A Shameless Plug

Here in Paraguay, there are plenty of signs that summertime is at hand. The mango trees seem to be weeping under the heavy loads of their Christmas-colored fruit, and the students at Collegio Privado Adonai, too, appear burdened down in the late-springtime heat with all their books and final exams and end-of-the-year stresses. Behind the scenes of the school, however, preparations are already being made for next year. Ben’s wife, Vivi, has been appointed next year’s directora, or principal, for the primary grades. I’ve received my own marching orders for teaching English, too – all six classes of 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th graders will be my responsbility, along with an hour of conversation each week with the 7th, 8th, and 9th graders. The foundations for the new addition to accommodate next year’s inaugural 11th grade have also been laid, waiting like a tilled concrete garden with iron beam sprouts for work teams and additional donations to be completed this summer (while God has blessed the school with a plethora of the workers from the North, we’re still waiting on and intensely praying for God to provide the funds).

Along with all these preparations for next year’s academics and ministries also comes another responsibility for Ben and I: facilitating and distributing the scholarships for needy students in the community. We have the privilege and duty of visiting families to decide whose children are most in need of tuition funds and, perhaps by extension, to also decide who will or will not be able to attend the Christian school. For most of the kids who receive the becas, the funding is perhaps the only chance they have to receive a decent education. Standards in public schools here can be abysmally low, so the Collegio Privado Adonai fulfills a very-real need for the children who attend, all within the safety and care of a Christ-centered, church-supported environment.

The scholarships given to children from the community also open doors of opportunity for their families to get involved in the school and church. There are countless parents and relatives of children from the school who are now attending the church as well, revealing the ultimate purpose of Collegio Privado Adonai and the church here – to reach out in service to a lost and dying world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This school has a real spiritual impact on lives.
So, how can you get involved in this God-grown ministry? I’d offer to you the Adopt-A-Student program, which gives North American friends the opportunity to sponsor a specific child here by donating the money necessary for tuition their costs. It costs $500 a year to send a Paraguayan child to Colegio Privado Adonai, but this investment in the lives of students and their families undoubtedly yields eternally significant and spiritually weighty dividends. Adopting-A-Student is an awesome chance to have a practical impact in the Kingdom of Heaven through blessing the life of a student and their family.

If you’re interested in helping out, send me an email at jbroredman@gmail.com. I’m more than happy to answer any questions you might have and help facilitate your participation in what God’s doing in Paraguay.

Thanksgiving in Paraguay

It’s Thanksgiving in Paraguay. The sun’s out and shining with all it’s golden strength while the soft scent of Jasmine floats gently and amiably through the backyard. Oscar’s outdoor thermometer, although perhaps giving an embellished reading because it sits in the light, reads some 110 degrees. It’s probably much cooler than that-- about 95. I’m sitting inside with the lights off and fan on, doing my best to imagine a cold and rainy November day in Ohio. The English Christmas carols I’m listening to sure do their best to set the sound of the season, but they do little in the way of driving away the reality of a hot day.

In reality, though I may wish for the comforting cold of home, I’ve got a world to be thankful for, especially as far as the weather goes. I’m living in a veritable tropical paradise, very similar to Hawaii, from what I’ve heard, and I’ve got a lot of people who care for me. This Thanksgiving, I’ll be celebrating with Oscar and Karen and their family, Ben and Vivi, and Pilar, a friend from Georgetown also serving in Asuncion, and two of her friends.

While the weather today has been hot and peaceful outside, Karen has been cooking up a storm inside with all the traditional Thanksgiving bells and whistles: a turkey, some mashed potatoes, sweet corn, and even some sweet-stuffed-squash. The turkey here is what is most precious. One pastor I spoke with had never tried it in all his life, and the other had a faint memory tasting the giant bird perhaps a couple decades before, although he couldn’t remember the taste. Needless to say, we’re privileged to have such a feast and American celebration in a place so from home.

And I am thankful, too: thankful that I’ve got an opportunity to serve in a foreign country for a year and to experience Thanksgiving away from home in Paraguay; thankful for all the hospitality that the Paraguayan church, and especially Oscar and Karen and their family, have shown me; thankful for everyone back home, too, who is thinking of and praying for me while I’m down here- I know there’s a lot of people who care incredibly much; thankful for God’s own strength, protection, consolation, and many other graces as I’ve adjusted to the culture here; and thankful that, ultimately, I know my destiny is in His hands and that He cares for me far more than any one else does and knows what’s best for me far more than I do.

And so,

Now thank we all our God
With hearts and hands and voices
Who doeth wondrous things
In us and in all places
Who from out mother’s arms
And from our childhood’s way
Hath showered us with gifts
And blesseth us today.

