Into the Rainy Season

After a dry summer, autumn is here and so is the wet, cool weather. We are thankful to the Lord for the rain. Our springs are replenished. Our garden is receiving some extra water, and the moisture in the air creates some spectacular views.

The picture below is one that I took in the early morning around 5:30AM last week. Typically the valley has heavy fog in the morning.

Dane took the pictures below in the morning at about 7:15AM on the 24th. You can see the clouds forming and rising into the air over the river in the distance.

We took the below pictures last evening around 5:50PM on the road down to our farm. In the bottom picture, you can see the roof of our house in the distance, and again, beyond it, the clouds forming over the river.

When researching this area prior to our move here, Dane and I read that Misiones has no rainy season, but that the rain (about 70 inches per year) is distributed relatively evenly throughout the year. This is basically true, from what we have experienced here, with the exception of summer. We arrived here in the summer of 2007 (winter 2007 in the US) and the weather was wet here and there, but there was no significant rainfall. The rainfall increased slowly through last autumn and winter, and then it was really wet in the spring, and then came a dry summer. Over the summer, all of the uphill springs dryed up and some of the higher downhill ones, too, but after three days of heavy rain, all the springs are flowing again and we have had some rain just about everyday for the last two weeks.

With the increase in rain, we had to retire our tent that we used for storage. The tent was pretty much done a few months ago and had become like tissue paper, but we covered it with plastic and it did fine for a while. However, the elements finally deteriorated the plastic too, and we decided to move the contents of the tent into one of the other smaller tents. The other tent sits under the awning of the kitchen tent, so it is more protected from the sun and rain.

*By the way, US military tents are awesome. They are built to last, and are worth every penny spent on them. I imagine ours will be around for years. Our kitchen tent has been dry when everything else was wet. We keep Dane's office with our computers in this tent and have never had a problem with them getting wet, even in severe weather. We use our woodburning stove in it too! If we had known better, we would have brought some GP smalls; but, we really didn't expect to live in tents either.

Dane got the rest of the big exterior walls framed on the house this past week. I think he is going to start working on the wood for the exterior walls next. He has to sand and finish all the wood first and then he can start putting it up, but it is also time to plant and we have about 10,000 yerba mate trees to put in the ground! What to do, what to do? At times like this I think of Proverbs 24:27 that says, "Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house." I pray that whatever Dane puts his hand to that the Lord God guide him and that we as a family put our complete trust in Him.

Two men came to our farm on separate days this past week with farms to sell. One is thirty one acres right on the opposite side of the river from Jim's property. Below is a picture of it and the river in which it meets. The property isn't the greatest and it is fiscal, but it is riverfront property. When Dane has time and Lord willing, he is going to go to the Office of Lands to check the status of this property's papers (who is the owner on record, who has the permission of occupation etc.,). Many properties are too complicated to buy because the people who bought them prior haven't gone through the proper government procedures in getting the property in their names, getting the permission to occupy etc.

Well its snack time and Elisabeth, who is four, has made the tortilla dough all by herself and is now, rolling the tortillas out. I'm off to fry them for her, so she doesn't have any accidents.

Just a Note

I finally got the last of our old email updates from 2007 on the blog today, so now our whole history in Argentina is in one place. Look for them in the archive folders if you want a recap.

The Rain Has Cleared

It has been a couple of weeks since I posted. Last weekend we had three days of intensive rain and after that had no internet for nearly a week. But we are online now.

With the sun, rain, wind, etc., our sleeping tent, a ten person tent that Pop bought at Walmart, has about had it. The tent has been great, but it certainly was not intended to be used daily for seven months. We have sewn it, patched it, and put plastic over it time and again. With the big rain this last week, we added two more pieces of plastic and again, thankfully, I think we are in the dry. We are grateful to God for the lessons we have learned during this time of tent dwelling. We have a greater appreciation for the weather than we ever had before. I think we also appreciate more the experiences of the tent dwelling sojourners of which the Bible speaks.

