Letter fro Goya - 24 October 2011

"Familiarity Breeds Love"

Dear Family and Friends,

Transfers have come and gone and Hna. Silva and I are going strong for at least another 6 weeks in Goya just as I hoped. I am happy—we are working with some really great people and it would be a shame to have to leave them. I am starting to realize how 6 weeks is really not very long at all.

I am grateful for this opportunity that I have as a missionary to live in a specific city and really settle into my life here for longer than a passing moment. As a tourist or a traveler, who would ever think to come to Goya? This is not a tourist city—there is nothing particularly noteworthy in that respect. It is a small riverside city in northern Argentina. There is that saying “familiarity breeds contempt,” but that saying makes me mad. I don’t think it is true, or at least it shouldn’t be true if we are doing things right in our relationships with both people and places. I think familiarity should breed love and that for the most part the better we get to know people and places  the more we should love them. That is how I feel about Goya. I love the details. I love the little things I would never know or see if I were just passing through. I even love walking the same streets and seeing the same people and doing a lot of the same things every day, because it’s only then that I start to notice that even in what seems to be routine there is endless and fascinating and lovely variation. Maybe it is only when we have the routine that we can start to appreciate these small things.

We have visited Liliana dozens of times. The walk to her house is familiar. I have started to memorize the graffiti on her front door we have knocked and waited so many times (white-out names and phrases--surely the doing of one or more of her three rascally sons). We always greet each other in the same way, ask the same questions (“how are you? How is your week going?”). We sing, share a scripture, a thought, a prayer. Her son Tommy usually yells and slams doors and has to be wrangled or distracted or calmed. Her second son Agustin, greets us with a handshake and a gap-toothed smile. He usually is eating an apple and watching television, cutting off a single piece at a time with a small kitchen knife and Liliana usually yells at him to be careful and to please put the knife away. 

But then, there are differences. Last night, for example, it was cold and cloudy when we visited and Liliana´s voice was hoarse with a cough and she was rolling out frybread dough on the table with a glass cup and my boots were covered in mud but she told me not to worry about it and to come inside anyway. And then, before we left she disappeared into the kitchen and reemerged with two steaming pieces of fry bread and she smiled and told us “this should be good for a day like today.” And we thanked her and said goodbye, kissing each other’s cheeks. And the fry bread was almost too hot to hold in my bare hands and when we walked outside the streets were all abandoned because it was a Sunday evening and in Goya everyone is afraid of the rain. And I am not sure why something so simple and unremarkable was so wonderful to me, but how i savored that moment: walking through the empty streets, muddy boots, dark gray sky, steaming frybread in hand.

Here are some other precious, funny, quirky little details for you:

-Walking down Madariaga by the hospital we often pass an old man with only 3 or 4 teeth and when we see him he always, without fail, comes to greet us enthusiastically and tries to kiss Hna. Da Silva and she always, without fail, smiles and extends her arm firm and insistent and says “hello! As missionaries we greet with a handshake!” and his attempt to kiss her is foiled once more.

-Ducking under a barbed wire fence next to a horseracing track every time we go to visit Gustavo.

-There is a set of twin boys named Justo and Enrique. They are probably 11 or 12 years old and we run into them EVERYWHERE. Hna. Da Silva always enthusiastically yells out “Hola, Justo!!!” and 9 times out of 10 the boy shakes his head and yells “ENRIQUE!” and we continue on our way. We are starting to be able to tell them apart. Enrique is skinner and more serious. Justo is chubbier and a little warmer when he greets us. Sometimes we say the wrong name anyways just because it’s funny.

-Grido – the Baskin Robbins of Argentina has recently opened a new store half a block from our apartment. Hna. Da Silva and I are very please. Now we can keep relaxing all the time. 

-Hna. Da Silva love Christmas music. We probably sing at least one Christmas song a day. She also hates walking in straight lines because she says she feels like she’s not getting anywhere.  So we are always zigzagging through the streets. She loves to tell jokes. I love to translate her jokes into English because they don’t make as much sense but they sound funnier. Here is one for you:

Q: What do you call a yellow dot on top of a building?

A: A french fry committing suicide.

Well. I will leave you with that. I planned to tell you all about our investigator Marcelo and how he is incredible and he is going to get baptized next week and to share some thoughts from my scripture study but I am running out of time. I will tell you all about it next week.

I love you all! You should all send me a letter. I love getting paper mail.

Love,

Hna. Brooke  M. Parker