Author: Anastacia Maness

In my last post about our 3rd Week in Argentina I told about our time in Buenos Aires, Pilar, and Posadas. God really blessed us during the week that we spent in those cities.

Scott working on his sketch journal while we waited to catch the bus to Córdoba.

One thing I forgot to mention in our 3rd week post was the Quinceñera. There was a preacher’s daughter that was having a 15th Birthday party and the Greenwoods’ daughter was invited to the party. Scott had the opportunity to talk with a lot of preachers we would not have had time to meet if it hadn’t been for that party. After the party when we all went to pick up their daughter we talked with several preachers from different parts of the country that we had talked about wanting to visit.

God worked in so many ways like that on this trip. It is like He is holding open the doors for us saying, “Yes, go this way. You’re headed in the right direction.”

Now to continue where I left off in my last post.

Thursday, September 25: Scott and I went to the station and caught the bus back to Córdoba, Argentina.

While on the bus we met three college students from the United States. Any time you here the words, “Cool!” and “Like” in the same sentence you can pretty much tell where they are from. 🙂

We really had a lot of opportunities to talk about God on this trip. Every time someone asked us why we were there, we were able to share the burden God has laid on our hearts.

After explaining the purpose of our trip to the college students behind us, Scott struck up a conversation with the man in the seat in front of us. The man was raised a Jehovah Witness and Scott was able to talk with him for at least an hour or two about Jesus and the Bible.

Croissants and other breads with butter and jelly are a typical Argentine breakfast. In this picture we are having ours with submarinos (hot chocolate milk) but usually we drink coffee with it.

Friday, September 26:  We spent a very cold night on the bus and were happy that we had a room reserved for the rest of our week.

We went to a restaurant for a late breakfast. I learned that a submarino is not a submarine sandwich. I also learned that I like submarinos which are a hot chocolate milk. After breakfast we walked to a section of the city we hadn’t visited yet. 

We walked around a park and visited the Museum of Natural Science. Walking around the museum reading all the signs in Spanish was very good for our vocabulary. We learned some new words.

Gustavo (in white) is an improvisational actor. He was one of the first people we met in Argentina at the English Talk group.

Saturday, September 27, 2014: 

We caught up on some writing and then that evening we went to an improvisational show one of our first friends in Argentina was performing. The two actors were acting out the life of a teenage girl that they picked from the audience. I didn’t understand all of it but I understood some and Scott explained the rest to me on our walk back to our hostel. They were funny and we had fun. Several of the friends we met during our first day in the country were there. We enjoyed the show and the company of our friends.

Sunday, September 28, 2014:

The last of our trip we had two churches left to visit that we had not been to before on our trip but they were recommend to us at different times on our trip.

We visited the morning service of a Non-Denominational Church during their morning service. Again I didn’t understand much but afterward Scott told me it wasn’t bad. There was quite a crowd there and they had a nice building. We visited with a lady before the services. After services were over we pretty much disappeared into the crowd and headed out to get a bite to eat and then back to our hostel.

We forgot to take a picture of the church so photo credit goes to the Averys. Click on this picture to see their website.

Sunday evening we got on a bus and went to Iglesia Bautista Vida Abundante (Abundant Life Baptist Church) on the south side of Córdoba. We walked a short way from the bus stop to the church.

We made it to the front gate of the church early. We didn’t have to wait long until a cute little blonde headed girl about Elijah’s age came outside and talked with us in Spanish through the fence. She said that the pastor was not there but her father was inside. At that moment her father came out and greeted us in Spanish as well.

We went inside and met the man’s wife who asked us in Spanish, “Where are you from?”

Scott replied, “Estados Unidos en el estado de Texas.”

She replied, “Cool!” and English immediately commenced.

The two families we first met there were both Missionaries. They had only been there a few months and were very happy to share with us their experiences in getting their residence papers and moving onto the field. You can read more about them at the The Averys Online.

