"Pimp Me"
-T shirt worn by the wife of one of the pastors to a church service one Sunday. To her credit, she did dress it up with a lovely beige sweater and some nice slacks. We are fairly certain she had no idea what it meant.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Annual Meetings
It is District Assembly time here in the Central District of Paraguay, and much needs to be done before the actually assembly on November 8th and 9th. For our non-Nararene readers, district assembly is when all of the churches in this district gather together, pastors make reports, committees make reports, and the district church is able to come together. So, we have been going to many of the church´s annual meetings, which have to be held before the district assembly. This year there was only one church that didn´t have an annual meeting, which is apparently a lot better than last year. And this year there are several new churches that have just begun or restarted than last year. Therefore, it is exciting to go and hear the reports at different churches. Unfortunately for us, some of these meetings can take hours for each and every head of each and every committee to stand up and make reports... thankfully there was only one church that managed to go for 3 hours. :) While many of the churches are very small here in Paraguay and still beginning to grow and make their way into the community (the Central District has only been here for 25 years) it is exciting to see and hear their passion for children and youth, missions, and reaching out into their communities.
We had the opportunity to go to another one of these annual meetings today in Maka´i, a church that we visited during the first month that we were here. Maka´i is somewhat out on the ouskirts of town, in a neighborhood where families have very little. The family of the pastor of this church has 12 children!! Only 9 are still at home, but anyway that is still a great deal of kids. There are a lot of children in the neighborhood, but the church is having difficulty finding leaders who are willing to teach and lead these children and youth. It´s amazing to me that these problems seem to be all across the world, adults not willing to take leadership positions in the church, but instead just wanting to come and be without anything being required of them. However, as followers of Christ and members of His body, the Church there are things that are required of us. God has given us each passions and abilities, we only to be aware of these and allow God to use us in whatever way that we can be used. God has equipped us to serve God and God´s church.... if we would only trust in Him and not in ourselves.
The pastor´s wife today made some good statements while she was giving her report about the "Escuela Domincal" or Sunday School, which rarely seems to happen on Sunday here. She said that as we minister to children we must not be only going to the children but we also need to be meeting their needs. People have needs and we need to be trying to help them. It reminds me of the quote from Amy Carmichael, "the problem with saving souls is that they are attached to human bodies". We need to be recognizing the needs of people, where they are at... and seeking as the church to come together and help each other. This is a very intelligent lady. She has not had a lot of schooling, and I don´t think that she can write or read, but having 12 children has helped her to know that children are people who have needs, just as much as adults. And as we go to share the Good News with people, this Good News must have something to say about their life right now as well.
Another neat part about the meetings - I heard today at the annual meeting at Maka´i that they were receiving Alabaster money for their church. How neat is that! I have always grown up saving my change (for those of you who don´t know in the Nazarene church there is an offering that is taken twice a year for the building of churches and schools, and then during the year you save your change in these cardboard boxes and bring them on Alabaster Sunday) but never before have I been able to see a place where Alabaster offerings are actually going. Unfortuantely I also learned tonight that Alabaster offerings can only be used for the construction of something new ... it can´t be used to repair buildings. Last night we had a pretty bad storm and the wind blew off a part of the roof in the church in Lambare. They are going out to look at it tomorrow and we´re hoping that tonight nothing falls in and also breaks the floor. So, we are praying that God will provide for this church as well.
Well, as always thanks again for reading! Please leave your comments for us here or you can always send us an email! Thanks, we love you!
Sarah and Ted
We had the opportunity to go to another one of these annual meetings today in Maka´i, a church that we visited during the first month that we were here. Maka´i is somewhat out on the ouskirts of town, in a neighborhood where families have very little. The family of the pastor of this church has 12 children!! Only 9 are still at home, but anyway that is still a great deal of kids. There are a lot of children in the neighborhood, but the church is having difficulty finding leaders who are willing to teach and lead these children and youth. It´s amazing to me that these problems seem to be all across the world, adults not willing to take leadership positions in the church, but instead just wanting to come and be without anything being required of them. However, as followers of Christ and members of His body, the Church there are things that are required of us. God has given us each passions and abilities, we only to be aware of these and allow God to use us in whatever way that we can be used. God has equipped us to serve God and God´s church.... if we would only trust in Him and not in ourselves.
