Christmas in pictures

Tradional Christmas Train--on a much larger scale

Our family has been doing this candy Christmas train for a long time.  Over the years we've shared the memory making with friends.  This year it was an event.  We made the 6 hour drive into Asuncion in order to spend some time celebrating Christmas with our teammates.  With 15 kids all working to build and create using candy, it was a very boisterous room.

 These were the main ingredients.  A huge thank-you to our church family for sending these tasty candies.

 Here is the before picture (well,  after many candies were sampled to insure tastiness).










During...

 
















And after....
 

Another huge thank-you to our friends, the Mckegs, for sending us a candy train kit.  It was exactly the pieces we needed for Gabby to be the engine train this year.  God did in fact, give wings to your package.


It was a blast to share our tradition with this great bunch of kids.

kids' club

One of the ministries the church does is kids' club.  Once a month elementary age kids come to the church for singing, games, crafts, and a snack.  This month the kids came three consecutive days to enjoy these activities.

We had the opportunity to give 19 of them a ride from the countryside.  19!   One of the things I enjoy about the Paraguayan culture is that they will make sure that everyone fits without complaining about personal space.  What a joy it was to hear their laughter and see their smiling faces in the rear view mirror.

Preparing for the singing and story time.

Craft time. 

We played a version of "duck, duck goose."  Instead of saying duck and patting heads, we used a sponge to say drip, drip, splash.  As you can see the kids loved it.

Cookie Time

It was a little different this year with humidity, heat, and runny frosting, but tasty nonetheless. 

Thankful Tree

This idea was inspired by our good friends, the Self Family, in Versailles, KY.  Each day of November (or as many as you can get) each member of the family writes one thing on a leaf for which he or she is thankful. What fun it was to hear what the kids were thankful for. 

I had to add a closeup of the happy squirrel Rebekah drew in the tree trunk.

The beginnings of Christmas

The girls and I made salt dough ornaments to spark a Christmas mood.  I'm not sure where we are going to hang them since we don't have a tree.  We'll have to be a little more creative this year with decorating.

Thanksgiving

Our first big holiday in Paraguay was awesome.  Getting together with our teammates is always a blessing, but it was especially great to eat turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potato (or acorn squash) pie, and apple pie with whipped cream for dessert.

 

  
After the fantastic meal, we had a talent show, and heard from the kids two stories, a song, and a harmonic piece. 

I'm not sure what these two are up to, but it looks a little suspicious.

Gross and real life in PY

We ate it anyway.  What's a few bugs, when it's popcorn?

More Travels

Yesterday we got up at 3am and packed up the truck in order to leave at 4:30.  Our experience has been that if we travel on Sundays, we have less of a chance of being stopped by the police.  Since all of our paperwork isn't completely in order, getting stopped can be a little stressful.  We pray before each trip that God will shut the eyes of the police as we travel.  So far, we have not ever been stopped at  a checkpoint.  The dirt portion of the trip took an especially long time because the tie-downs in the trailer kept working loose from all the bouncing around, so they had to be re-tied numerous times.  I was riding my motorcycle, so I would typically ride for about 5 minutes or so and then stop and wait 10 or 15 minutes for Holly to catch up.  Several times I turned around to backtrack because Holly was taking so long.  She definitely had to drive much slower with the trailer.  We also stopped to help pull a guy out of the mud who had gotten stuck.  Right after we stopped, a guy with an F150 came by and offered to pull him out.  I decided to let him try, since us helping him involved detaching the trailer.  The F150 promptly got stuck in the mud as well, so I ended up having to pull both of them out.  That whole fiasco took an hour, but it was nice to stop and help, and then see their surprise when we told them we didn't want any money.

Real life in PY #4

Here a document, there a document, everywhere a document...

The process of acquiring residency visas has not been quick or simple.  We have traveled to downtown Asuncion numerous times to attain copies of important documents, followed by other trips to other buildings to have the copies legalized or translated.  All this is done with the goal of having all required pieces of paper for five people when we arrive here.

 Immigrations.

After a five hour wait, we left with documents stating that Darin and I have turned in our application for temporary residential visas.  The kids' packets were missing a document which means, we will be going back to immigrations on another day.