We then met the pastor and enjoyed their services. We were really impressed by the Bible drill they had at the beginning of their evening service. They had everyone hold their Bibles up. One person called out the text to look up and whoever found the passage first stood up and read it.  Scott and I both liked how that taught the members to learn their Bibles and how to find things themselves.

That night Scott and I followed both families to one of their homes to visit and fellowship. We learned a lot about what all it took to bring their families over. We also learned what we need to do to prepare ahead of time. Then everyone shared stories of language learning mistakes which had us all laughing. 

We had such a good time that it grew late before we knew it and we called for a remise (a type of taxi) to take us back to our hostel. A funny story during our taxi ride home the meter in the taxi was broken and we thought the price was going up fast with every block. Finally Scott asked our driver about the price and he laughed and explained the meter was broken and the decimal point was in the wrong spot. So when we saw the price climbing past to 200 pesos it was actually only passing 20. Decimal points may be a small mark but they make a big difference. 

Bonus Picture: A professional dog walker in Argentina

Monday, September 29: We were finally winding down our trip and only made a few more plans to finish up our trip. We wanted to buy a few gifts for our children and I had a list of a few items I wanted to see if they had at their Walmart and I wanted to look at Carrefour another store similar to Walmart. So around lunch time we ate a bite and went down to the bus stop to catch the bus headed toward both stores. 

We didn’t want to miss our stop so we got off a little early and walked to the Carrefour. A young man that got off at the same stop we did thought we were lost. He warned us not to go the direction he and a group of students that got off at the same stop were going because that was a bad neighborhood. We thanked him for the warning and explained we were actually headed the opposite direction and pointed toward the store.

We walked to the Carrefour gates and realized there were no cars in the parking lot. It was around 2 in the afternoon. We had assumed they would be open all day. 

Walmart was only a mile or two away so we decided to walk there. While we were walking, I told Scott I wanted to buy a hat first thing. As we crossed the road toward the gates, Scott started laughing. I looked up and “Oh no!” They were closed too. Obviously we didn’t get the memo that it was a holiday and the bigger businesses were closed.

Thankfully we didn’t have to walk far to the bus stop in front of the store.

That evening we found this protest forming on a normally busy street. A large crowd of women and men were blocking the road banging on pots and pans. Scott took this picture of the protestors as we crossed the road. Scott asked one of the shop owners what the protest was about. She just said that someone had died 2 weeks ago. 

Later we found out from one of our friends that a woman and her baby were killed by her ex-husband. The people were protesting wanting justice for the woman and her baby. You can read the story in Spanish at La Mañana de Córdoba. 

Tuesday, September 30:

We went by the bank to exchange our pesos back into dollars before our flight the next morning. However the bank was closed. I guess the holiday lasted more than just one day. So instead of exchanging the money we decided to have lunch. 

Later that afternoon we had coffee and submarinos (hot chocolate milk) with the Missionary, Bro. Masters, that we visited earlier in the month and his wife. 

Then our last dinner in Argentina we enjoyed with the Jacksons. They had us at their home earlier in the month and they wanted to take us out to eat before we left.

Wednesday, October 1:

We called a taxi very early our last morning. The driver made very good time to the airport. Scott is pretty sure our driver would win at Nascar. 

We caught our flights back home where our children were eagerly waiting with lots of hugs and pictures for us. 

And this ends my summary of our trip. I am also in the middle of creating a short slideshow about our trip that I will share as a video or slideshow on here soon. I will probably have a few more stories from our trip pop up from time to time as well. 

Thanks for following along! And as always if you have any questions for us feel free to ask them in the comments or by email. 

I’ve been talking so much about my husband and myself. My next post I will share some of what the kids were up to while we were gone.

So if you’ve been missing pictures of the kids stayed tuned. I’ll be talking about them in my next post. 

~♥~ Anastacia “Stacie” Maness ~♥~