Author: Hazel Frost

By an ironic twist of fate, or possibly someone’s bad sense of humour, I find myself on the re-organised Latin Link Argentina team exec. I’m not exactly first choice material for execs. My list of pet hates starts with meetings, admin, and paperwork, so the prospect of the coming year being punctuated by meetings, meetings about meetings, meetings about meetings about meetings, and discussions about why no-one has actioned the minutes since the last meeting, is not one that I am looking forward to with any joy. (Apart from the deep and lasting sort that is able to sustain all who have accepted the salvation of Christ, which if we are honest, is sometimes so deep that I’m not quite sure where I last saw it….)
Apart from lacking in anything resembling leadership skills, I also have some major failings in the area of dealing with paper. My brain works on a strictly need to know basis. If my brain thinks it needs this information which is about 5% of documents received, it remembers what it said, what it looked like, and where I put it. If my brain can’t think of an immediate use for this information, i.e. the other 95% of the time, then I have to try and house it in my patented PLD filing system. PLD is a simple system, consisting of three categories: the Pile on the desk category, the Lost without trace category, or the Direct to Dustbin category. The major advantage to this system is that anything that has managed to spend 6 months or more in the P or L categories, when it resurfaces, can usually be consigned direct to D. And in any case, I won’t have any recollection of having received the paper, what it said, or what I did with it, if it wasn’t immediately recognised by the “need to know” filter.

Producing documents if anything, is even worse, because it also contains an element of stress. Even after only one meeting, we have made ourselves a little list of documents to produce or revise, none of which will be remotely relevant to anyone’s life, and therein lies the element of stress. Even though I know that few people will read it, and that those who do will wonder why they did, I know with the same amount of knowing, that I will spend hours and hours of my life producing the things, going mad at my computer when it doesn’t do exactly what I want it to, getting the wording right, the layout, the format, the spacing, because I am totally unable to act as though what I am doing wasn’t important. The ratio of time and emotional energy in the production to the time and emotional energy in the reading will be impossibly lopsided, and with good reason…. because by and large this stuff doesn’t matter. And yet I will want the recipients to read, digest and care, not because one word of the content is remotely relevant to them, but because of what it has cost me to produce it, even though I know with all of my heart that if the same thing had landed in my inbox, I would have sent it Direct to D.

Taking all this into account, it makes one wonder why a compassionate God couldn’t come up with a job that I actually have some of the skills for, like cleaning toilets, looking after kids, or roller-skating to Siberia against a headwind…. (“Do everything without arguing or complaining….” Oh yeah alright then, but there had better be good biscuits….)

1. Both are the second city of their respective countries, both are similar size, several times smaller than their respective capitals.
2. Both are located to the north and west of the capital.
3. Both have a hate hate relationship with the capital.
4. Both are surrounded by rather attractive countryside, with hills close by, i.e. the Peak District, and the Sierras de Cordoba.
5. Both have a rich historical past, the region of Cordoba as home to the Camechingon peoples, and later known as Cordoba, a colonial capital founded by the Spanish, and Birmingham as a market town based around Birmingham castle following Bronze age origins.
6. Both have a strong multi-cultural mix, both past and present.
7. Both have been important academic hubs. Cordoba has the second oldest university in Latin America founded by the Jesuits in 1613. Birmingham was home to the Lunar society around 1765, which set the pace for the British industrial revolution.
8. Both have experienced scenes of disturbance and uprising, the logical flip-side of academic moving and shaking. Hence Birmingham’s Priestly riots in 1791, and the more recent popular uprising in Cordoba of 1969, known as the “Cordobazo”
9. Both have significant industrial heritages…. Cordoba in the manufacture of aeroplanes, trains, cars, textiles, chemicals, and more recently technologies, and Birmingham in toys, textiles, iron, steel, guns, transport, and of course Cadbury’s chocolate.
10. Both have a thriving middle class, and pockets of real deprivation. And in both cases it’s the middle class who have the most to say about being poor.
11. Both have had sizable investment in regeneration of their respective historical and commercial centres in recent years.
12. And most importantly of all, both have the one accent in their country which every comedian needs to perfect if they want to be taken seriously on the stand-up circuit.

