Thursday, September 23, 2010

En La Casa de Dios

Ok so I am terrible at keeping up with this thin so I'm just going to give you post by post some highlights of last week.

This particular post is going to be about my church going experience thus far in Mendoza Argentina. Title translations is (in the house of God).

For those of you who I haven't told which may be mostly everyone, every sunday afternoon I go to the parque San Martin, which is this huge park with losts of fields and a zoo and a lake and other alternative fun things to do. I go to this park every week to play soccer/futbol. Which in Argentina, and probably most of South America is an activity that is almost unheard of for women to participate. So naturally I find it thrilling when I can juggle the ball more than some of the guys.

 A few weeks ago I went with some of my fellow Americans to the park and we joined this group of young Argentine guys (which is the normal practice since there aren't enough of us American kids to play a game we normally just join the guys already playing). These guys were so different than the ones we normally play with who show off and hog the ball and rarely pass it unless you are screaming at the top of your lungs. These guys would pass the ball and one of them who seemed older than the other would yell at the boys if they kept the ball for too long, the game actually felt like a game of soccer, rather than a lets-see-how-long-and-how-many-tricks-i-can-do-with-the-ball-until-i-score kind of game.

After playing for a few hours we were all exhausted and decided to take a break under the tree and one of the guy's novia (girlfriend) showed up with tea and soda and cookies and asked if we wanted to join them, naturally we accepted the offer. We all got to talking about ourselves where we were from, what we were studying, and so on. Then I asked them how they all knew each other, because it seemed as if they did. One of the older guys replied that they all go to church together and that after church the boys/guys all head to the park to play a few games of soccer. The conversation continued as we all began talking about religion, which made some of those who weren't really religious slightly uncomfortable so eventually topics were changed.

However, as we were all leaving they asked if any of us would like to join them at church some day the younger kids go to hang out on Saturday nights and then there are services on Sundays, I got excited, because even though I don't consider myself to be the most religious person, I still feel comforted by the idea of being in that kind of family community and honestly I thought it would be a great opportunity to get to know more of the language.

So we all exchanged information of e-mail and phone numbers and facebook and headed on our separate ways. We also had made plans to play the following week and from that point on it has become somewhat of a Sunday tradition.

Which brings me to the actual topic of this post...Church. So Pablo one of the guys from the group called me over the course of the week seeing if any of us wanted to go to a boliche(latin dance club) with them and the guys on Friday nights, since most people already had plans we passed, but I did ask him if I could go to church with them that Saturday and Sunday; he said of course and that he would have Ivan come and pick me up from the Plaza Independencia and show me where to go.

I was excited for my first church experience, and I was expecting that we would get there in what is my stereotypical idea of what a church looks like, and sit around and talk about Jesus and things. However, after about a 30 minute bus ride, I realized that we were heading to Godoy Cruz which is on the opposite end of the city and is known to be a slightly dangerous part of town. We got off at the stop and begin walking down this dirt road and then we turn into this white building and Ivan says, "We're here!" I tried to hide my surprise a little as we walk into what looks like the front yard of someone's house, it is beautiful, but so different from anything I would have expected it has a small court yard and white wash stone walls and a very open feeling to it.

He takes me into the main room with all of the pews and up front is the band practicing, Pablo plays the drums, there are two people who play guitar and then everyone sings. THIS is what I was looking for, and they all began to practice, I kept thinking that it was going to be an actual service so I continued to look around to see where the people were, but no more showed up except for some of the younger siblings or children of the band.

After band practice was over I was just hanging out with pablo and some of the other guys and this little guy who looked about my brother's age was messing around with the electric fender lookalike and I asked him if he would play me a song, and he replied that he didn't know how to play but he wanted to learn. So I told him to come over to me and I picked up one of the acoustic guitars and started showing him a bunch of different chords. He picked them up wicked fast, way faster than I ever did, and so I showed him a couple of songs he could play just using the combination of the five or six chords I showed him. It was so incredibly rewarding to see how proud this boy was of what he was learning and so we just sat around and played together for a while. Then Pablo came back in and I was messing around on the drums and he thought it was a good idea to try to teach me how to play.... FAIL. I can't play drums for my life, I mean I started to get it at one point and then tried twirling the sticks and just made a mess of it all.

After indulging in music for a while we all went into the kitchen to start putting together some potted flowers to hand out to the congregation at the service tomorrow, it was so nice just to be doing something with people around. Especially people who are so kind and welcoming, we talked about all things under the sun, and we had a super intense discussion about religion. I tried to explain to them the idea of unitarian religion, which is something I would like to get involved in, but they had no idea- or it got lost in translation. The youth leader kind of understood what I was getting at, and then we began talking about corruption in the church and how sometimes the relevance is lost when reading the bible or trying to interpret it. This is the kind of interaction I have been craving since I arrived here, just pure deep conversation.

Then we just sat around for a while and before I knew it, it was 1:30 am so we were all starving and getting tired and the youth pastor volunteered to drive us all home especially since there was no way that I was going to wait at the bus stop for half an hour waiting for the bus in the middle of Godoy Cruz. So we stuffed all of us into the van and went on a lovely tour of the city. It was so nice to just be around people that I forgot that we were even in Argentina, it just felt like hanging out with old friends which was a great feeling.

The next morning came wayyy to early though, I had to wake up at about 8 in order to get to the bus stop by 930 (it take half an hour from my house to the bus stop by trole) in order to get to the church by 10. I arrived after a short snooze on the bus and was exhausted, Pablo met me at the stop and walked me over to the back courtyard where all the youth and some of the adults were sitting outside in a circle with their bibles out discussing different passages. I was slightly caught off guard because a) i didn't have a bible and b) i have never read from the bible and c) I certainly didn't have a bible in Spanish.

The discussion was short and then we went and headed into the service which was very much like the Lutheran services at home, lots of singing and clapping and some scripture. We also did this one activity where Jesica put a certain number of dots on random peoples faces, and then we all got into groups with our corresponding dot number and went in front of the congregation and either said an individual prayer or quoted scripture. Before this point, I had been pretty slick about not getting noticed as the new American girl, but one of the women in my group made a point to recognize before we spoke, that we are now an "International Group" and I was then introduced. I suppose it was a good thing that way literally everyone in the congregation could come up to me kiss me on the cheek and welcome me to church.

It was a great experience and I will definitely be going back, I miss my family and the congregation back home and it feels really nice to have that kind of inclusiveness back in my life. It will also be an incredibly opportunity to meet new people and see a different side of the culture. My host family is pretty well off and I live in a really nice area, I think it is going to be good to see all the different aspects of the Argentine culture, as well as meet some really great people, and finally practice more Spanish!!!

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