Some Iguazu Pics

By popular demand, some pics from Iguazu falls...

A Bloody Ritual

It’s three o’clock in the morning and I’m wide awake. Outside, a tropical thunderstorm pierces the night’s dark quietude with intense flashes of lightning and booming drumrolls of thunder. Because of the storm, the electricity’s gone out and the fan that usually propels me back to sleep is suddenly and helplessly dead in the corner of the room.

It’s not the heat that bothers me this morning, though. No, it’s the cult of seemingly invisible mosquitoes swarming around my head that prevents my sweet repose once again; mosquitoes that, under normal circumstances, would be expeditiously exorcised by the fan’s firm and reassuring breeze.

The only sensible evidence of the disease-carriers’ despicable presence is a soft low buzzing next to my ear, eerily reminiscent to the sound of a dentist’s drill. Making matters even worse, I can neither see nor feel the pests until it’s too late to object and they’ve sucked my life right out of me, like so many tiny demons drawing the blood from a helpless sacrifice. They fly an evil and complicated dance around my head for what seems like hours as I, with body hastily covered by the protection of my light cotton sheets, frantically pray for them to go away. Occasionally, I madly but vainly protest their diabolical ritual with a wild and desperate flailing of arms.

Under these hallowing circumstances and in the daze of half-sleep, I ponder the import of an eternally significant, yet so often neglected, question: why don’t Paraguayans use screens in their windows?

A Touch of Romance

“There are people praying for you, Jason,” my friend told me solemnly and honestly. I wondered for a moment why people here would be praying for me in such a serious way. Maybe they thought I was a little edgy for them, a little too secular, a little too North American. Then I wondered if they thought my soul was in danger, perhaps because I listen to Garth Brooks sometimes and have an Anglican prayerbook on my shelf. After thinking some of these things out loud, my friend clarified what she had said, and this time there was no wondering about the meaning of her words. “No, they’re praying for you. Te quiere, literally, they want you – they like you .”

The words hit me like a ton of bricks. “Oh,” I mumbled, much like one mumbles when he is not watching where he is going and walks straight into a wall or corner and there is no where else to go. They want me. They’re praying for me. For a husband. For their husband.
What to think… what to think… what to think… There are a lot of things that come to mind when the idea of marriage, and specifically the idea of my marriage, pops up. And trust me, my being in Paraguay only makes me even more confused and even more uncertain as to what the future holds. Some things I know for sure, though:

1-It’s way too early in my time here to even be worrying about these things.
2-I didn’t come to Paraguay to find a wife. I came to serve God, Opa (Guarani for “it’s finished”), end of story.
3-I appear to most people up North and here, too, to be the perfect eligible bachelor missionary. Not only am I good looking, but I look holy, too.
4- Number 3 is mostly true- I’m eligible, a bachelor, and a missionary. But I’m not so holy or perfect as I act around other people.
5- When I finally get around to dating a girl, it will probably be after a long and serious friendship with her.
6- Be that as it may, number 5 comes only after a lot of prayer and fasting and seeking God’s will.
7-Whoever the girl is will know for sure what my intentions are. If I haven’t said anything to her officially, there’s nothing officially or importantly there.
8-I don’t want to break anyone’s heart -- mine, any girl’s, or God’s.

Casual dating isn’t an option for me in general or in the church here specifically. When people decide to become novio and novia, “boyfriend” and “girlfriend”, in the Paraguayan church, they make a prompt and public social and spiritual commitment to marry each other sometime. Considering the culture, it’s not ironic that in Spanish, novio and novia also mean “groom” and “bride.” Whatever these relationships are, then, they are very quickly announced in front of the church and the plans for a wedding are very soon in the making. It may seem strange, but relationships go from friendships to engagements in one quick and giant (and perhaps sometimes too careless) jump. Dating relationships/engagements are only broken off with much pain and public demonstrations of remorse, and I know already a couple people my age who have had to go through such a well-known and difficult ordeal.

So, I’m certainly in no hurry to jump on the marriage wagon, especially here in Paraguay. I’m waiting on God and doing my best, as the Song of Songs suggests, to leave the passions of my love all alone in peaceful and unaware slumber until the mightily right day when comes the time to awaken and stir them up to life. Until that day, though, I’m an eligible bachelor missionary doing my best not to trample over anyone’s soft and precious heart. I’m treading softly and trying not to show too much interest in any one girl particularly, all the while learning a new language and culture and making new friends and so much more. It seems to me to be a big and dangerous undertaking, so I’d ask you to please pray for me. Just please, I ask you with all my heart, don’t pray for me.

