Leaving

We've had an awesome time and Paraguay. We are leaving this morning and will be home in about a day. Please pray that Ben has patience and obedience in the airport. Oh...and an extra seat. Thank you so much for your prayers all month. We really felt them. This has been a great time for our family to see God at work. We will post more blogs about our last week and our trip to the falls when we get settled in back home. Make sure you check out the Mckissicks blog too... Amy is a way better blogger than I am. She would be my idol....if that wasn't a sin or anything.

Ten Things I didn't know before I came to Paraguay

1.I didn’t know roosters crowed more than once a day. Seriously….the cartoons make it look like all they do is wake up the farm. Apparently the cookadoodle dooo all day and all night. And, To cure a chicken’s cold you poke a feather in the flap of skin behind its neck.

2.I didn’t know that abagados (A Paraguayan’s good luck charm), could be the tip of a deceased child’s pinky finger shoved under the skin in your wrist. Nasty!

3. Pigs like to attend bible studies too.

4.You can only earn 20 cents an hour for back breaking labor.

5.I like mandioca. It’s like a really big potato and tastes great with barbecue sauce.

6.I really like to be clean. I thought I wouldn’t mind a little dirt on my feet but it makes me feel really scummy. I have to at least wash my feet if not my whole body before I go to bed.

7.Cows really do go home for dinner. They wander around aimlessly all day but when six o’clock comes they charge right on by the house to get fed. Pete said “If your life revolved around food I bet you’d find your way home too.”

8.Your son might just survive if he sucks on a wash cloth that was dipped in bleach and used to clean up raw pig juice. Don’t ever ask me about this. I don’t want to talk about it or think about it ever again.

9.I didn’t know I could consume so many carb-on-carb, fried-on-fried meals. I’m definitely headed for gestational diabetes and a 12 pound baby (Don’t tell Tork).

10. There are different levels of shacks. There's really bad shacks with spaces between the boards which let in drafts in the winter and bugs in the summer. Good shacks have extra boards to keep out the bugs and the cold...and some are even painted. Really nice shacks have cement floors and maybe a lightbulb. All shacks have an outdoor toliet and none of them have showers.

All for 20 mil

Around eleven o’clock last night Pete and I were sound asleep when I started hearing Lady, the dog, barking. The cows, which moo all night, were getting louder and louder and this set off the roosters crowing. I thought great …Intruder, the cow who breaks into the yard all the time, was back with a bunch of friends. I was really confused and had visions that the house was besieged by cows and chickens when I started to hear a woman wailing from far off. Amy urgently called “Pete it’s an emergency.” Pete jumped out of bed and ran out into the street. I followed him and looked out the door. There were two cars and about twenty people milling around. The women were crying and falling on the ground and the men just stood around in clusters. Pete was running back and forth from the road to the mobile clinic bringing Jeff equipment. Amy was consoling the women and bringing them blankets. She told me that the man who Pete and Jeff where working on had been shot in the head. He was barely breathing when they brought him. Jeff was trying to help the man breath by giving him a tracheostomy to maintain his airway. Amy said that the capillaries had already burst in one eye and the other pupil was fixed. I watched Pete running back and forth numerous times over the next twenty-five minutes until the women started to wail violently. I knew immediately that they had told them that the man had died. I just kept praying for the wife who I could see wrapped up in a blanket next to the car, asking God to comfort her. I really couldn’t do anything else. I thought that if my husband had been shot I would want someone praying for us ceaselessly during the crisis. How awful to watch your husband die in the back of an SUV covered in blood and gasping for air.
Then a member of the national police force wearing a bullet proof vest asked Jeff to write down what he had done and saw. Apparently, the man who had been shot was the husband of the school’s principal. He was the son-in-law of the richest and most politically connected man in town. Everyone here is related to one another. The murderer apparently called the man and told him to meet him outside his house. When he came outside he shot him. The man’s daughter saw her father get shot from inside her bedroom. Jeff said he had heard four gunshots a few minutes before all the people arrived. The shooter left his motorcycle at the man’s house and fled into the woods. Amy said the man’s family will probably kill him if they find him before the police.
This all would have been heart wrenching except for what God had showed me that very morning at church. I would have thought before, oh how awful to lose someone with no assurance of their salvation. Most Paraguayans believe that after someone dies you have to spend nine days in prayer praying them out of Purgatory. How wretched to think that I am responsible for someone else’s eternal destiny. But that very morning under a patch of trees in a grassy field I watched a group of believers sing praises to Jesus in a language I didn’t know and heard every word with my heart. I saw that God was the God of the whole earth and not just my little life. He had grown up a church of new believers, people who didn’t even know him a few years before. And there they were right before my eyes singing of Christ’s saving grace with smiles on their faces. They openly confessed their sins, asked for prayer, worshipped, and shared their personal walks with Christ. Who am I to know what will come of this death. Perhaps He is using it to bring more San Franciscans into a personal relationship with Him. “What can was away my sin….nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again….nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

