdense. Thursday is Thanksgiving, and we’ve devoted the whole day to just hanging out and preparing the dinner for the evening. When we first started planning this, everyone got really excited and started talking about what they wanted to make — each person picking something that is a family tradition for them.

I told the group I’d like to make lefse. For those that aren’t familiar with lefse (lehf-suh), it’s a Norwegian flatbread made from potatoes that’s often eaten with butter and sugar, all rolled up into a Norwegian tube of deliciousness. It’s about the same size and shape as a big tortilla, but it’s got a really different taste. Making lefse has always been a tradition for my family, especially around the holidays, but in the last months here in Argentina it has taken on some new meanings for me.

A few weeks ago I was talking with Pedro and Mirta, my homestay parents, and we got to talking about recipes and food we like. I mentioned that there were a few things that I’d like to try to make for them (you know, all the healthy things like cookies and brownies and peach cobbler), and that I especially wanted to make lefse. Incidentally, this conversation about making food together and sharing of what’s important to us ended up being an ice breaker moment for us, and we’ve only gotten closer since then.

So last Friday evening was lefse night at the Terceros’ house with the three of us all working in the kitchen together (see pictures on the web). It was honestly a really fun experience to introduce them to one of my family’s traditions, and it was fun to spend time with them — just talking, rolling out the dough, throwing the lefse one by one onto the makeshift lefse griddle, and of course getting flour everywhere. About halfway through the evening I put some water on the stove for “mate”, and then I realized a little bit later what an interesting encounter of traditions was happening.

Mate (mah-tay) is a very distinctive and very characteristic Argentine and Uruguayan tradition in which chopped up “mate yerba” leaves (yair-bah, or share-ba as we say here in Buenos Aires) are put into a fist-sized gourd, also called a mate. The yerba leaves are more or less like tea leaves, and so they make a kind of instant tea when hot water is poured over them and then drunk through the bombilla (bohm-bee-zsha), a special type of metal straw with small holes in the end to keep out the actual leaves.

What’s important about mate (besides that it’s good) is that it’s a communal tradition. Sometimes it’s drunk alone, but when there are other people around it is almost guaranteed that it will be shared. Groups pass around the mate in a circle with each person drinking from it. This happens at home, with friends, at parties, at seminars, at work – anywhere. After each person is done the mate is sent back to the person who prepared it to be refilled with hot water and then passed onto the next person. In the end mate is about being with people and passing the time. No one ever drinks mate fast (as in no one ever says “I’m on my way out the door but I’m going to chug some mate first”), and it’s not really kosher to just pop in and have some mate and not stay for some conversation. The point is never just to get mate in your stomach and go, just as the point of, say, Thanksgiving dinner is never just to get turkey in your stomach and be done with it all.

For me lefse-making has always been something my whole family has done together. It’s a whole afternoon or evening event with fun conversation, a constant stream of lefse made and lefse eaten, and (this part is important) lots of flour everywhere. Making lefse with my family is something I have always looked forward to, and now bringing that tradition here to my Argentine family has really warmed my heart. Warmed not just for the chance to bring those who care for me closer by sharing part of my family’s traditions and heritage, nor for way the tradition became classically Argentine by the presence of the mate being passed back and forth, but for the presence of a both abstract and tangible communion in the mate and the lefse making. I give thanks for that time together – our own Norske-Argentino breaking of bread.

Diaconía/Trabajo (Ministry/Work)
My time at La Lechería has been going really well. Certainly, as with my time in Argentina in general, there have been ups and downs (strikes and gutters, in the parlance of our times) and moments of great mental and even physical exhaustion, but every week brings a better sense of what I need to/should/can/want to do there.

If there’s one thing I do with regularity at La Lechería it’s teaching English. I’ve got a handful of high school aged kids, one younger girl, and a woman from the barrio that comes for an hour each week to study with me. Beyond that I’m the on-call “profesor de Inglés” helping usually younger kids with worksheets or assignments, or sometimes just teaching whatever. Last week this 5th grade girl Micaela (a real sweetheart) came to me and just wanted to learn something, so we worked on the alphabet with easy example words for each letter (you know like A as in apple, B as in bacteriologist, etc). I’ve really enjoyed this part of my time at La Lechería both in the laid-back, straightforward situations like with Micaela, but also in the considerably more challenging situations a few of my advanced students presented me with in September when they came into our first study session and said, “Teach me English.”