Friday was supposed to be a nice quiet easy-ish day after being in the childrens’ home on Wednesday and Thursday. We had a doctors appointment at 6pm, and people were coming around for an asado (BBQ) in the evening. So we spent the morning slowly, I walked the dog, did some shopping in advance of the evening, leaving the drinks and a few other things to buy later, had lunch, bit of a siesta…. At 4.30 we thought we’d make some coffee, do the washing up and start preparing stuff for the evening. At 5pm the dog arrived home squealing, with an absolutely massive gash in her chest, it was so big and deep and wide-open we honestly weren’t sure if she would survive, so Martin held her down and applied pressure, I phoned our usual vet, who gave me an emergency number for someone else, who in turn organised a different guy to come round. He turned our house into an operating theatre, put the dog out, shaved her, cleaned out the wound and stitched her up, she’s got three rows of stitches, one layer deep inside, then another layer a bit further out and then finally a third layer at skin level. Luckily it was her chest rather than the abdomen so her vital organs were protected by the ribs. We have no idea where or how she did it, but she’s always jumping over fences and walls, she’s convinced she’s a puma, so we can only assume it went badly wrong and that she landed on something, like a railing possibly, in mid-leap. We missed our doctor’s appointment, the vet left at seven leaving the house covered in blood and fur, and the dog still unconscious, with people due to arrive at eight and only half of the shopping done. So we did an emergency clean, an emergency shop, Martin lit the fire, I chopped salads and we were just about looking normal with the dog coming round kind of dozily when the first person arrived, which was luckily not till 8.30, this being Argentina and all. The asado went great in the end, Martin’s getting it off to a fine art, and he always receives lots of kudos for being a non-argentinian who has learnt how to do a good Argentinian asado. The dog managed to open one of her stitches slightly just as everyone was leaving soon after midnight, so we had to stop her bleeding, and then we kept getting up all night to check on her, but by the morning it seemed to have knitted itself, yesterday she spent the day lying around looking poor and sorry for herself but the wound’s only leaking slightly and she doesn’t seem to be in immediate danger. She’s still interested in food which is a good sign, although she’s so greedy I think it would take more than nearly bleeding to death to put her off her dinner!

I’ve been nearly writing this entry for ages, so I thought I’d better bite the bullet and actually put it together, even though I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to turn out. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is attitudes to “health and wealth” teaching in churches both in Argentina and in the UK, and I’m coming to the conclusion that even churches who appear to be at totally opposite ends of the spectrum, seem to end up saying and believing pretty much the same things.
For the uninitiated “Health and Wealth” is the tag-name given to a brand of Christian teaching which says that God wants to give all his followers good health and material prosperity, and that if we don’t have good health and material prosperity then that must be our fault because we are variously failing in obedience, in faith, to tithe, to “claim” what God wants to do for us, or that we are otherwise separated from God through our unconfessed sin.

There is some evidence for health and wealth teaching. After all the Old Testament in general, and the pentateuch particularly, is littered with exhortations to obedience, and promises of prosperity as a result of obedience. Jesus himself said that the Father knows how to give good gifts to his children. When Solomon asks God for wisdom, he is given not only wisdom, but also material wealth as a reward by God for asking wisely, so we can presumably understand therefore that God would recognise health and wealth as falling under the heading of “good gifts” which the Father knows how to give.

No, the flaw in the scheme is not that it is entirely untrue, but in that it attempts to expound one bit of the plot as though it were a systematic model for the entire play. The thing very quickly falls apart when we notice that some of the most obedient people were some of the least materially prosperous, and thus in a caricatured world we might find ourselves asking whether John the Baptist, the apostle Paul, or the Lord Jesus Christ were terribly lacking in faith, or if they had just slightly miscalculated their tithe. We might also sneak a glance at Jacob who became materially rich, but was also deliberately given his dislocated hip as a blessing from God. And going back to Solomon, sure he was given great wealth, but as a reward for asking for wisdom, suggesting that the wisest thing is not to seek material riches.

Overt health and wealth teaching tends to be the domain of the “livelier” churches, both in Argentina and the UK. Here we hear quite a lot of fairly starkly “health and wealth” theology. We have heard that “the only reason why people ever die is because the church isn’t praying enough, and if we really had faith we would be down at the hospital ordering sick people to get better”. We have also heard that the way to be prosperous is to give more money to the church, and that if you are poor it is because you are not giving enough money to the church; or that if you are faithful in your tithe then you have the authority to ask God for anything and it will be done. There is even a church here which refers to its offering envelopes as “the keys to the blessing”.

In the UK at least, we tend to move in more conservative theological circles, and people in conservative theological circles tend to get a bit squeaky about such teaching, arguably with good reason. But I’m starting to wonder if we of the conservative church might in the final instance actually covertly hold the same beliefs that we appear to look down on.

Why do I say that? Firstly we need to understand that the position of the church in UK society generally belongs to a higher social strata than in Argentina. This means that where Argentinians are aspiring to “health and wealth”, the conservative UK church generally is healthy and wealthy, at least by comparison, and therefore doesn’t need to look to God to meet those aspirations. However, take away the health or the wealth to which a conservative UK Christian has become accustomed, and watch what happens. “God’s got to heal her, he’s just got to”; a friend whose wife was having surgery (why?). “Why is God making me go through this?”; a friend during a long period of unemployment (why not?). And when Martin had his road accident a lot of people said “Why did God allow this to happen?” (What divine right grants us protection from breaking our necks, especially if we’re going to walk out in front of moving Ford Escorts?)