From Scratch

A few months ago I was fascinated with making things from scratch. I patted myself on the back when I made my own bread, butter, peanut butter and jam. I had visions of Little House on the Prairie and my own Food Network show.
It’s funny how it was a novelty to make my own bread, but here in Paraguay we really don’t have an option. Every morning I’m surprised by how much time we spend in the kitchen making three meals from scratch. There is always something else to make. I’m learning a lot of things actually can be made in your very own kitchen. For example, I made Marshmallows today; the kids love them but I can’t say that it’s an experience I want to repeat. It was a lot of work to make something that just tastes like a pile of sugar anyway. We made croissant rolls and a cheese Danish today too. Pete said he’ll never eat Pillsbury again. My response was “don’t hold your breath.”
In addition, to making almost everything from scratch Amy also pasteurizes her own milk, hangs her clothes out to dry, chases cows out of the yard, feeds two hamsters, two guinea pigs, one dog, one cat, a flock of ducks, a chicken named “Birdie” and occasionally the stray pig. It’s never a boring day around here. Today alone, we caught a frog, smoked a pig (or part of one), cleaned the flood in the kitchen (the drain pipe just fell off), got to see the girl who’s finger Jeff sewed back together a few days ago, and of course watched Finding Nemo for the thousandth time (Ben’s obsessed…he wants to name the new baby Nemo Elephant Goosey Goosey).
Here’s a list of some of the things we’ve made while I’ve been here and a few Amy has made before. I’ve included one of my favorite recipes below. You should make it; the cinnamon rolls are delicious. Let me know what you think. I will be happy to post any other recipes you want to try.

Cinnamon Sugar Biscuits Makes 7
2 cups Flour
3 Tbs sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
2/3 c milk
½ c shortening

1. Mix all the together, knead, roll out flat
2. Fill with: 3 tbs butter, 3 tbs sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon
3. Roll up, slice it and put them in muffin tins to bake
4. Cook at 350 for 11 minutes


Marshmallows
Refried Beans
Cheese Danish
Lemon Curd
Bread
Cinnamon Rolls
Cake
Pancakes
Brownies
Croisants
Pizza
Rice Pudding
Yogurt
Maple Syrup
Granola
Popcorn
Three Musketeer Bars
Reese Pieces
Poptarts (they didn’t taste very good)
Pumpkin Puree
Ice cream and Magic Hardshell
Whip Cream
Onion Rings
French Fries
Tortilla strips
Spaghetti Sauce
Bread Sticks
Lemonade (with the lemons from the yard)
Krispy Kreme Donuts
Hostess Cupcakes
Twinkies
Corn Dog
Applesauce
Corn Bread

Pictures

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.

San Francisco

We've been having a fantasticially exciting muddy adventure so far. We arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday. The Mckissicks are based in a small agricultural town of about 3,500 people. Jeff graduated from Pete's residency about five years ago and moved to Paraguay to start a free medical clinic and plant churches. They were visiting Harlingen last year on furlough when we met them and started to think about visiting them to see what it was all about. So far Pete has been assisting Jeff in the mobile clinic which is conviently parked beside their house. Patients wait in the yard from about 8 till 12 to be seen. They have all kinds of crazy complaints! Amy and I visited a woman yesterday during the Paraguayan tea time. I'm not sure what her real name is but they refer to her as Jabba the Hut because she never smiles and is rather large. She did have an eery resemblance to the character. We talked about the neighborhood, her family, and my baby which she thought should be born here and become a Paraguyan. When we left she gave us two chicks for Amy's daughter, Ginny. When we got home we ate dinner, Ben chased some frogs and then there was a lightning storm. The power went out which meant no lights and no water. In addition, our room started to leak and water flooded the kitchen. It was kind of a hilarious semi-camping scene. Ben loves it here. He has tons of friends to play with and gets to run around all day. We've only had a few mishaps..a couple of ant bites because he snuck out without shoes,and an almost tumble out of an open trailer. THere's a lot of more to tell....but I'll save it for next time. Thanks for all your prayers we really feel them.