Beyond teaching English the kinds of things I do day to day vary. I often spend time with some of the 4th-7th graders just talking or helping with homework or playing chess or whatever. I’ve recently started a more structured weekly thing where I present brainteasers to the kids. Last week I did Euler-paths, which is the nerdy graph theory term (I’m a Computer Science major, give me a break) for a drawing of points connected by lines in which you have to trace over all the lines exactly once without lifting your pencil from the page. The trick is that some are impossible (which I can prove formally, and it’s too bad the kids don’t understand technical English, cause I’m sure they’d *love* that.), and I presented them in order from an easy version to a little bit harder version to an impossible version. It was honestly really fun to see the kids having a good time with all this, and seeing them process the last one and saying things like “I did it. I can so do it!” and then when they give it a few tries at the chalkboard saying “I totally had it! I just forgot.” Next week I think we’ll do a couple more and then I’ll show them the trick.

Recently, I’ve also been working on starting two different music groups that should be getting going in the next week or so. The first one is a STOMP-type percussion group that’ll play on 5 gallon sized buckets that we’re finding in the streets. The other one is more or less a rock band that some of the kids are interested in forming. We already have parts of a drumset, a bass guitar and some sound stuff, and the admins at La Lechería put me in charge of figuring out what we’re lacking and getting the group up on its feet. We’ll see how that all goes.

Well that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the mujeres are fuertes, all the hombres are hermosos, and all the pibes sacan dieces. As always, I would love to hear from you, even if it’s just a quick email about how things are going for you. May you be blessed in this week of thanksgiving, family and friends.

As Pedro says, “lo mejor, che.” All the best. Peace and love from Argentina,
Justin

p.s. If you’re wondering about the “strikes and gutters, in the parlance of our times” phrase I used earlier, it’s a quote from one of my favorite movies “The Big Lebowski”, man.

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/justin.haaheim
Google group site with my previous newsletter: http://groups.google.com/group/justins-yagm-friends
ELCA site with information on my program: http://www.elca.org/globalserve/youngadults

The sense of community was accented for me in two particular ways. First, almost all of the discussions were conducted in English (often with a French translation as well) because that is the common language everyone learns. Although I teach English in Slovakia and thus help this idea of a common world language, it was so cool to see the results in action. I loved hearing two people talking, one with a Korean accent, one with an Italian accent. It somehow made world peace seem more possible. The other accent of community was in the ecumenism. It occurred to me sometime mid-week that I didn’t even know the religious backgrounds of many of my new friends, and more to the point, it made no difference to me. If it came up in conversation, it was like, “Oh you’re Catholic? Huh. Anyway…” or it became of way to learn from each other, but in no way was it a way or reason to judge each other. We were ultimately there for the same purpose: to pray to God and grow in faith.

This experience yet increased my excitement for the ecumenical situation in which I will find myself at Yale Divinity School this fall. Although this blog is hardly about my experience in Slovakia, it was an important time to reflect and appreciate that experience. I was able to look at my time in Slovakia from a few countries away, to put some of the lessons I have learned this year to use in a new situation, and to compare my experiences to others’ for mutual learning. And when I returned to Vrbovce last week, I was delighted to discover that I was truly missed by the people in Vrbovce. I was greeted with exclamations of, “Where have you been?”, “How was France?”, and best of all, from my host mom, “Our daughter is home!”

Following their time in Slovakia the band headed for Vienna, and I went along with them. There were times I actually forgot I wasn’t still a member of this group! I was immediately myself – the self that was so defined by my time in the Gustavus Wind Orchestra – in a way I haven’t been for months. What a blessing to be with dear friends in such a beautiful city, to share music and experiences, and to rediscover a part of myself that, in all my emotional and spiritual struggles of the last 4 months, I had lost track of. After a day and a half in Vienna, I went with the orchestra back to Bratislava for a concert. The group drew much of the American population living in Bratislava, which was exciting.

After my third and final concert with the Gustavus Wind Orchestra, I bid my friends farewell and returned home, but the time I was able to spend with the group will remain dear. It reinforced the importance of my time at Gustavus, and especially my time with the Gustavus Wind Orchestra, reminded me of all the growth and discovery that took place there, and proved (to be totally sappy) that I will always be a Gustie!

That being said, I have enjoyed this month teaching English two or three evenings a week to adults. Since I have no books, I am essentially making up my own curriculum, which is fun and a bit worrisome, as I have no idea how to do this. But they seem to be learning, so I guess I’m not doing too bad a job! I also lead conversation class in three different grade levels, which gives me a grand total of 7 levels of English to teach, plus piano lessons (also with exercises made up by yours truly, as I have no books for that either) and drum set lessons (no books and no experience!). I’m having a good time, really. The other project we’re working on is to create a youth “hang-out” room – a project which is well underway and should be complete in a couple weeks! Very exciting, for me and for the youth. It is wonderful to see physical results, I must admit.