Not much work happened on the house since my last post except the framing of some more walls, but Dane hopes to get back to that sometime next week.

Dane did work on the big Ford truck. He put rails on the flat bed, got it fixed up so that it would pass inspection, and got it insured so that the Sosa's could use it to haul yerba mate for other farmers. We hope that this will generate a little income for us and for our neighbors.

The things they say........

One day as Dane was working, he kept dropping his tools and said, "Boy, I am dropping tools left and right."

His helper, Elijah, our six year old, responded, "Yeah, and straight down!"

Furthermore, Dane passed a kidney stone a week ago Friday. I think that his bouncing around in the truck as he drove it to town dislodged it. Needless to say, he is happy to report that it is over for the time being. He did say that of all the accidents, broken bones, surgeries, etc, that he has had, passing a kidney stone was by far the most painful. Ouch! We are thankful to have him up and going again.

Also, we did get back to Posadas to apply for Joseph's Argentine passport the Tuesday before last. They told us that we should have it within forty days if there are no problems this time.

Joseph got his first pair of shoes Friday. He is walking really well now and at fourteen months old, he had never had anything except socks on his feet. You would have thought he was being tortured when we stood him up with the shoes. He walked and screamed like a cat with something on its feet, but within a half hour he was used to them. If it weren't socially unacceptable because of modesty issues, I imagine someday, if left to his own devices, he might resemble the vine swinging Tarzan.

Well, we are in the midst of celebrating the Passover this weekend. Passover, the time set aside to remember the sacrificial death of Jesus, was last night and today is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which symbolizes our casting out of wicked worldly things for things of truth (1 Corinthians 5). Tomorrow will be the Feast of First Fruits, when we celebrate Jesus's resurrection and His gift of eternal life to us (1 Corinthians 15). In fifty days, will come the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was given unto men. This is a special time of remembrance and Bible study for us and we have enjoyed having the opportunity to study the Bible with our neighbors Susana and Andrea.

This is a picture of the beautiful sunset and a full moon that Dane took last night before we had our Passover meal.

Here is a picture of the children sitting around the table just before we began our Passover meal.

Wow....

One big worm!

Anyone want to go fishing?

This Week in Review

This past week Dane and Javier finished putting up all the beams for the second story of the house. They also framed up a few walls. It is really exciting to see the house starting to come together. We look forward to having actual walls around us again, but living in tents has not been bad. It has opened our eyes to many things and we have appreciated all the lessons we have learned from the experience.


The week before last we got an email from the Argentina Federal Police in Buenos Aires saying that Joseph's passport application was denied because they were lacking some paperwork. Thankfully, they told us that we could reapply for the passport without cost to us, so we traveled to Posadas on Thursday to do this; however, we were asked to return tomorrow so that the gentlemen in the office could find out all that is required of us in Buenos Aires for the second application. Lord willing, this time around all will go without a hitch. We will let you know how that goes in the next post.

Here are some other pictures of things of interest from last week.

I got stung by a bee, I think, or it may have been a wasp. Anyway, my right hand has been swollen for about three days now and really itchy. The swelling is starting to go down now and I no longer look like I have a boxing glove on my hand. Since we are now raising bees, I am glad to know that I am not allergic to them.

This is a picture of a "pepino del monte." We found these wild cucumbers that the Sosa's have told us about growing near our garden fence. They are small like the size of a baby carrot, but they taste just like a regular cucumber. It is so much fun finding wild edibles. We also have wild blackberries and many kinds of wild fruit trees in the forest too. Another wild plant that is good to eat is the bamboo. If the bamboo shoots are picked when they are small, they can be cooked and eaten. We haven't cooked any yet, but have picked some and eaten them raw.

This is a picture of Abby putting the baby to sleep. He looks nearly half her size now, but she is very good with him. Many nights she sings to him and bounces him to sleep.

Well it is time to start getting cleaned up for the day. The mornings and the evenings are starting to get colder now, so we start bathing earlier.