March 7, 2007

Dear Friends:

Greetings from Argentina! How are things going for you these days? It’s been a long time since we’ve heard from you. I trust God continues to bless you in all you’re doing. Drop us a line or an email when you can and bring us up to date on what you’re doing.

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written. Things here have been extremely busy as you probably noticed in our last prayer letter. We had hoped to spend January getting caught up on everything, but the kids have taken a lot of our time and I’ve had some extra work to do with the mission and the Seminary. I’ll try and make up for it by giving you more news than ever! We won’t just tell you what happened; we’ll also let you know what we anticipate in the coming months.

We had a very busy 2006. There were lots of guests, some major changes in our kids and more ministry than ever. Combine that with having to look for a new vehicle and just plain being older and you have a very busy schedule. Many times I haven’t been in my office except to reload my briefcase until after 1:00 AM.

School is officially back in session so we’re getting up early and having late nights. Colin is full time at his school and Nigel is hoping to get started on the workshops he needs for his electrician’s ticket this coming week. Jackie and Chelsea are enjoying the peace and quiet of not having boys around the house. It seems like summer never happened, except for the heat.

To give you an example, several weeks ago I was supposed to have had a “light” week. Colin spent every day (8:00 AM to 11:30 PM) at a basketball camp, Nigel was studying for his exams and I thought I’d take Chelsea on a day trip to have some fun and to help her get some assignments done for her classes. She’s currently taking an Earth Sciences/Geology course plus Photoshop.

We decided to spend an entire day photographing a canyon about a 2 hour drive from our house. It was a bit cloudy when we left, but the place we were going is the “sun spot” of Argentina. We had a great time doing a bit of hiking and taking pictures, some for her geology teacher and some for the photography class. On the way home, about 45 kilometers from our house we saw some water on the roads. We didn’t think anything of it until we got to a curve about 16 km. from home. Apparently there had been a heavy rain, but just in a 20 km. area! The road was cut by a river 3’ deep and 100 yards long. Beyond that was another cut even deeper and 400 yards long. We arrived at the “river” at 6:00 PM. The road had been cut since 2:00. We spent almost 6 hours waiting before the police finally told us it was relatively safe to take a dirt road, through some fields, over a hill and connect with an alternative route home. We had already called to tell Colin we wouldn’t be picking him up (he spent the night at the gym in an apartment they have there).

The detour was an adventure. Fortunately we recently were able to purchase a Ford pick-up (double cab, two wheel drive, basic model, the only option it has is air conditioning). We drove 4 kilometers up the road to a small bridge, about 8’ wide. On the side of the bridge was a 4-wheel drive jeep that had flipped, trying to cross when the water was too high. All that was visible of the jeep were the two rear tires! We made it across the bridge and drove 2 more kilometers to an arroyo or irrigation ditch. It had overflowed, but the water on the side was only about 24 inches deep. The problem was you couldn’t tell where the deeper parts of the ditch were. Several people had walked across and there was a car stuck on the side which helped us see the path to take. We got across very carefully and finally made it home after midnight, 7 hours later than planned. Needless to say, a lot of the things I was going to do that night had to be pushed into other days the next week.

The town we were stuck in waiting for the water to recede has a population of 5000 people. There were that many more who were waiting to cross the water which led to a shortage of everything, especially bathrooms! Even though we had to wait so long, the trip was worth it. Chelsea got some great rock samples, we took some pictures that you wouldn’t believe and even had some close encounters with animals. I spent 5 minutes being watched by a huge fox. When Chelsea got back from taking some photos elsewhere, we took some photos of him. Then Chelsea went into a field full of a type of flowering sage brush to get a closer picture of what we call a “parrot tree.” This is the season when the wild parrots live in the canyon. Chelsea got half way to the tree and almost all of the birds took off. She stood in the middle of the field and was surrounded by swarming parrots. She pointed the camera straight up and got a great picture of 48 birds, and that wasn’t even half of the flock! It was quite an experience.

Jackie has been spending some time each morning practicing basketball. It’s been a long time since she’s played but she’s been approached by several ladies at basketball games who have asked her if she’d like to play in a league or on the “maxi” provincial team. She’s not sure if she wants to commit to that yet, but she’s doing shooting practice each morning just in case. She had the property all caught up until we started getting heavy rains. They’ve been happening off and on for 2 weeks so she’s just now starting to have things the way she wants them again. This time of year we have heavy rains (a normal year, we receive about 190 mm. in January, this year we had over 250 mm.), followed by hot, sunny days with temperatures around 100º F. She’s enjoying her cantaloupe. We brought some seeds back with us in 2005 and she made a special plot for them and to our surprise, they came up and are producing. It’s almost impossible to find cantaloupe in this part of Argentina. She currently has planted several types of squash, cucumbers, radish and even an okra plant.