The pastor´s wife today made some good statements while she was giving her report about the "Escuela Domincal" or Sunday School, which rarely seems to happen on Sunday here. She said that as we minister to children we must not be only going to the children but we also need to be meeting their needs. People have needs and we need to be trying to help them. It reminds me of the quote from Amy Carmichael, "the problem with saving souls is that they are attached to human bodies". We need to be recognizing the needs of people, where they are at... and seeking as the church to come together and help each other. This is a very intelligent lady. She has not had a lot of schooling, and I don´t think that she can write or read, but having 12 children has helped her to know that children are people who have needs, just as much as adults. And as we go to share the Good News with people, this Good News must have something to say about their life right now as well.
Another neat part about the meetings - I heard today at the annual meeting at Maka´i that they were receiving Alabaster money for their church. How neat is that! I have always grown up saving my change (for those of you who don´t know in the Nazarene church there is an offering that is taken twice a year for the building of churches and schools, and then during the year you save your change in these cardboard boxes and bring them on Alabaster Sunday) but never before have I been able to see a place where Alabaster offerings are actually going. Unfortuantely I also learned tonight that Alabaster offerings can only be used for the construction of something new ... it can´t be used to repair buildings. Last night we had a pretty bad storm and the wind blew off a part of the roof in the church in Lambare. They are going out to look at it tomorrow and we´re hoping that tonight nothing falls in and also breaks the floor. So, we are praying that God will provide for this church as well.
Well, as always thanks again for reading! Please leave your comments for us here or you can always send us an email! Thanks, we love you!
Sarah and Ted
Thursday, October 16, 2008
News from the cabana
Hello friends!
It´s been a while since I´ve posted, but we´ve been staying pretty busy, and with only one computer we only had half as much time to email, skype, blog, read, etc... however, that will change now because, thanks to your generous support, we will able to buy another laptop to use while we´re here which will then become the computer for the district center office in January. So thanks!
This week we´ve mostly been spending our time in the library, or rather in the office working on library stuff. The books are all labeled with their call numbers (shown here), and now we are going through and making needed repairs, and also glueing envelopes with cards in the back of each book. It´s a little tedious but actually a little relaxing, and it´s rewarding to see the pile of books starting to look like a real library. This week we will probably start working on identifying subjects for each book so we can create a searchable library database on the computer.
We´ve also been continuing our work with the kids at two different churches, and both of those
groups are a lot of fun. They are starting to get comfortable with us and we are starting to know them a little better. There are some girls in Fernando de la Mora who really love Sarah, and every time we get there and they see me the come running up to me and say "y Sarah?" which means, roughly translated, "look! it´s that funny looking american guy with the unpronouncable name! I bet he knows here SARAH is! yay!" It´s ok, I´ve gotten used to it.
We´ve also been riding the bus quite a bit, which has gotten to be less of a novelty and more of a part of life. One day last week we set a record, riding 7 buses in one day. So far today we´ve only been on four, but number five is looking pretty iminent.
One thing we did for the first time this week was buy something on the bus. Chipa, actually. People are always jumping on and off the buses selling all kinds of crazy stuff, but pretty much a daily regular is Chipa. Chipa is a kind of cheesy bread which comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, but the most common is about like a small bagel. I´ve heard that some are more cheesy, but the only kinds I have had kind of taste like a plain bagel with some dry parmesean cheese mixed in. Most kinds also have anise seed in them, giving them a slightly different flavor. The one we bought on the bus...well... lets just say it probably had been on the bus a while. Very crispy. Not real cheesy.
So we´ve started to get down a bit of a weekly rhythm, which is something we´ve lacked up till now. We have spanish class on tuesday and thursday mornings, church on wednesday and sundays, kids program on saturday and most of the rest of the time we are in Fernando de la Mora at the district center. It´s been a good few weeks, and we´re excited for the time we still have left.
The weather is warming up, it got to 99F last week, but then on thursday it rained (really hard, we know, we walked over a mile in it) and it hasn´t warmed up much since. It looks like it´s going to be a
nother cool rainy week, which is cool with us but the Paraguayans are freezing when it gets below 50F. We´ll walking around in tee shirts, just happy to not be sweaty, and we´ll see people with winter coats and sweaters on. it´s crazy. Anyway, it´s been really nice. We hear that in a few weeks the mangoes will be ripe, which is exciting because we have several trees outside the district center that are LOADED with mangoes.