Real life in PY #3

W.A.I.T.

You know you are going to be waiting a while when the numbers look like this.

The number they are on...

The number you have....

 
Yep, I waited 30 minutes to get my meat from the butcher, but I nailed the order and didn't even get a second glance because of my accent.

Real life #2

Real life in PY means creepy crawlies like you've never seen before.

Real life

Our bathroom looks like this...

Because our backyard looks like this...

Real life in PY means dirt and mud.

Something from the dead

This tree caught my attention initially because of its size.  It towers above my head and the branches slightly overhang the dirt road.  It is also dead, yet has stood through the very destructive spring storms when other alive trees have fallen.  As I looked closer at this dead, towering tree I saw something else.

 

 

At the very center of this tree grows a cactus, a completely different plant coming from what is now dead.

What came to mind was...

"But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 

made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--

it is by grace you have been saved" Eph. 2:4-5.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;

 the old has gone, the new has come!" 2 Cor. 5:18.

Everyone has sinned and because of our sin, we are spiritually dead.  We have no way of giving life to ourselves because we have no way to cleanse ourselves from the sin which has killed us.  There is only one way to become alive, a new creation, and that is through believing in Jesus: believing he is God's Son, that He lived a perfect life, that he died on the cross to pay the penalty for each and every one of our sins, and that he rose from the dead three days later.  Call upon him for the forgiveness of your sins, and be made alive by his forgiveness and grace.  Become a new creation.

Art Class

Early Saturday morning the girls and I walked a mile to a woman's house to check out an art class.  I thought it would be a good time to do something pleasant while improving our language skills.  We weren't sure what to expect, but the woman had assured me that all we would need was what we had: colored pencils, paper, and crayons.

When we arrived, we were sweetly welcomed, introduced to the other children, and offered Terrere (a cold tea), which was very welcome after our long, hot walk.  The girls sat down and began drawing.  That is when there was a shift in the room.

The other children stared at what the girls were drawing.  I figured it was because the girls were using colored pencils, while the others were painting.  Here is their artwork.

Rebekah said this was where she wanted to camp. 

Gabby thought a game of tag would be fun, and those black rectangles on the tree are steps so you can pick the pears.

The following day I learned something.  The teacher of the class told me that she had never seen a child sit down and draw mountains (these were the first things on Rebekah's paper).  They don't have mountains here, let alone snow-capped peaks with pine trees sprinkled around.  

So as my girls practiced and learned more Spanish, they were also teaching (unbeknownst to them) the other children about landscape in the States.

Science class

We are so blessed to have a teammate whose calling is to help with home-school.  Once a month Miss Karen comes to our home and helps me with whatever I need.  She brings books and prepares art projects for the kids.  It is wonderful to have her come.

One of her main activities is doing Biology with the older boys.   She even organized having a microscope sent down.  In the last class they had a chance to study mold.  (We had been preparing this specimen for four weeks in our fridge.)  As you can see they are a great group of hardworking teenagers.

Timothy Training

This past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I drove about 2 hours north to the town of San Francisco.  A church which was recently planted by SIM missionaries was doing some training for the leaders of their church and a few leaders from some other churches.  They were going through various Bible stories and practicing telling them.  Then they would talk about what lessons they could draw from the stories.  Almost everything was taking place in Guarani so I wasn't able to understand very much.

We ate all of our meals together, and those of us who were not from San Francisco spent both nights outside sleeping under the trees.  The first night I learned that mosquitoes can bite you through a sheet.  The second night I woke up at about 1am to feel a little mist on my face.  I began to pray that God would hold off the rain.  I woke up again at  3am to feel a little more mist, but that was as strong as it got.  God held off the rain for us so our bedding just got a little damp.  I was awoken several times each night as cows crunched and munched their way through the area, and the roosters in the area had choir practice.

On the way back I drove the long circuitous route in order to take several people home since I was the only person with an automobile.  We were pretty overloaded at the start and I could feel the truck's suspension bottoming out with every rut and hole.  The 2 hour return trip turned into 6 hours, but it was a good opportunity to see where the men were from and how far they had traveled to get there.