We’re going to be having some big changes as a family this coming year. Carolyn Gruesbeck is coming to help me out with administration, both with the mission and with the Seminary. It will be a blessing though having her here will make some adjustments to our lifestyle. She’s 22 years old and is a recent university graduate. She does speak and write Spanish so I’m hoping to have her take over some of the financial aspects of the Seminary plus the library. That will be a big help. I’ll probably have her type some of my correspondence (I can always tape letters while driving or waiting for kids to get out of classes), so you’ll probably here more from us after we get her settled in.

Part of the work in then next few weeks is finding a place for her to live. She could live here with us in Cerrillos, but she’d like to stay with an Argentine family to improve her Spanish and help her learn the culture. We have several people in mind, but haven’t found the perfect match yet. We’re hoping she and Chelsea will “click” because Chelsea could teach her so many things and it will probably help Chelsea think about transitioning to North America having someone else bilingual here to interact with. The hardest part of this process is slowing down enough for Carolyn to “get on the train.” If we can help her get well adapted the first few months, then when the regular Seminary year begins in May, she’ll be a lot more help.

We’re also excited about John and Carol Hollingsworth coming to Argentina. They’ve just started to raise their support so it will be several years before they’re actually here contributing, but it’s encouraging to know that we’ll have some more hands to help with the work. Each of us here on the field (we are 4 families and a single woman), have so many jobs that when one of us is on home assignment, the work for the others is almost overwhelming. We get a lot of help from our Argentine friends, but there are some things they can’t do, for example, legal and accounting work for the mission. This coming year our treasurer will be on home assignment for 8 months so I’ll have to add that work into my normal schedule. When the Hollingsworth family arrives, it will be a big help. Pray for them as they raise their support.

We enjoyed having a short term team with us in 2006. There is a strong possibility we’ll have another in 2007. At present, we’ve been contacted through Delta Ministries by 2 churches who are interested. We hope to have them finish up where the last group left off. There is still much to be done on the buildings here in Cerrillos. We also need to raise some more funds to help make some needed repairs.

In February we hosted a meeting between all of the missionaries and the leadership of the national church to discuss how to use our resources better and to talk about fund raising. We’re hoping to get the local churches to work harder on teaching their members how to give. The idea of donations and supporting ministry is something totally foreign to our culture here. But as the national church grows and the amount of mission funding diminishes, there is a tension between how to make a good transition. Argentines have been taught all of their lives that when the money dries up from one source, instead of economizing or working harder, you search for another financial source. We’ll still need several years to change this model, but at least they are willing to talk about how to make the changes. In the past, they’ve always expected the missionaries to raise more funds, but as we all take on more jobs, fund raising is much harder. As you well realize, we don’t have a lot of extra time for correspondence and that’s virtually the only way to raise funds from this far away. One very positive result of the meeting is the formation of a “church growth” team. The idea is to have several of us work with a local church for a year to help them learn how to manage their funds, resolve their conflicts and go forward. I’ll be forming part of that team in the Salta area and it could be a real blessing.

Our medical compassion ministry had an extremely busy 2006. This year looks like more of the same, though at present, we’re out of funds. I’m hoping to raise $2000 this year to continue the help we’ve been giving to needy brothers in Christ. In the past 12 months, I’ve helped 12 people avoid unnecessary surgeries, mostly for gall bladder problems. The majority of the public health doctors here blame the liver and the gall bladder for everything. I’ve had 8 cases of gall stones in the past few months of which, only one person actually had them. We did a bunch of ultra sound imaging and found that the rest of the people only had simple gastritis and with some Maalox or Mylanta, they were cured.

The lady who did have gall stones deserves a special mention. Her name is Teodora Frías and she should be leaving the hospital today. She came here 2 months ago to attend the funeral of her son in law who died of Lou Gherig’s Disease. While she was here, a gall stone caused her to have a major pancreas attack and she almost died. Once she was stabilized, the doctors told her not to travel until she had the problem solved and then said; “come back towards the end of January or February and we’ll start the process.” She’s visiting from Bolivia so that wasn’t an option. I was able to get her to the doctors I work with and we found that she needed her gall bladder out immediately. The public hospital that normally handles this surgery told us that she could have it done in August. We were able (with God’s help), to get the entire process done in 20 days and she had a laparoscopic surgery last week. Her daughter, who she came to console, works as a newspaper vender and had spent all of her savings on the final hospitalization and burial of her husband. I was able to cover all of her expenses except for the actual surgery. After talking with the head of the hospital, we were able to get the surgery done for a donation from the family. They got together 50 pesos (16.50 U$S) and had the surgery. That in itself was a miracle.

