Disorientation, Orientation – September Newsletter from Argentina Posted on September 28th, 2006 by Justin Haaheim '06

Disorientation, Orientation

Where do I even begin? The last two months of my life — from Mexico to Marshfield and from Chaska to Chicago to Buenos Aires — have been filled with more than I feel like I could ever hope to interpret, and I’ve really only just begun. But what a paradox it is that in a time when so much in my life has been changing in people and place and culture and language — when my world has been figuratively and literally turned upside down — I have also felt such a profound sense of confidence and peace. Being among the other volunteers in Chicago and Buenos Aires has affirmed and strengthened my sense that this is what I am called to do at this point in my life — that this is my vocation . Despite my reoccurring feelings of disorientation and doubt, I have this deeper confidence that this is the right place for me now, and so I begin my year of service giving thanks for what I have been blessed to experience and for the light that has been shone on my path these last months.

Maybe best to start with a recap of where I’ve been:
I am serving this year (from August of this year until July of next year) as a missionary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). I am actually serving through a special program of the ELCA’s Global Missions division called “Young Adults in Global Missions” or YAGM, which accepts “young adults” ages 20 to 30 to serve in roughly 10 countries around the world. My year of service is in Argentina, but as part of a language training piece of this program the ELCA sent me to Mexico for three weeks in July and August to study at a language school there. That’s where I sent my first newsletter from.

Back to Minnesota
The original plan had been to spend four weeks in Mexico, but after a series of conversations with the other two guys in Mexico and the ELCA Global Missions staff we decided to come back a week early to give us a little more time back home to pack and to spend with family and friends before leaving for the year. Sneakily, I decided to keep this a secret from Dorea (my girlfriend) who was going to be leaving for grad school in New York during that fourth week and wasn’t expecting to see me at all until a possible visit to Argentina around Christmas. Beth, a friend of ours, and I put together a surprise for Dorea in which my parents picked me up from the Minneapolis airport and took me straight to a café where Beth had brought Dorea for coffee and some “girl time”. I snuck into the café, walked up behind Dorea while she was at the table and gave her a big smooch on the cheek. The surprise went perfectly, and thankfully Dorea realized it was me *before* she went to slap the random guy that had just kissed her cheek. 🙂

I spent the next few days with Dorea and her parents in Marshfield (her hometown), including spending an evening at their church’s Vacation Bible School event (themed “Fiesta!”) showing some of my pictures from Mexico and teaching the kids some basic Spanish vocabulary. At the end of the week we got Dorea all packed up to head off to grad school and I sent her and her parents on their way. I then connected with my family in Wisconsin for a little vacation time doing some rock climbing at Devils Lake and a few thrill rides at the Wisconsin Dells.

That last week before I left ended up being a lot of preparing for the looming missions work I would be doing. Errands and a doctor appointment on Monday; more errands and some packing on Tuesday; wisdom teeth out on Wednesday; resting and packing on Thursday; packing and an unlikely opportunity to meet Rob, the volunteer that just got back from serving at La Lechería where I am now on Friday; packing and family time on Saturday; flying out on Sunday. Phew.

Sunday’s flight was to Chicago for a week-long orientation with both the ELCA and the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), which has a parallel young adult missions program. Each church had about 35 volunteers serving through their program going to a number of sites around the world (the sites for this year are Argentina, Peru, Mexico, the Philippines, India, Slovakia, the UK, Ghana, Kenya, and Germany).

Orientation in Chicago
The orientation was great. Amazing. It was perfect (well, almost). I can’t begin to describe how at-home and happy I felt being in that place with those people — like minded in many ways, but yet all different and interesting. The week was filled with meetings, worship, ultimate frisbee, etc. Though I could’ve done without some of the extended sessions on ELCA policies (like how we can’t adopt babies while abroad (except really we can, but we’ve got to check with our country coordinator first)), I really can’t emphasize enough how thankful I am for having as many amazing opportunities as I did.