A Paraguayan Funeral

I arrived at the small, rusty brick house under the cover of darkness with a large, hasty group of church members, like so many troopers storming an enemy stronghold in the middle of the night. We came to visit the home straight from Wednesday night services with a dual purpose: to offer our emotional support and physical company as a sort condolence for the bereaved immediate and evangelical family; and also, by our presence, to prevent the complex mourning and death rituals of the extended Catholic family.

The main person of interest at the meeting was the recently departed, an older gentleman who had also recently joined our Anabaptist church. Following in the spiritual footsteps of his wife and daughter, he had been accepted as a full member of the church and was baptized again on his death bed only the Thursday previous. Now it was the following Wednesday night, and he was dead. I heard he had been suffering from cancer or some other ailment for some time and had come home to die in the comfort of his home.

The home did its best job in preparing itself to honor the patriarch’s death. The front room, visible from the street, had cleared itself of all furniture and in the center, elevated like some magic floating platform, was a rented sterling silver coffin holding the body of the deceased with his feet facing the road. He was wearing a comfortable new brown sweat suit and, while I don’t think his family intended this, looked like a Franciscan monk lying in repose. In the background of this mourning scene, at the head of the coffin, was a massive crucifix lit up by Las-Vegas style neon-purple lights, along with a serious-looking six-foot silver candelabra whose one light bulb three-over from the right burnt out. To the left of the coffin was a plastic wreath-sign almost as big as the room that advertised for the funeral company. A glass of holy water under the coffin was left to ward away evil spirits.

You could feel the tension in the air just as much as you could feel the warm Paraguayan night. On one side of the front lawn sat the Catholic extended family, seemingly un-welcomed from the front room of the house once the Protestants arrived. They appeared to be moping about and waiting for us all to leave, and I noticed more than once on their faces irritated expressions of mistrust and doubt. Most of the immediate family, including the widow, daughter, a son, and some grandchildren, met with the newcomers inside.

Here, dividing the two factions by only a few physical feet, loomed the immense spiritual and ideological chasm that wholly separated the evangelical and Catholic churches and cultures of Paraguay. On one side were those who had come to build an altar of candles and say rosaries and pray ancient prayers to God on behalf the departed. On the other side were those who had come to sing songs with a guitar and preach a sermon and pray an unscripted prayer for all the family members left behind. Two worlds collided at one poor Paraguayan man’s funeral. One world that wanted to say evening masses for nine days in an elaborate ceremony to rescue the departed’s soul from hot Purgatory, and the other that wanted to reach out to the community through a gesture of inviting faith in cool contemporary form.

In the end, the evangelicals seemed to win the turf war over the dead man’s house. At the request of the widow, daughter, and some friends, evangelical preachers came every night for more than a week to prevent a Catholic mass from being said. I’m not sure how the Catholics were able to finally express their grief, but I’m fairly certain the immediate family was pleased by the reaction and support shown by the evangelical church.

And as for the welfare of the dearly departed man’s soul? I can’t say for sure where he’s at or what he’s doing, but I can say for sure that he knows now better than any of the rest of us just who is right and who is wrong in this mixed-up church business. I can also say for sure, though, that he’s not going to share his secret with me or a single living soul.

Long Weekend Trip

Last weekend I had the chance to see a little more of Paraguay and get a better taste for her culture and form. The 9th and 10th grades went on a two and a half day trip to see several sights in areas of the country about six hours east of Asuncion. I was privileged to go along on the secure but tiring excursion with all the excited youth.

We left around midnight last Thursday. Lucky for me, the sickness I felt in my stomach from a bad lunch of tepid fruit-smoothie was no indication of how the rest of the weekend would end up. We boarded our bus, which to my grand surprise was a huge air-conditioned Brazilian affair with twice the space for reclining than any of the airlines I traveled on to get here. With my pillow in hand and ear plugs in ears, I drifted off to sleep.

Around 5:30 in the morning I was awakened to breakfast time. Our bus was stopping at one of the most-famous Chiparrias in Paraguay to enjoy an early morning bite to eat. Chipa, one of the national foods here, is a bagel-like snack whose dough is baked warm with cheese and is sold everywhere. Women with chipa baskets on their hips or heads enter public buses all the time to sell it, and countless roadside stands feed weary travelers with it.

We stopped at a place that was supposed to sell the best chipa in all of Paraguay. There was a bathroom there, too, that had a guard posted outside who carried what looked like an elephant gun. I felt much better knowing that we were all safe from stampeding herds of giant mammals as we ate fresh chipa and drank hot cocido, a drink like sweet creamy coffee made from charred yerba mate.

