meetings, meetings, and more meetings

Sunday morning we had an early morning meeting with the mayor of Buenos Aires and his wife at their house. We met over coffee and sweetbread. We met for nearly 2 hours and talked about a wide variety of subjects and listening to the different needs of the city and the people. Even though Buenos Aires is a small town the mayor oversees over 60,000 people in his area. The needs in the area are many and I forsee work for several years here, not to mention other areas of the country.

After our meeting we were able to go to church services at the church of Christ in Buenos Aires. Daniel preached an excellent lesson on having a clear vision of God's will in our lives and to act upon it. Minor led the singing and did an awesome job. Tim and I both led prayers and we had a great visit with church members we met last year. We were able to get lots of photos of the new church building and also had time to show Tim around town and introduced him to the reposteria (bakery) that we found last summer! Yep, it's still good!

After worship we went to the local TV station and met with the station director and got a copy of the footage they shot Saturday during the President's visit. The station also is need of a lot of equipment and training and I am hopeful to be able to find help back at Freed-Hardeman when I return. Our TV station at school has a lot to offer and I am hopeful to recruit some staff to go with us this summer to do a training class on editing and camera work, along with tech information to make their news broadcasts more fluid and professional. After that meeting we took the western route along the coast to Jaco, which is on the Pacific Coast. We spent the night there at a local hotel that is actually run and owned by people from the States.

Today we spent the day looking at several different hotels that might serve as a retreat at the end of our future trips. The coastal area is really beautiful and there is a lot to do here. We looked at a couple of hotels that are right on the beach and we also looked at some that were up in the mountains. Zip line canopy tours, horseback riding, waterfalls, and beaches are just of the few things to do here. from Joco it normally is about an hour drive to San Jose and we left about 4:00. We arrived in San Jose around 7:00 tonight (we would have been here a lot sooner if it had not been for a fender bender on the main highway coming into town). We are staying the rest of the week at the Best Western Hotel which is near the hotel.

Tonight we got a letter via email from the President's office. Our offical meeting is set up for Tuesday at 3:00. The President is not going to be able to attend due to several things that have come up since our first meeting on Saturday, but the Vice-President will head up our meeting. We are so excited that we have already scheduled the meeting and we are very hopeful that the meeting will be very productive. We are also meeting with members of the San Jose city government in the morning along with lawyers to discuss some of the legal requirements we will need to know before going into the main meeting in the afternoon. Wednesday we will be meeting with a local preacher who is going to take us to the Bible camp owned by the church to see the layout and discuss ways to use the camp as a staging area for our containers and supplies that will be eventually coming into the country.

I will keep you updated as the week progresses. Things have fallen into place very well and we are getting a lot of things done. God is good!

TR

The photo is Daniel Chaves, Tim Hines, Minor Perez and myself with President Laura Chinchilla this past Saturday in Buenos Aires