Daily Life

We’ve had a busy week in Paraguay so far. We arrived last Tuesday in San Franscico and so much has happened already. I feel like each day is packed full of new and exciting things. Nothing is ever boring around here. If it’s not a guy who shows up with a axe wound to the face it’s the cow who’s figured out how to break down the front gate and help himself to the grass in the yard. Ben is enjoying himself playing with all his new friends. Although, his suicide attempts have picked up a bit since he’s been here. Today he climbed to the top of the slide in the back yard which is by no means toddler ready. It’s about as tall as the house and the end of the slide stops about three feet from the ground (where you fall directly onto a pile of rocky cement). A lot of my day revolves around putting him in time out for looking at it. Today he made it up and down without us knowing. He has a few scratches and a busted lip but still wants to go down again. Nutcase.

Pete spends the mornings with Jeff in the mobile clinic. On Friday, they had a patient who showed up in a diabetic coma. Her blood sugar was 30 and she was unresponsive. They tried to give her some sugar water but she couldn’t even swallow. They don’t have any diabetic meds in the van because they are too expensive and hard to come by down here so they had to send her to the nearest city which is about an hour away.

In the afternoons, I get to visit some of the local women with Amy. Some of them are believers and some of them are just locals who Amy is friends with. Last week, I went to see a lady who had adopted one of her family member’s little boy who’s arms stopped at his elbows. When his parents saw his birth defect they didn’t want him anymore. He seemed sweet but really shy. He has learned how to write and draw in spite of his disabilities. He also managed to turn on the motorcycle that Ben had climbed up on behind my back. Yikes!

The Paraguayans seem to be a resilient, family oriented society. Today we all experienced Paraguayan church for the first time. It was the once every other month long service, lasting from 8 till 2. We sang, believers shared what God was teaching them, we drank ter ere (Paraguyan tea time, read ted a day), ate a meal together, than sang and shared some more. It was inspiring to see other believers share the way God was working in their lives. It’s not an easy or really culturally normal thing to be a Christian here. Most of the Paraguayans associate Christians with a charismatic church here who call themselves Christians but really just have emotionally driven services where they wail and cry late into the night. Most of them believe that Christians are off their rockers. I really can’t blame them. I will try to keep you posted on all the exciting news this week. Please keep us in all your prayers as we continue to seek God’s will for our lives and to live the adventure he’s laid before us.