One last thing for today, we finally got a resolution for our plane ticket issue: it´s not ideal for us, but it´s has some pros. Our origional intent was to leave paraguay January 20th and spend a few days relaxing in Seattle before Sarah starts classes February 2nd. However, we were unable to get seats on ANY flight out of Paraguay or South America untill the 28th of january, a whole week later than we wanted. This means a REALLY quick weekend in Seattle and arrival in Kansas City THE DAY before classes start for Sarah. On the upside, we have one week less of bills to pay and food to buy. Also on the upside, we will be able to attend and help with the anual youth camp week in January, which we were going to miss by two days before. So that will be really exciting. Now all we have to do is get jobs and a place to live lined up for when we get home and we´ll be in good shape!
But we´ve got lots of time for that. For now we´re just enjoying life at the speed of Paraguay and trying to get a few things done.
Thanks again for all your comments and messages! We miss you all, and we´d LOVE to talk to you on skype sometime! look us up!
Peace,
Ted and Sarah
It´s been a while since I´ve posted, but we´ve been staying pretty busy, and with only one computer we only had half as much time to email, skype, blog, read, etc... however, that will change now because, thanks to your generous support, we will able to buy another laptop to use while we´re here which will then become the computer for the district center office in January. So thanks!
This week we´ve mostly been spending our time in the library, or rather in the office working on library stuff. The books are all labeled with their call numbers (shown here), and now we are going through and making needed repairs, and also glueing envelopes with cards in the back of each book. It´s a little tedious but actually a little relaxing, and it´s rewarding to see the pile of books starting to look like a real library. This week we will probably start working on identifying subjects for each book so we can create a searchable library database on the computer.We´ve also been continuing our work with the kids at two different churches, and both of those
groups are a lot of fun. They are starting to get comfortable with us and we are starting to know them a little better. There are some girls in Fernando de la Mora who really love Sarah, and every time we get there and they see me the come running up to me and say "y Sarah?" which means, roughly translated, "look! it´s that funny looking american guy with the unpronouncable name! I bet he knows here SARAH is! yay!" It´s ok, I´ve gotten used to it.We´ve also been riding the bus quite a bit, which has gotten to be less of a novelty and more of a part of life. One day last week we set a record, riding 7 buses in one day. So far today we´ve only been on four, but number five is looking pretty iminent.
One thing we did for the first time this week was buy something on the bus. Chipa, actually. People are always jumping on and off the buses selling all kinds of crazy stuff, but pretty much a daily regular is Chipa. Chipa is a kind of cheesy bread which comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, but the most common is about like a small bagel. I´ve heard that some are more cheesy, but the only kinds I have had kind of taste like a plain bagel with some dry parmesean cheese mixed in. Most kinds also have anise seed in them, giving them a slightly different flavor. The one we bought on the bus...well... lets just say it probably had been on the bus a while. Very crispy. Not real cheesy.
So we´ve started to get down a bit of a weekly rhythm, which is something we´ve lacked up till now. We have spanish class on tuesday and thursday mornings, church on wednesday and sundays, kids program on saturday and most of the rest of the time we are in Fernando de la Mora at the district center. It´s been a good few weeks, and we´re excited for the time we still have left.
The weather is warming up, it got to 99F last week, but then on thursday it rained (really hard, we know, we walked over a mile in it) and it hasn´t warmed up much since. It looks like it´s going to be a
nother cool rainy week, which is cool with us but the Paraguayans are freezing when it gets below 50F. We´ll walking around in tee shirts, just happy to not be sweaty, and we´ll see people with winter coats and sweaters on. it´s crazy. Anyway, it´s been really nice. We hear that in a few weeks the mangoes will be ripe, which is exciting because we have several trees outside the district center that are LOADED with mangoes.
One last thing for today, we finally got a resolution for our plane ticket issue: it´s not ideal for us, but it´s has some pros. Our origional intent was to leave paraguay January 20th and spend a few days relaxing in Seattle before Sarah starts classes February 2nd. However, we were unable to get seats on ANY flight out of Paraguay or South America untill the 28th of january, a whole week later than we wanted. This means a REALLY quick weekend in Seattle and arrival in Kansas City THE DAY before classes start for Sarah. On the upside, we have one week less of bills to pay and food to buy. Also on the upside, we will be able to attend and help with the anual youth camp week in January, which we were going to miss by two days before. So that will be really exciting. Now all we have to do is get jobs and a place to live lined up for when we get home and we´ll be in good shape!
But we´ve got lots of time for that. For now we´re just enjoying life at the speed of Paraguay and trying to get a few things done.