Our hometown (for now)

For the last three months we have been living in the town of Yuty in southern Paraguay.  The kids had a fun time doing some light painting by the sign on the main highway coming into Yuty from the north.  Yuty is a town of about 5,000 people, but it is the largest town for quite some distance.  It is where people from the area come to do any significant shopping.  We live on the extreme north end of town and our driveway is the last driveway on the dirt road before it becomes cobblestone as it heads into town.

Sometimes life here seems a little like an oxymoron.  There are things around us that are very modern mixed in with things that make us feel as though we have traveled back in time nearly 100 years.  We will see things such as a man on horseback herding cattle through town while texting on his phone.  Overall there are many things about life that I would compare to rural life in the US 50 or 60 years ago. 
First off, everyone knows everyone else, and all of their business.  There are no big stores that sell everything.  Our biggest "supermarket" is less than half the size of an average pharmacy in the US, so the selection is quite limited.  Many times you have to go from place to place looking for what it is that you need.  One of the things that has been difficult for me is that at the places that sell hardware type stuff, everything is in the back, so you have to ask them for what you want.  This is difficult when you don't know the name for what you want in Spanish.  It is even more difficult when you don't know exactly what it is that you want and you are just looking for something to solve a problem that you have.  There is no browsing.
There is also a level of trust being in a small town.  Several times we have been in a shop and didn't have enough money on us for what we purchased, and they just tell us to bring the rest of the money later.  This situation can be caused by simply not bringing enough cash, or just having bills too large and they don't have change.  The largest bill here is the equivalent of a 20 dollar bill.  Many times people don't have change for a bill this large.  Sometimes they will go to another shop to ask them if they have change, or they will just tell you to pay when you come back later.  You don't really hear that at Walmart. 
Of all the streets you see on the map of Yuty above, only the two main streets going through town have asphalt.  One is asphalt all the way through town and the other one is only asphalt only about halfway through town.  The rest of the streets in town are either cobblestone or dirt, with the majority being dirt.
Around here everyone, (I repeat for emphasis) everyone, rides motorcycles everywhere.  It is rare to see anyone walking, and not a lot of automobiles.  They are almost all little 150cc Chinese motorcycles and mopeds.  Most of the people cut the silencers out of the mufflers, so they are extremely loud.  We see kids as young as 10 driving around town on motorcycles.  Many of them are texting while they are driving.  Accidents do happen as well.  There was a motorcycle accident right in front of our house last week.  We have seen as many as 5 people on a single motorcycle.  There is no age too young to be a passenger.  We have seen many mothers holding infants as they cling to the seat.  I even saw one mother nursing a baby while she was hanging on the back.  I believe she was multi-tasking.

Visiting

This afternoon we headed out of town to visit some of our friends.  As we headed out of town, the road kept getting smaller and smaller.  Finally it turned into a dirt single-track for motorcycles.  Eventually we had to stop, park, and head out on foot.  After a short walk we arrived at the family's land. They have an amazing view across the river and the valley.  After spending an hour sitting under their mango tree drinking Terere, they gave us a tour of their fields and showed us the various crops they are growing.  It is always so humbling to see people working so hard to simply survive.

La tormenta: Dos

This past week we had another strong storm come through similar to the one several weeks ago.  The last time we were in Asuncion, but this time we were here at home.  It came through about 10:30PM and it was quite loud.  There was hail coming down with the rain and we discovered that with our metal roof it was almost impossible to talk to each other.  Holly and I ran outside to try to cover our washing machine with a tarp.  The washing machine is kept outside on the back patio because there is no place for it in the house.  We were began to get worried that the hail was going to break out the window in our car, but God protected it from any damage.  We weathered the storm with nothing more than water coming in around all of our windows and around the edges of several rooms.  Several people in town lost their entire roofs.  There were also  lot of trees down from the wind.  I spent the last couple of days helping to fix the roof at the church.  A large portion of the roof was blown off.  Unfortunately the pain in my shoulder kept me from doing some of the work.  Because of the expense, we were trying to re-use as much of the damaged metal from the roof as possible.  I spent a large chunk of my time using tin snips to cut out the completely unusable parts.