Which makes me wonder if somewhere we of the conservative church haven’t sold out to a respectable conservative middle class UK form of “health and wealth” teaching which goes something like “God wants to bless you, his followers with good health and material prosperity to the level at which you have become accustomed”.

In the case of overt “health and wealth” theology, we put our faith in that which we want God to give us, and in the faith of covert “health and wealth” theology, we put our faith in that which God has already given us. In some cases the latter might be even more dangerous than the former, since we have also frequently forgotten that the gifts were his in the first place. In either case I would suggest that the result is about the same, give or take a nuance; that we have lost sight of Jesus, because we don’t trust that we are safe in Jesus, probably because we have no idea what it means to be safe in Jesus:

“The centrality of Jesus has been subject to continual usurpment by money, buildings, hard work, good works, Myers Briggs, efficient organisation, computers, food, the Bible, church activities, principles, religion, theology, virtue, sex, sexuality, party spirit, meetings, soundness, politics, fame, talent, tradition, single-issue fanaticism, alcohol, and family to name but a few” (Adrian Plass, in “Jesus: Safe, Tender, Extreme”)

Now I’m thinking I should stop right here if only because it’s going to take me half the night to put this into Spanish. But I haven’t finished thinking about this yet, so post a comment, send an email….

Hi all. Sorry the long silence, we were away: couple days in the childrens’ home, followed by nearly a week at the Latin Link Argentina team conference, followed by couple more days in the childrens’ home. Now we’re back. It’s a testament to the strength of local community here that when I went shopping for food yesterday morning, the lady in the veg shop said “We’ve missed you all this time”. When since did anyone in Tesco or any other “friendly local hypermarket” even notice, let alone give a monkeys, that I didn’t show up for a week or two?
I’m a little concerned that the blog entry that’s generated the most response has been the one about toilets… But I probably shouldn’t be really… after all if you were posh you probably wouldn’t be friends with us or reading our blog in the first place. Today I’m afraid I don’t have a toilet story. But I do have two pieces of good advice for your next visit to Argentina. One: buy soda. Two: don’t get a bank account.

On soda. We’ve just discovered soda. It’s great. Soda gets delivered to the door, by a guy called a “Sodero”, from a little truck (remember the British milk float?). It costs 50 centavos (that’s 9pence) for a litre and a quarter. It comes in a reusable bottle thus eliminating plastic waste, just hand it back and they swop it for a full one. It has a proper valve so it never loses its gas. It can be mixed with all manner of things to create your own range of fizzy drinks with as many or few calories as you like. And you never need to pay another penny to those evil Pepsi / Coca Cola empires again. Perfect.

On bank accounts. To be fair I’ve only been twice, so it might not be a fair test. The first time I had to pay in 30 pesos to someone’s account (£6). I stood in the queue that said deposits, until they told me that this was only for large deposits, so I stood in the queue for small deposits, until they told me that I needed the correct change, so I stood in the queue for general services, where they told me that they don’t give change here (“but you’re a bank….”). Luckily at this point the security guard took pity on me, and wrangled change out of someone from a back office. Third piece of advice: Security guards are the most knowledgeable members of staff, don’t be put off by the gun. The second time we had to pay in 200 pesos to someone else’s account in a different bank. We had been given a CBU number, which we were assured was the magic number we would need. So we asked the security guard which queue to join; the general one. The lady said “that’s fine, you can go straight to the cashier”. The cashier said “I can’t do this without an account number, you’ll need to take a ticket to see the man at the desk to find out the account number”. The man at the desk said “I can’t do this, I’ll take you to see another man at the other end who can find out the account number”. The man at the other end found out the account number, and he handed it to us, on a print out containing the other person’s personal information, including every detail pertaining to the account with their recent transactions and current funds available, and sent us with this in our hands back to the cashier to pay our money in.

Moral of the story? Stick to soda, it’s safer.

“An Englishman goes to church rather like he goes to the toilet: with the minimum of fuss, and preferrably without explanation” (our friend Bernie, opening a Bible study a few years ago)
Visitors to Argentina soon discover that every public toilet is attended by a Rottweiler, dressed up as a female person. Her main responsibilities involve handing a carefully measured length of toilet paper to each customer, in exchange for a coin; and saying “pa-se” when a cubicle becomes free. To be fair, if I’d been doing that for a few years, I can imagine that I might become a bit growly.

This week the Rottweiler in the minibus station has come up with an alternative diversion much more sophisticated than biting people’s ankles. She now requires each prospective toilet-user to announce publicly exactly what they are planning on putting into the toilet, so that she can then decide whether to point them to the cubicle where the flush uses a lot of water, or the one where the flush doesn’t work too well.

By luck or by the abundant mercy of God, just over the road there is a little coffee bar, where for the modest price of a small coffee, patrons may also use the toilet for free and for nothing, and most importantly without explanation. I am so English!