Martin & Hazel Frost

The sermon that I gave this morning can be found under the sermons tab. I think it went OK, I’m not fully convinced about how it holds together, but I’m used to my preaching invites arriving about a year apart so if I started having a regular fixture on the preaching rota then I will have to learn the art / discipline of producing something coherent on a regular basis rather than a corker once in a blue moon.
Other than that we had visitors over the weekend, prison-visiting types from Cordoba. “La Chanchita” has been going into prisons for thirty eight years, after becoming a Christian during his own youth spent on the wrong side of the bars. He’s an amazing character and we’re planning on going across to see him in Cordoba later in the week.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
inauspicious/ɪnɔːˈspɪʃəs/

▶adjective

not conducive to success; unpromising.

– derivatives
inauspiciously adverb,
inauspiciousness noun.

“Mummy, why do we have to see if there are any lizards in my hair?”  Yes, the weather is warming up and it is national nit week again.  I’m not quite sure how he made the journey to “lizards” in either language, but he doesn’t have any, or dinosaurs either.  We also learn that he isn’t a socialist as far as his own cash is concerned;  “No, because if I spend my coins then I wouldn’t have any coins left…”

The back half of last week degenerated into chaos when it started raining and the city disappeared.  On Thursday afternoon after three turns around the city trying to find a working route home the car gave up and sulked in the middle of the flood.  People might fall over themselves to hug and kiss each other here, but possibly not surprisingly, fewer are in a hurry to get their feet wet on behalf of their fellow man, and since our sulking Corsa was blocking the road I had the experience of pushing the car whilst attempting to operate the steering wheel by myself while watching several other drivers try to pass on either side, decide they weren’t going to make it and reverse away again, further soaking me with their tidal waves in the process.  Including a mini-bus filled with strong young male members of a local Christian foundation, may the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon them (it may be that I didn’t use those exact words).  Fortunately our next-door neighbour appeared in his Kangoo and came to my rescue.  “Get in the car and I’ll push you with my truck”… you’ll do what???  “Get in the car…”  And bless him, he has obviously done this before because he used the front of his Kangoo to push me not only out of the flood and up onto the main road but almost back to the house, before my own beast reluctantly spluttered into life again, and what’s more he didn’t even chip the paintwork.  Which is better than I’d managed… I later realised that I had lost the front number plate at some stage during our sub-aqua city tour.  We’ve done this before, in exactly the same way.  And you needn’t think you can just pick up a replacement at Halfords.  Oh no, write off three days of your life filling in paperwork and collecting rubber stamps.  And the replacement has a big fat D in middle of it, for Dunce, so everyone else can see how stupid you were. 

Keen to avoid this fate yet again (actually I don’t even know what the replacement of the replacement would say; RS for Really Stupid maybe?) I did another little tour of the city, unsuccessful because it was nearly dark, and because most roads were still under water.  And thus went off swearing to the Scout group to start making pancakes.  Over three days we made, stuffed and sold nearly 700 pancakes for our camp fund.  Thursday evening was a rather inauspicious start since of our five gas rings we could only make four work, and of our zillion frying pans only two appeared to be suitable for cooking pancakes.  However, I did manage to gather one useful piece of information… the local TV station “Canal 4” doubles as an informal lost and found, since people hand stuff in there to be announced in the in-between-programmes bits, and other people go along to announce their lost possession, and so quite often the two manage to be reunited without any announcements being made.  So Friday morning I went to Canal 4, where the lady at the desk dug out a clip-board with a list of number plates that had been handed in (no kidding… so why don’t they change the design so that they aren’t held on by bubble gum and gravity?)  where sadly mine wasn’t on the list, so she added my details to a different clip board of number plates still presumed scattered around the city.  And then she suggested I should try the bus station next since apparently they also have a collection of lost number-plates.  So I did, and there it was, although I couldn’t collect it because it was by now in police custody and I was required to prove that I owned the car, which luckily merely involved a detour back home to collect the paperwork rather than three days sitting in an office generating it.  Followed by another detour to the supermarket to pick up a couple of cheap frying pans.  I hope not to see another pancake for some considerable time. 