Saint's Day

A little while ago we had the opportunity to observe some of the activities associated with Saint's Day here in Yuty.  One of the things they do is to have a Mass early in the morning at the Catholic church and afterward they bring out the statue of their saint and parade it through the town.  We heard conflicting information concerning who the statue is depicting.  We heard both the Virgin of Caacupe and the Virgin of Natividad. 

What really hit us was seeing the huge crowd of people following this image of clay, crying and reaching out trying to touch it.  It was heartbreaking to see what they are putting their faith in.

Some hard things

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered…

We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure…” (2 Cor. 1:8)

I identify with Paul’s words and I was encouraged by his honesty.  Where would I be if the Bible authors had left out the lows and only written about the highs?

So this blog is a little different than our others.  It is a peek into the realities of our life and the struggles we’ve faced as a family.

When it rains, water leaks in through the windows.  When it rains a lot, a lot of water leaks in through the windows.   Around 1am, 3am, and 5am a rooster crows right outside of Rebekah’s window, and the sound ricochets off the cement walls in our house.   Often we don’t have enough water pressure to trigger the shower’s heating mechanism, so either it’s a cold shower or no shower.  Our stove is not insulated which takes twice as long to bake.  If there is a flux of electricity and I have the washing machine running, the washer will stop working and sit unfinished until I go out to hang it up only to realize I actually need to reset it instead. 

Each time we make the seven hour drive into Asuncion to do paperwork it is exhausting and causes disorganization for several days.  When we need to buy something, first we must figure out where the item is sold, and second we must figure out how the item is sold.  For example, at one store she rang me up at one register, I paid at another, and at a third, after producing my “paid” receipt, I was handed my items.  Traffic has different rules here.  I’ll leave it at that.

When we walk down the street, people stare at us because we look, walk, and act differently.  We don’t know when to greet and when to just pass buy.  And at what stage does the relationship need to be before I greet the other ladies with a kiss on the cheek?  When we engage in conversation, we miss the details of what is said, which causes the stress of misunderstanding.  When we attempt small talk we run out of questions quickly and there becomes an awkward silence as we don’t know a culturally appropriate exit.

We have had sick stomachs, diarrhea, aching muscles, colds, a sliced foot, and tired bodies.  And yea, we’ve wanted to go home. 

But here is where we draw our strength.   

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered…

We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure…

But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God” (2 Cor. 1:8-9).

To Him be all glory, forever and ever!  For He is faithful and good.

Photos

Some of you may know I enjoy photography.  Not that I'm necessarily good at it, but I do enjoy it.  I tend to follow the rule that if you take enough pictures, one will eventually turn out.  I have created a blog to periodically post some of my photos and I put a link to it on the right hand side of this blog.  You can just click on the picture.

Everyday sights

Here are a few things we see everyday.

Paraguayans are very skilled at carrying  things on a motorcycle.  We have seen a goat, wooden boards, a TV, a fan, a square plastic table, and of course coolers. 

There are always animals (pigs, dogs, cows, chickens) along the road.  Sometimes a cow or horse are staked in a grassy area to eat for the day; other times they are free to roam like you see in this picture.   
 

I know the first rule of blogging is probably to know what your picture is about, but I don't.   We see these trucks filled with wood regularly, but I have no idea what it is used for.   Not knowing has become a significant part of our life and we are learning to handle the stress of uncertainty.

This woman owns this "despensa" or little shop.  She is sweeping the cement in front of her store because having a clean entrance is very important.

Keeping the area clean of the red dust is a constant task, and we see them sweeping everyday.

These two pictures depict a very important aspect of the Paraguayan culture.  The woman on the left is selling herbs (carried on her head) used in the tea, Terere.  On the right, the two men are drinking Terere from their gaumpa, a cow horn.   First, the tea is packed into the bottom of the gaumpa, then the metal straw with tiny holes is slid into the bottom.  Next ice water is poured in and finally the host or hostess takes the first drink to strain out any lose fibers.   Then the gaumpa is passed around the circle to share.

Terere is important because it is their time for visiting.  Conversation can last an hour or two depending on the time and day.