Three of my favorite seminars were:
-the seminar on Accompaniment, the ELCA’s new vision for missions work, by Rafael Malpica-Padilla. He spoke eloquently about the bidirectionality of work like ours — that even as we try to give and serve, we also receive and learn in profound and important ways. This notion of “walking together” is the foundation of what it means for us to be missionaries.
-a seminar by Winston Persuad from Wartburg Seminary on nothing in particular. He spoke about many different aspects of traveling and living and serving and relationships (and Cricket, which he claims is the best game in the world), interspersing wonderful stories of his life and travels in Guyana, the US, and the rest of the world.
-a seminar on Globalization by Rick Ufford-Chase, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (if you’re wondering what the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church is, he explained it as being like the Pope but with no power). Rick struck me immediately as honest, articulate, insightful, put-together, and very friendly and welcoming. He is someone that I see as a role model for me in faith and in work. He spoke powerfully about the many different facets and challenges our world faces as many seek to “globalize” it — to bring capitalism and free trade to all the countries of the world.

On Tuesday night of the orientation week I got the chance to head up to my brother Jason’s place in northwest Chicago and meet my whole family (they were in town for the day) for one last family gathering. Jason grilled, and we talked and shared stories including some of my stories and pictures from Mexico. On Thursday evening the ELCA and PCUSA took us out on a boat ride on lake Michigan and up the river, which provided some much needed time to relax and be quiet and peaceful. Sunday was the big day when we all headed to the airport with our country groups to fly out together to our countries of service. Of course, it had to be raining cats and dogs.

I’m going to take a minute now to introduce my country group, because I’m definitely going to refer to them now and in the future. There are five other volunteers: Lesley, Meredith, Carrie, Stacey and Rachel. Yes, it is me an five (very nice) women. This gender distribution has led to some interesting dynamics in discussion already, particularly when the discussion is about, say, women’s rights and affirmative action for women in science. Let’s just say it’s a little bit of an uphill battle trying to defend a perspective on gender issues when it’s one on seven, counting the five other volunteers, Kate our country coordinator and Judy, professor of gender issues in theology at the school and resident hard-core feminist. But then again I think a lot of you know me well enough to know that I tend to be a pretty… ummm… passionate conversationalist. So don’t worry — I won’t go down without a fight. 🙂

In all seriousness, though, I really love the group we have down here. We’ve got a pretty interesting mix of personality types and backgrounds between us, but that hasn’t stopped us from becoming really close already in the couple weeks we’ve spent together. They are definitely a blessing. I am thankful for them.

So we, the Argentina group, made it (wet) to the airport at about 1pm only to find out at about 4pm that our 5:55pm flight had been delayed about 20 minutes due to weather. Ok. No problem. We still had about 30 minutes in the Washington Dulles airport to make our connecting flight to Buenos Aires.

About 20 minutes later, the departure time on the flight information screens had moved back a bit more. And then a little bit more. When all was said and done our 5:55pm departure had been moved to 7:17pm, and we were all a bit unsure about what was going to happen. We ended up landing in Dulles at 10:00pm ready to *leap* off the plane and sprint through the terminal only to find out that the plane had left at 9:58. Huh.

As it turns out, there’s only one United flight to Buenos Aires a day, so the next flight we could catch was the next day at the same time. A few phone calls later, the ELCA had agreed to put us up in a hotel for the night and we chilled in the Hyatt Dulles. We spent the next day bumming around in Reston, VA, which is really I think a pretty bad city for “bumming around”. The two main events in the afternoon were wandering around Kohls and crashing in their “Back to college” dorm room furniture display area, and getting my haircut. The highlight of the day for me was that evening when we had a fun dinner at TGI Fridays, after which we headed back to the hotel to take the shuttle to the airport. We arrived with *plenty* of time at the Dulles airport, and at 9:45pm finally hopped the plane to Buenos Aires.