And now this week is grinding gently into action.  I have another sermon to write for Sunday, which is quite an honour to have two so close together, I am normally the scraping the barrel option as far as the preaching rota is concerned, in fact this is the first time for literally several years where it hasn’t been a bank holiday weekend.  So I’m currently chewing on John 6 and why it matters that Jesus is the bread of life and what might he have meant by verse 26. 

Totally unrelated but definitely worth a look, this link is to the sassiest article I’ve seen on the Paralympics I like it. 

Out of focus and bemused

Questions that I have never previously been asked by a passport-office; “Can he write his name?”  “Can you get up in the morning?” 

Joni’s baby Argentinean passport runs out in November so I went to the civil registry to see about another one.  “Can he write his name?”  “Er, not really, he runs out of A4 paper after the first few letters…”  “Right, then we have to do this before he’s five because he has to be able to sign his own passport when he’s five.  Can you get up in the morning?”  “Er yes….” “Good, be here at seven tomorrow then.” 

That was yesterday.  Thus today found us in the passport department of the civil registry at 7 a.m. where an electronic device took his photograph and another electronic device took his fingerprints, and a human being informed us that a new passport will be arriving by courier in a couple of weeks. 

How do you solve a problem like…

  Maria isn’t her name, but it’s how we know her as it’s the first name she gave us.  And she isn’t so much a “problem” as a conundrum.  My itinerant friend reappeared this morning and our peaceful if not entirely productive post-passport-office mud-pie making session out on the patio suddenly became a confetti chase around town.  We went to her current bedsit, followed by two queues in the benefits office, followed by the bank.  The benefits office insists that there’s a pension in her name that has been drawn since 2007.  She insists she isn’t drawing it.  The bank insists that the money is being drawn out of her account with her bank-card from the cash-machine.  She insists that it isn’t her, although she has the bank card in her possession but claims not to know how to use it.  I would decide not to believe her, except that the benefit office also volunteered the information that she has been going in there every month for the last while to ask when her pension will be paid, which I can’t see why she would do that unless she really isn’t being paid it.  So, is this an elaborate hoax, or is she telling the truth, or is something very strange going on that I have no idea about?  What I do know is that if she were middle class and articulate, both the benefits office and the bank would be at least a little bit interested in finding out, but because she’s poor and confusing, they assume she’s lying through her teeth and they have washed their hands of her.  She knows that the jury’s still out as far as my believing her is concerned, but I am also morally driven to act as though she might be telling the truth at least until I’m convinced otherwise.  So where to go next? 

How do you hold a moonbeam?

Shrek was a strange creature of uncertain parentage.  The neighbourhood kids had aptly named him, for although he wasn’t large or green, he was definitely a species all on his own.  We identified shark, cockroach, anteater, and alien somewhere in his genetic make-up.  He came to live with us when his previous owners threw him out and he took to sleeping on our door-step, until we relented and started feeding him.  Dog-ownership is a fluid thing in Argentina, there are many street-dogs, and many of those are “owned” in the sense that someone feeds them, maybe takes them in at night, maybe does their inoculations, and maybe pays their vets bills.  A collar claims ownership of “your” dog.  So Shrek became ours, although he regularly lost his collar.  He knew where his food was, and he always came in at night eventually (although sometimes not until the wee small hours).  He liked home comforts, he would sneak onto a bed or the sofa anytime he thought no-one was looking.  He loved to play; chasing madly after birds and guinea pigs, or fishing for stones in the drainage ditch, or running after a ball with Joni (we got through many plastic footballs courtesy of his sharp front teeth).  He was clear he was top dog in the neighbourhood, often coming home with bloody ears from defending his turf, and he once spent three days hiding under our bed having misjudged the pit-bull that used to live next-door.  You can take the dog off the street, but you can’t take the street out of the dog, and today he died as he had always lived; chasing after the traffic.  Joni and I said a little prayer tonight to ask God to look after him for us.  Stuff theology. 