Thanks again for all your comments and messages! We miss you all, and we´d LOVE to talk to you on skype sometime! look us up!
Peace,
Ted and Sarah
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Updates!
We're still here! It's been a while, but we're still here and things are still going well! You should have received our monthly e-newsletter last week, if you didn't get an e-copy feel free to email us or leave a comment and we can e-send you one. Here are some other updates from the life of the tedandsarah:
>Spanish is coming along nicely. We've started classes with a teacher who is really good. And as could be expected, Sarah has finished all her homework and Ted is going to have to stay up late cramming tonight for class tomorrow. Go figure. However, the teacher really likes Ted's phonetics, so I definitely feel like he has an unfair advantage whenever we do any reading... so I've been trying to work hard at reading more fluidly.. We do feel like we're getting better, see below..
>Yesterday some guy on the bus must have though we didn't look too foreign, because he asked a question about the bus. Not only that, we were able to both understand him AND respond appropriately! Go us! We can even order McDonald's without too much trouble now!
>We've also been learning to be better servants, having lots of opportunities to cook and clean and run errands. We are learning to see the day to day things like dishes as a part of our missionary service here, and that makes everything a little bit more fun.
>One of those missionary-service related things lately has been paying the bills. Not actually paying for the bills but taking the money to the people who collect it. So it's meant a little walking and some exploring, both of which we enjoy. But the crazy thing is that there is this one place that is basically the Bill-Pay Center... there's a list of probably thirty companies on the sign out front, and if you brought in your bills for those companies you could pay any an all of them there. Flavia sent us with a stack of about 6, and we paid them all at once! Crazyness!
>On our way to class last week we stopped in a restaurant we've been wanting to try, and it was AMAZING. It's called "Medialunas Calentitas", basically translates to "Hot Little Croissants" (Medialunas being litterally "half-moons" which is the word they use) Anyway we enjoyed a few ham and cheese sandwiches and some GREAT coffee... they make it fresh with espresso and it was FABULOUS. I was happy to replace McDonalds at the top of my list as the best coffee we'd had so far in Paraguay. They also sell quiches, juices, chocolate croissants and other goodies, so we're excited to go back again. and again. and again.
>The U.S. dollar has been doing some crazy stuff lately... I'm no economist so someone who understands what's happening may have to explain it to us. When we arrived the Dollar was at about 3890 Guaranies and had been going down for some time. Since then it has hovered right around 3900, until about a week ago when it started to go UP. We have heard lots of news about banks closing and stocks dropping and bailouts and so forth, all of which I would have thought would have made the dollar go DOWN, but just the opposite seems to be happening here. Yesterday we were shocked to see it at 4030, but today I was even MORE shocked to see it had gone up 100 guaranies overnight, and is now at 4130. Anyone with a possible explaination, we'd love to know what you think. Especially since all of our funds are now in guaranies!
> I (Sarah) got back from my wonderful trip by bus to Gualeguaychu, Argentina last week but I still haven't gotten around to blogging about it so I thought I would throw some things in here with a couple of Ted's random "this is what is going on in our life right now" glimpses. While Argentina is located directly next to Paraguay is a very different country with more of an influence from Europe than from a native population like we have here in Paraguay. The people like to consume a lot of mate (to read more about that check out my NTS blog) and they were very friendly and kind to a non-fluent castellano (which is what they call Spanish here). The bus ride was quite interesting, it came fully equipped with reclining seats, meals, and a bathroom (which I tried not to use). I got more stamps in my passport, which was a lot of fun, but I'm not sure that the 2 hours at the fronterra both ways was quite worth it. :) I got to go swimming in the "termals" hot water spring pools in Gualeguaychu, which were amazing, with three different pools that had varying degrees of warmth. They were pretty wonderful. And, I got to meet some pretty incredible people! So, all in all it was a great trip... unfortunately I didn't get anything very significant to bring back with me, except some pesos... which Ted accidentally tried to pay at Medialuna's with... that was funny!
>Today when we came home from work we found the house suprisingly quiet. This afternoon our new friends Ed, Lynn, Phillip, and John Wittung got on a plane and headed back to their home. As much as we enjoyed spending some time with them, we're glad they were able to leave Paraguay, and as their future in Bolivia is still very uncertain, we will continue to pray for them and ask that you would do the same.