Arriving in Argentina
The flight was about 10 hours, so we got into Buenos Aires at about 9am. (FYI, Buenos Aires is two hours ahead of Central Time during US daylight savings time and three hours ahead otherwise.) Kate, our country coordinator (and all around wonder-woman), met us at the airport with her husband David, and after spending a little bit of time sorting out our luggage we headed to a small seminary called ISEDET (which I’m sure is an acronym for something) in Buenos Aires to unpack, eat and begin our in-country orientation with a meeting with some of the leaders of the IELU, which is the Argentine equivalent of the ELCA.

The conversations at that meeting ended up being pretty profound, with some interesting and refreshing perspectives on Lutheran faith and Lutheran theology. Looking back on the situation makes me smile a little bit because it reminds me how amazing but still slightly strange and dream-like the first two weeks were for me in Argentina. Firstly, we were all exhausted from all the traveling we had done to get to Buenos Aires (although if you ask Meredith she’ll say that I slept *plenty* on the plane and in all sorts of funny and interesting orientations in my seat). The coffee they served us at the meeting was sort of too little too late for a few of us. Add to that Alan, the big, jolly president of the IELU who speaks impeccable English with a thick British accent that, when you step back and just listen to the sounds, sounds like he’s really speaking German (can you imagine that?). The majority of the meeting was in English, but it occasionally switched back and forth between Spanish and English which added to this overall dream-like disorientation. The other main speaker was a pastor named Lisandro.

The thrust of the conversation was about the nature of God’s grace — one which has resurfaced many times in the couple weeks we’ve been in Buenos Aires. I ended up (true to my style) taking a few pages of notes from the meeting, which is probably a good indicator of the number of things that were really fascinating and well-articulated. I think if I had to sum up what was said briefly it would be this:

God’s grace is a gift of unity, not division. God did not create insiders and outsiders — those that are pure and those that are impure — but rather it is we that seek to draw these lines and categorize people as “in” or “out”. Condemnation and salvation are things we all live in every day, but God’s grace saves us from our sins. We are called foremost to love. We are called to be human, and to love each other with all our humanity. In this we see that God is never something we bring to “outsiders”. God lives in those “outsiders” and reaches in to us through them.

I don’t really think any of us (in Argentina and throughout the whole program) came into this year thinking of ourselves as missionaries in the traditional sense (that we are called to be proselytizers, bringing God to the heathens or something), but for me at least this message has still been a really important one, especially as my faith has been stretched and challenged. How does my faith call me to be a “missionary” in my community here in Argentina? How am I called to accompany, as the ELCA puts it in their vision for what being a missionary is, the people that I live and work with here?

I have been working for three days now at La Lechería, the center for youth in one of the barrios (neighborhoods) near my house. What can I say from my experience there so far? I am called to smile, which is to say that I am called to keep my chin up and to not throw my hands in the air and give up. I am called to love the people I work with through the frustration of not being able to understand *anything* that some of the kids say, and through the frustration of knowing that I’m being talked about and laughed at even though I (sometimes) don’t know what’s being said.

But to say that shows only the very surface level of what I’ve experienced at La Lechería. In fact, I have felt pretty overwhelmingly loved and welcomed by the people there these first few days. I see pretty clearly that beneath this desire to haze me into the school these people, young and old, love me and are glad I am there. They are a blessing. I am thankful for them.

But now what an expectation I have to live up to. I pray that in these next weeks and months I will have the strength to be a positive and buoyant presence in that place. I pray that I may be a blessing to that community, and that I may, with my talents and with all that I have to give, serve them well.

This all brings me up to the present moment. I am living in a cozy little house with Pedro and Mirta, a couple probably in their 50’s. Their house is in the town El Talar, which is a suburb of Buenos Aires and about an hour or hour and a half bus ride out. I’m working four days a week at La Lechería, and hopefully will also be doing some organizing for a concert series/visual art series program of the IELU down here called LutherArte on the weekends.

I have in fact been taking pictures down here, and slowly but surely I’m getting over to the nearby “locutorio” (internet café) to upload them. There are about 30 up now. You can check back now and then for more, but I’ll probably send an email if I upload a bunch. They’re here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/justin.haaheim

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch. May you be blessed in all that you do.
Peace and love.
Justin