“See mummy, I got dressed very quickly so I won’t get trouble about daddy” 

Monday was a bank holiday, another one, this time remembering San Martin.  I asked one of the fathers at Joni’s school who San Martin was.  He said “some guy who rode a horse to Chile”.  Whatever, it was a day off.  So we went for a picnic to Miramar. 

“Ohhhhhhhhh, I don’t want to go to Miramar, the water’s all salty”  (Why do kids the whole world over do that ohhhhh thing when they’re whinging about something?  They come out of the uterus knowing that that will be the most effective sound ever when you really want to annoy your parents.) 

So we went anyway….

         

  

We managed the challenge of walking the parapet without anyone falling in…

  

Beware the wild baby…

And as the last vestige of light disappeared from the evening sky;

“Ohhhhhhh, why do we have to go home already?  Didn’t we bring the tent?” 

Life’s chugging along as usual, one kid at school, the other trashing the house, the car being fixed; normal service in the Frost household. The car had to go back in to fix the last fix when we realised that they’d left a spanner hanging out of the undercarriage, and the undercarriage itself was dripping oil, fun all the way. But it seems to be OK now, for the next two minutes at least.
I was writing a sermon on and off over the last week or so, on Ephesians 6 (Efesios in Spanish). It’s up under the sermons tab for those who read Spanish or want to look at the pictures. It went down well this morning, received a rousing applause at the end anyway which isn’t how we normally respond to the message. It’s probably a moot point as to whether it’s good or bad that folk like what you say, but it’s nice to be appreciated anyway.

The sun was shining so we took the rest of the day off and went to Devoto, small town half and hour away which has a sizeable plaza and kid’s play area, and an ice-cream shop and a duck pond full of turtles. I don’t know what we’ll do with ourselves when our kids have grown out of thinking of Devoto as an exciting afternoon out, but thankfully that’s a few years away yet.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

It’s a funny old life this one.  Martin is currently holed up in the house of an ex-prisoner, where the XP is so far trying to avoid talking to him because of what he knows that Martin knows but doesn’t want to acknowledge that he knows Martin knows… fun and games, Martin’s hoping to bring him back here tomorrow.  Another XP is in a live-in relationship with a transvestite and says he wants to get out at least some of the time, but he’s also financially dependent on his partner which is a real concern in a land where “job-seekers allowance” isn’t even a pipe-dream.  Both of these guys are Christians, and we do believe that both of them have a genuine faith even if their current life-styles are more complicated than the bitching about their neighbours and looking down their noses at the church down the road which most Christians are free to indulge in without having their salvation drawn into question by those around them.  The question is how to stand with these guys (and others) in a way that says we know that you don’t want things to be this way but we understand you can’t do it right now? 

I finally tracked down where my itinerant friend is currently living, after several months of trying to make head or tail of her directions (beyond the big tree, near the horses, past the red car that sometimes parks there… ) coupled with the fact that she’s changed location half a dozen times (part of the job description).  And having found her she’s currently hiding from me having conned a third party into phoning me up to try and extract more money from me.  She knows I’ll be annoyed about that, we’ve known each other for a few years now.  Question is, do I wait for her to come to me (she always does in the end) or should I go to her first, now that I know where to find her. 

When I hear my husband’s phone conversations “Let me check that I’m understanding you, what I think I’ve heard you say is that you’re working as a male prostitute…” it makes me feel truly proud that he’s at the real chalk-face dealing with the grit of societies casualties.  But as he says, why is it that prisoners is considered sexy ministry, whereas chasing around town after funny old itinerant ladies wouldn’t get half the press coverage in a mission magazine, and yet we purport to believe that to Jesus both people would be worth exactly the same. 

And when I see so many mission related bulletins and presentations it strikes me that so much stuff is about being big; big conferences on big stages with big names and middle class people with clean faces singing songs and gazing upwards in adoration (presumably of the expensive paint on the shiny ceiling, can’t imagine what else there is to look at up there), it is kind of hard not to feel a tiny bit smug that while all that racket’s going on, we’re standing with (walking with/limping along with) the people who Jesus might have walked with had he walked in Argentina.  But at the same time, I am also totally aware that had we been able to fore-tell the future and see ourselves today before we arrived, we might well have run several miles in the opposite direction.  So the fairest thing I can say is that if we are on “the road less travelled”, then it is either by accident of fate, or possibly because the road has chosen us. 