>Also another prayer concern is our plane tickets. We just got an email saying that the date we wanted to go home is booked, so we're working on coming up with a plan B, but we don't know what that will look like yet. Please pray for us! Thanks!
Thanks for reading and keeping in touch with us! We love to hear from you guys! Que Dios te bendiga!!
>Spanish is coming along nicely. We've started classes with a teacher who is really good. And as could be expected, Sarah has finished all her homework and Ted is going to have to stay up late cramming tonight for class tomorrow. Go figure. However, the teacher really likes Ted's phonetics, so I definitely feel like he has an unfair advantage whenever we do any reading... so I've been trying to work hard at reading more fluidly.. We do feel like we're getting better, see below..
>Yesterday some guy on the bus must have though we didn't look too foreign, because he asked a question about the bus. Not only that, we were able to both understand him AND respond appropriately! Go us! We can even order McDonald's without too much trouble now!
>We've also been learning to be better servants, having lots of opportunities to cook and clean and run errands. We are learning to see the day to day things like dishes as a part of our missionary service here, and that makes everything a little bit more fun.
>One of those missionary-service related things lately has been paying the bills. Not actually paying for the bills but taking the money to the people who collect it. So it's meant a little walking and some exploring, both of which we enjoy. But the crazy thing is that there is this one place that is basically the Bill-Pay Center... there's a list of probably thirty companies on the sign out front, and if you brought in your bills for those companies you could pay any an all of them there. Flavia sent us with a stack of about 6, and we paid them all at once! Crazyness!
>On our way to class last week we stopped in a restaurant we've been wanting to try, and it was AMAZING. It's called "Medialunas Calentitas", basically translates to "Hot Little Croissants" (Medialunas being litterally "half-moons" which is the word they use) Anyway we enjoyed a few ham and cheese sandwiches and some GREAT coffee... they make it fresh with espresso and it was FABULOUS. I was happy to replace McDonalds at the top of my list as the best coffee we'd had so far in Paraguay. They also sell quiches, juices, chocolate croissants and other goodies, so we're excited to go back again. and again. and again.
>The U.S. dollar has been doing some crazy stuff lately... I'm no economist so someone who understands what's happening may have to explain it to us. When we arrived the Dollar was at about 3890 Guaranies and had been going down for some time. Since then it has hovered right around 3900, until about a week ago when it started to go UP. We have heard lots of news about banks closing and stocks dropping and bailouts and so forth, all of which I would have thought would have made the dollar go DOWN, but just the opposite seems to be happening here. Yesterday we were shocked to see it at 4030, but today I was even MORE shocked to see it had gone up 100 guaranies overnight, and is now at 4130. Anyone with a possible explaination, we'd love to know what you think. Especially since all of our funds are now in guaranies!
> I (Sarah) got back from my wonderful trip by bus to Gualeguaychu, Argentina last week but I still haven't gotten around to blogging about it so I thought I would throw some things in here with a couple of Ted's random "this is what is going on in our life right now" glimpses. While Argentina is located directly next to Paraguay is a very different country with more of an influence from Europe than from a native population like we have here in Paraguay. The people like to consume a lot of mate (to read more about that check out my NTS blog) and they were very friendly and kind to a non-fluent castellano (which is what they call Spanish here). The bus ride was quite interesting, it came fully equipped with reclining seats, meals, and a bathroom (which I tried not to use). I got more stamps in my passport, which was a lot of fun, but I'm not sure that the 2 hours at the fronterra both ways was quite worth it. :) I got to go swimming in the "termals" hot water spring pools in Gualeguaychu, which were amazing, with three different pools that had varying degrees of warmth. They were pretty wonderful. And, I got to meet some pretty incredible people! So, all in all it was a great trip... unfortunately I didn't get anything very significant to bring back with me, except some pesos... which Ted accidentally tried to pay at Medialuna's with... that was funny!
>Today when we came home from work we found the house suprisingly quiet. This afternoon our new friends Ed, Lynn, Phillip, and John Wittung got on a plane and headed back to their home. As much as we enjoyed spending some time with them, we're glad they were able to leave Paraguay, and as their future in Bolivia is still very uncertain, we will continue to pray for them and ask that you would do the same.
>Also another prayer concern is our plane tickets. We just got an email saying that the date we wanted to go home is booked, so we're working on coming up with a plan B, but we don't know what that will look like yet. Please pray for us! Thanks!
Thanks for reading and keeping in touch with us! We love to hear from you guys! Que Dios te bendiga!!
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