Along with the guard were several middle-aged ladies selling chipa at this most famous chipa stand. They wore robin-egg blue form-fitting outfits and reminded me of airline stewardesses. From what I heard, the chipa vendor has a coveted job here, selling a flavor of national culinary pride and making good business while doing it. I thought the stop was a delicious piece of Paraguayan cultural pie.

We traveled some more and I slept another two hours all the way to Brazil, where we stopped at Tres Fronteras. The tourist spot, called Three Frontiers in English, is the place where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay all three meet in a grand panorama and where can be seen two rivers flowing into one another with an ancient embrace. It was exciting because it was the first real photo opportunity, and I learned there that Paraguayans have a little jingle they sing when they want or are having a picture taken. It goes something like this: “FOH-toh, FOH-toh, FOH-toh.” All through the trip, I took plenty of FOH-tohs.

By mid-morning we’d reached Iguazu Falls. I’m pretty sure these falls are, water quantity-wise, the largest in the world. Even in a time of drought like now, their size supposedly dwarfs Niagara Falls (although, in my own mind, they were no more impressive than their North American counterparts. The nice thing about Iguazu that is different than Niagara, however, is that the former is set in the midst of a largely unspoiled jungle. The Brazilian government has set up just enough amenities and tourist huts to make the visit comfortable for the foreigner, but not enough to spoil the natural serenity or beauty of the surrounding tropical landscape). I’m not sure how I could have come to any other conclusion than to say that they were really beautiful, really big, and pretty impressive.

One thing I remember more distinctly than the waterfalls were the millipedes – giant South American ones the size of your face – crawling everywhere on the footpaths. People naturally stepped all over the path and the millipedes, smooshing the creatures into the ground. I could tell the ones that had died recently, as they were still round and fleshly, apart from the ones that had died much earlier, which were only skeletons and dried out. At some point the dead ones seem to have become part of the cement walkway, leaving their imprints like very ancient fossils.

For lunch on Friday we visited a Brazilian buffet. The food was abundant and, in my opinion, very tasty. There were savory gobs of various meats, served fresh off of long roasting rods, along with plenty of South American salads and treats. We washed it all down with Coca Cola, the drink de force of the weekend and of good times in Paraguay.

Friday afternoon we visited Itapu, the site of the world’s largest man-made dam. Built under a Paraguayan dictator a few decades ago with Brazilian financing, the dam is a testament to man’s ability to harness nature’s forces. Nearly a dozen and a half giant turbines slowly let filter through the great waters of the now stopped-up Parana, the fourth largest river flow in the world, creating enough electricity in just one and a half turbines to supply all of Paraguay’s needs. The rest is sent to Brazil. Money from the dam is used in building projects and public services all over Paraguay, with a large part of it also going into the private coffers of high-ranking political officials and friends of the state.

Friday night we stayed at a beautiful campground on the shores of the great lake created by Itapu Dam. The stay was completely free for our school group, financed as a gift and pacifier to the Paraguayan people by the dam proprietors and government. It was a scenic paradise where we had the chance to enjoy a ride through the jungle in horse-drawn carriage in the daytime and see the massive ginger moon rise up out of the dark waters in the nighttime. The perfect setting, along with a massive grilled meat dinner served by the school’s director and pastor, made our stay entirely wonderful and a highlight of the trip.

Saturday we woke bright and early to enjoy some more of the campground. We left mid-morning for Ciudad del Este, a shopper’s paradise filled with the newest and cheapest electronic goods, the most fashionable and imitated sports gear, and the most impressive and blackest of all markets I’ve ever seen. It was a dream-come-true of materialistic sensationalism, with shop after shop and seller after seller pawning their worldly wares. I was completely overwhelmed by the scene and unable to process anything. With all the frenzied purchasing activity going on around me and my own explainable fears of losing everything in my pockets, I was glad we only had an hour to stay. Even though I needed an alarm clock, I decided not to purchase anything in this great “City of the East” (Ciudad del Este) and left with my pockets still burdened by Paraguayan cash.

Saturday afternoon, we visited another waterfall and then spent the remainder of the day at the AC Church outside of Ciudad del Este playing bocce ball and eating roast chicken. We returned in the evening to Itapu, where we saw an over-hyped light and sound show as the dam slowly and un-dramatically turned on its fluorescent nightlights. After another stop at the church, we headed back to our air-conditioned bus for a night trip back to Asuncion. All in all, the excursion was a grand adventure in the safety of a school field trip and gave us all the chance to see, hear, and smell some of Paraguay’s greatest secret treasures.