Knock, Knock!
Who’s there?
Says!
Says who?
Says me, that’s who?

My commitments for the afternoon were cancelled, and Joni had a last-minute play-date at someone else’s house, so not only did I manage to make the final adjustments to the hoodie I’ve been knitting for the last couple of months:

but I also managed to make a pair of booties for Danny out of the oddment of wool left over:

 

and he even kept them on for the rest of the day which is more impressive than you realise.  I used this pattern after trawling through many and discarding anything which said “slip one” “increase across the row” “circular needles” or any other vocabulary that I didn’t understand, so believe me these are eeeeasy.  The author reckons it’s for nought to three months, but using chunky wool and 5mm needles they fit Danny’s chubby little pork-pie feet just fine.  I sewed the cuff down and used it to house a cord which I tied up at the back, which might be why he didn’t take them off, although he’s never not managed to extract himself from his trainers within thirty seconds.  He did however toss them into the bath after I took them off for him this evening, so maybe that’s a statement, and now I have to dry them out and the house has gone into freezing mode for the night.  He put his socks into the toilet yesterday too.  I already have the next batch of wool waiting in the wings for Joni who also wants a hoodie, hopefully before spring arrives and the temperature goes through the roof.  I’m thinking I should make it big enough to last next winter too.  Or maybe I should just go the whole hog and knit a marquee to last him into adulthood. 

Looking back at the last several family/minutiae orientated blog entries I probably should state that we are doing some work too, I might even try and write about it at some stage.  Meanwhile if you’re interested in what’s going on around here in a general sort of way, check out this article from the Economist the other day, which sadly seems to be all too accurate; the same information has appeared in the local press here at any rate.  Fears for the economy abound, although looking at what’s going on around the rest of the world we probably might as well be here as anywhere else as far as economic stability is concerned, and despite the gloom and moaning there were still no tables to be had at our local coffee house when we attempted to make our contribution to the local economy on Sunday afternoon. 

Knock, Knock!
Who’s there?
Delores.
Delores who?
Delores my shepherd.

………………………………………..

Knock, Knock!
Who’s there?
Armageddon!
Armageddon who?
Armageddon out of here!

(jokes courtesy of best-knock-knock-jokes.com they don’t make’em like they used to…)

Night night. 

Another couple of dodgy home videos to impress Granny. 

Little brothers playing football; sort of anyway.  Except that the rules are set to ensure that the smallest one never gets the ball!  Danny’s been properly walking for ten days or so, and he’s practising with the dedication of a premier league player.  He’s super-independent; where Joni was “walking” holding hands ages before he actually had any proper balance, Danny doesn’t want anyone to touch him even when he falls flat on his face.  His first words will probably be something like “I can do it all by myself”. 

“a slug on a rug; purple!

an adder on a ladder; red!

a lion with an iron; yellow!

an… “

Mummy, what’s an iron? 

That’s an iron there in the picture

But what’s it for?

Mummy’s moment of realisation; of course, he’s my child, when would he have ever seen an iron, let alone one in use…?

We’re in the first week back after the two-weeks of Winter break here.  The first few days were filled with freezing drizzle, so our plans for picnics were shelved in favour of the cinema, twice; Madagascar 3 and Ice-Age 4 although the plots have rather blurred together for me; Madagiceage.  Joni likes to sit on the front row which has but one  advantage; namely that Danny can crawl around without being thrown out for public disorder.  I’m sure the other parents think we’re unspeakable, particularly when we pretend we haven’t noticed him eating popcorn off the floor.  Anything for a quiet life, I say, and he’s probably developing some great antibodies.

