Happy Birthday Gregg!
60 what did you say? Oh ya, not telling :)
Have to tell you about Gregg’s Birthday cake. We bought a
cake mix here—yup they have a few cake mixes. It made up pretty well. We made
some flan—also came in a kit. Added whip cream, ice cream, drizzled it with
chocolate and added a little Nutella and walnuts. Yum! (Perhaps not that pretty) We didn’t even share it
with our students.
Alligators?
As we picked up the kids for school one day this week, one
of the kids shouted, “Pare, pare, pare!” he wanted us to stop. Gregg was
driving so I followed the youngster off into the cow pasture toward a body of
water. “Mire!” he said as he pointed to the far side of the water. There on the
far bank slipping into the water was a yacare (pronouned shzakarei) or alligator and was probably 5
feet long. Yikes! I was back in the truck in lightning speed.
(Amazing what eagle eyes these kids have. They are
constantly looking and noticing their world.)
Story doesn’t end there however. On our trip to Los Perales
we crossed a bridge along a dirt road. On the side of the road was something
that looked like a very fat snake. If you know me at all, you know I abhor
snakes. Well, as we got closer, I saw that it wasn’t a snake but the tail end of another yacare
not more than two feet from the truck as we passed. Eight feet down the road was another
young yacare.
Okay…note to self, ”Do not take walks down ranch roads.” A
stationary bike is available at a Walmart in Buenos Aires and it is on our
shopping list.
Cleaning the old farm house:
We finished cleaning yesterday which included ceilings and walls which had accumulated spider webs. This is how one should protect themselves from falling spiders and dirt don't you think?
The last six drapes only needed vacuuming instead of cutting them apart, hemming them, and washing them. They were not nearly as dirty. Good news for Amy! I think the cleaning lady kept these vacuumed more regularly because there was a drastic difference.
The Learning Center which is part of our house
Don't you love the big windows? Oh yea...and clean drapes!
School
We missed one day of school this week because it was
Student’s Day. With all the missed school due to rain, seems kind of weird to
have another school holiday.
We’re still figuring out what works and what doesn’t work with
the kids. Our latest success has been using PowerPoint that was put together by
another missionary who taught English in Brazil. Actually, it’s not just
PowerPoint but a whole 300 page set of lessons. It is so helpful not have to reinvent
the wheel. Just have to figure out what’s best for our kids.
Another love the kids have is writing messages via email to some of our grand kids. Pen-pals have been a hit! I think they like anything to do with computers.
The old ranch home may be falling down, but it's still got charm don't you think?
Los Perales
We found the neighboring ranch just fine this week after the
hour and a half drive. The route really is hard with only maybe a quarter of
the roads paved. Even then there are deep holes in the pavement which means
extreme concentration for the driver the whole time. Any sign of rain and we
won’t be able to go.
Good news was that we found the way, have good tires, and it
wasn’t raining.
We will be working with three families at Los Perales. The
three mom’s want to learn to sew so they picked one of the patterns that I had
a feeling to bring and will get supplies this week. One of the mom’s has a
sewing machine but I will bring two for the others to use. Glad to know which
machines here at the ranch work well.
We’re also going to teach their older children English.
There are six kids between 6 and 11. Two of the older children want to take
piano lessons too so we’ll gear the English around piano vocabulary part of the
time. Hopefully, by December when they break for summer vacation, they will be
ready to start piano.
We will be spending about 3 1/2 hours there a week rather than 2 which was the norm. The families are eager to learn which is certainly half the battle.
Feliciano Branch
We missed a baptism on Saturday due to rain. We hear of new
baptisms quite regularly. However, we’re not much good since we’re home bound
so often. We do not proselyte at all but hope to support the little church
branch out here with whatever we can. Often we are used for taxi service. Most
everyone walks to church so last week we took a family home early from church because a family member was sick. We took another family home after church but I
didn’t catch why they needed a ride. Maybe because they are new to the area.
So sad that we’re stuck here so often but we took time today
to visit the manager, Yuca, and his family. His wife and kids only come to the
ranch on weekends because they want their kids to have a more stable education.
They live in Federal during the week. Yuca told us today that they leave at
6:30 am to take their kids to the bus stop and the kids don’t get home until
5:00 pm. Too bad there’s not a happy
medium.
We didn't make it to church again because of the little bit of rain that we had yesterday. So here we are having our own Sunday School.
Whenever Gregg is not there for sacrament meeting, the conductor has to sing a Capella. However, the piano is in need of a tuning so badly that one can't tell if the right notes are played or not.
Una Adventura:
Again this week, we thought there would be no adventura to
report because our trip to Los Perales was a success. The adventure came early
on Wednesday, Gregg’s Birthday. Let me set the stage. Last September, we
purchased Microsoft Office with an annual renewal fee so that we could have
access to their cloud storage called Onedrive along with updates for Office. We
knew that it was due this month and the credit card we had originally used had
been canceled. So when we got a phone call saying that we needed to renew, we
thought it was legit.
However, it wasn’t and instead of simply paying the fee and
enjoying the day, we had our computer hacked into and we spent hours trying to
assess the damage. We handle all of our finances on-line so it could have been
a very serious situation. However, here is the blessing.
When Gregg was asked to turn on his computer by the
so-called Microsoft employee, the new computer that he uses all the time with
all his financial apps simply would not turn on. He tried several times and it
was unresponsive. So we turned on the computer we use for teaching school.
After just a few minutes we realized that these guys were hacking our computer as we spoke so as fast as we could, we shut down the computer and hung up.
We called our son Adam to assess the damage and see what to
do next. He deemed the computer dead to us for now and not to use it until we
get back to the states when he can look at it personally. In fact we shut down
all the devices including internet for most of the day. We kept it up just long
enough to call our banks and notify them of the situation. First Bank took the
phony phone number to pass on to their fraud department. Probably, the hackers
were not sophisticated enough to snatch our bank info let alone worm its way
into other devises but apparently some are quick and incredibly intrusive so we
played it safe and followed Adam's directions.
Another miracle we realized was the fact that we brought all
three lap tops with us. We’re not sure why we have three—just had a feeling to
bring them all. Now with one dead we still have two computers and won’t miss a
beat.
Thanks again for your prayers. :)
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