In the near future, we hope to help a woman who needs 2 major surgeries. She needs a full hysterectomy due to some major hormonal problems, complicated by the onset of menopause, plus a breast reduction surgery. I’m sure you’re wondering why we’d be involved with a cosmetic surgery, well, it’s not cosmetic. Her hormones have been out of balance since she had her first child 21 years ago. He was born almost an albino due to some genetic problems. Shortly after his birth, she developed 2 more breasts and has kept them hidden by wearing large, baggy clothes ever since. When she heard about the medical ministry we have, she finally got up the courage to ask if we could help. This is after suffering pain and embarrassment for 20 years. We’ve been able to get her in contact with a good gynecologist and a good plastic surgeon. She has a small amount of health insurance, but the cost of her surgeries, if we aren’t able to help, will amount to more than 2 years of her salary. This is a woman who works for the government and is finishing her master’s degree in nutrition! In North America, she’d be extremely well paid but here, she earns less than 150 dollars per month. She’s a member of our local church and I’ve gone with her several times to her “ministry.” She goes into the poorest neighborhoods and instead of having the people come to an office in town, she sets up her little clinic in the front room of whichever house will let her. She weighs children 3 years old and under, dealing with cases of malnutrition. Her job takes her into the most dangerous neighborhoods here in Salta and she serves as the connection between the doctors and the poor. She seldom fails to share something about the Gospel as she works. To some degree, you could say she’s doing a ministry similar to ours, but on an Argentina budget. Pray for her, her name is Silvia.

Also, this past month I had a pastor from one of our churches in a neighboring province contact me about his 3 year old son. The son had 3 different episodes of convulsions in a 40 day period. They had run most of the major tests but didn’t tell the family the diagnosis. The doctor in their local town said the boy was just hyper-kinetic and needed a tonic. I was able to get the boy, Samuel, into a specialist and we found out he has epilepsy. He needed an MRI to determine the extent of the damage. That costs more than his dad earns in 3 months. I was hoping to have enough funds to help cover the cost, though at the moment, we don’t have any medical compassion funds left. God did work things out to His glory. I had been going through the Bible verses with David, the father, talking about how one of God’s compound names is “God Provides.” Just when things looked darkest, God provided a special clause (no one knew anything about) in their insurance and Samuel had his MRI. They had to do the process at midnight so I stayed with them at the hospital until 2:30 AM and then took the family to the home where they were staying. Pray for Samuel and his family as they learn to deal with this situation.

The Seminary started on February 5th. I’m still not sure how many new students we have this year since everyone waits until the last minute to sign up. Many make their final decision to attend classes after summer camps and vacations are over. Pray that we’ll have a good group and that all will go well with the professors this year. The regular students will start classes the last week of May.

We’re also planning a graduation for the end of March. I’m hoping to have 6 students graduate though we’ll have to see how many make it. Most of them are up to date with the majority of their classes and projects, but are behind a bit on their finances. They have to have everything done and complete before they can graduate.

I’m still working on training Argentine professors. The first part of the year I have two men teaching who have been doing very well. Inocencio Lazo is a Seminary graduate who has started a new church about an hour drive from Salta. He is teaching Evangelism and Discipleship plus Practical Theology this year. Fernando Pedraza, another Seminary graduate, runs the Christian book store here in Salta. He will be teaching Introduction to the Bible and perhaps one other course this year. The following term, I’m hoping to have Monica Marin, a graduate of a seminary in Bolivia will be teaching Theology Proper and Christology. She taught Church History last year. The basis of what they are teaching will be study guides and books that I’ve written when I taught those courses in the past.

Speaking of writing, as I write this letter, a 200 page book is in its final edit and we hope to have it available to the local churches in March. It’s a book on discipleship written by Bill Wagner, a pastor in Arlington Washington and is designed to help people who have been Believers for some time, but haven’t grown spiritually. It’s just the thing we need for many of the Christians here in Argentina. Cecilia Valdeviezo, my Argentine assistant and I, translated it and Miriam Prieto, my long time editor, is in the process of making sure it reads correctly. That project took a lot of time, as did the commentary on Job that I finally finished writing this year.

Before I finish, I should update you on some quick kid news. Chelsea received a big surprise when she was informed she has made the National Dean’s List for scholarship. That’s in relationship to her studies via Internet. She continues to have a perfect GPA. Nigel passed two of his exams and now can officially graduate. He still has 2 exams and 5 workshops to pass to finish his studies. In June he should start an apprenticeship as part of his training. He needs that experience. Colin continues to grow. He was selected to the All Provincial basketball team and will be representing Salta against 3 other Argentine provinces and teams from Bolivia, Chile and Peru this coming week. It’s a huge honor because he’s the only player from his age group who made the team. The team is the best of the 20 year olds and under in the province. Colin is still 15!

I guess I should close for now. Please continue to pray for the work here in Argentina. If you’re interested in helping out financially with the Seminary, the Pastoral Support program, the Cerrillos Conference Center or the Medical Compassion program, feel free to write or email and we’ll let you know how. Big thanks again for all your prayer and financial support.

Greetings and love from the entire family.

Rod for the Allens