Then we went to Buenos Aires for a week, starting with a trip to the zoo:-

 

and going on to our annual team conference.  From which we drove home (eight hours, that’s record time for us, it helped that the kids were asleep for most of it) on Wednesday evening and I spent the next two days in a no-man’s land of post-conference fog trying to drum up the brain-power to organise a Scout camp for the weekend just gone:-

 

We took over the rural school at Luis Sauce, where we didn’t do quite as much work on the school as I would have hoped beyond a little light painting, but we did have a good time and the camp-fire was electric (not literally, silly).

The upshot for both events is that I’m still on the team exec of our mission and I’m still the cub-section leader of our Scout group, definitely against my better judgement in both cases, and I’m also now the group-Scout leader which I’m still trying to figure out what that actually means before I decide how bad an idea it was.  In my defence, I have not chosen any of these positions, on the contrary, if I have any self-insight at all it is that leadership is my most un-quality of all and I seek to avoid it at all costs.  So I have no idea why other people find it amusing to shoe-horn me into these roles and I can only assume the major motive in all cases to be desperation, and more fool them when they get the leadership they have chosen. 

And now here we are back at the ranch trying to figure out what it was we thought we were doing before the winter holidays got in the way.  Looking forward to spring mostly I think.  I don’t mind wearing seventeen jumpers and never seeing my own skin on Scout camp when no-one else is going to wash anyway, but I’m not sure I could get away with it for the whole of the next two months at home. 

“I’ll ask Daddy…. he knows everything”  Ego boost to the four-year-old’s male parent. 

I on the other hand may have indoctrinated him too well;

“Mummy, someone’s dropped a sweet paper on the pavement… the police should come and put them in prison”  I wonder if he’s too young to open a discussion on the pluses and minuses of a totalitarian state. 

Me ‘n the Scouts are currently working on a plan for a joint project with the little rural school in Luis Sauce, the hamlet where I go several times a week to extract my young disabled friend.  The school is tiny in both fabric and membership (23 at present) and looks like it hasn’t had a great deal of maintenance within living memory.  The director says that’s because it isn’t widely seen and since all civil service appointments are political, all the money goes to those buildings which are visible by the public in order to maximise photo-opportunities and press coverage, so a hut in a field a long way from anywhere isn’t likely to become anyone’s priority anytime soon.  Hence, the idea is that we hold a Scout camp in the grounds, and the older kids will make themselves useful painting and fixing things, particularly the play equipment, while the younger kids (cub section) will share joint activities, games and the like with the pupils from the school.  At the moment we are holding our breath as the inspector for rural schools has to give permission.  There doesn’t seem to be great rhyme or reason why permission may or may not be granted, and there are apparently no official policies, so we await the whim of the dear inspector.  The current post-holder is rumoured to be particularly conservative when it comes to vetoing school trips and the like, so I’m hoping they’ve had a good day and drunk at least a glass of wine before they get round to reading our project proposal.  I really hope we get the go ahead, but I’m also happy we’ve even reached this point.  Working in partnership, love for ones neighbour, and looking out for folk who society doesn’t particularly notice are all things we’ve tried to model in the last nearly seven years since we’ve been here, and if we’re honest we’ve barely made any inroads into convincing the church that these ideas have any relevance to the gospel they’re preaching, so it’s an encouraging breath of fresh air for me to see the Scouts; kids and leaders alike, rolling their sleeves up and keen to run with a ball I’ve tossed them. 

And, something I have yet to understand… Having been initiated into the over-40’s club on my birthday last year, there’s a running joke in Argentina that all women over the age of forty are blonde, which is of course because just about all of them dye their hair.  I have no idea why they go for blonde, frankly it looks pretty silly when they could go for something that far better showcases their dark skin and dark eyes.  In fact even then I’m still searching for a any reason as to why that would be a good idea.  I’m guessing it’s about looking younger.  But why do they want to look younger?  Most of the young people I know are charming and wonderful, but lacking the sort of common sense that only years of life experience can bring.  So why would I want to disguise myself as someone who has even less common sense than I do?  (although it is a moot point; who has the least common sense?  the genuinely young and inexperienced, or those who try to emulate them?)  Needless to say I shall grow old with neither grace nor shame, granting myself the freedom to gobble up samples in shops and run my stick along railings to make up for the sobriety of my youth.  I may even start to wear purple.