How I´m doing: A General Update Letter

Dear Friends and Family, January 5, 2008

Greetings in Christ and a Happy New Year from Paraguay! I hope this letter finds you all knowing and enjoying the best of God’s blessings as January begins. Here in Paraguay, we’re in the midst of vacations and the unforgiving tropical summer heat. The mango trees are growing heavy with their ripening fruits and I too, along with them, am growing a little heavier from the abundance of tropical fruit I’ve been eating myself. Thankfully, construction on the school here has kept me busy with some physical work, while playing soccer and volleyball at the church nearly every day has helped keep me in some sort of shape as well.

My Spanish is improving by leaps and bounds. I can communicate now with nearly everyone after they’ve repeated themselves two or three times, although I’m certain that when it’s my turn to speak I sound like a foreigner and my speech is often garbled. Needless to say, it’s been a good lesson in humility for me to learn another language.

School starts in about another month. Until then, I’ve got many preparations to get my lesson plans in order and many activities in the church to keep me busy. There are services three nights a week along with Sunday morning church, as well as sports nearly every evening. The church community here is very close: they live together, worship together, and spend time together all the time. When there’s nothing else to do, people sit around and talk. When there’s everything in the world to be busy about, they still take the time to sit around and talk. It’s an incredible blessing for me to be so actively involved and to be so warmly welcomed in such a closely-knit fellowship.

Thank you so much for all your continued prayers and support. I’m learning more and more everyday just how dependent I am on God’s grace for even life itself, and I know that your prayers play such an important role in the work that God is doing. I have seen so many miracles in the way God has provided for the church here, and in my own time here as well, that I can’t help but believe He’s behind it all. We serve an awesome and faithful God—one who cares for us and wants us to know just how much He is moving in every way in our lives.

Please continue to remember my family in your prayers, too. The situation at home continues to be very trying for every one of them, and I know for certain they are in need of much encouragement and support. God has used many of you in the past to build the faith of my family, and I pray and trust that He will continue to use many of you in the same way now.
I miss you all very much and look forward to seeing you again, Lord willing, at the end of this year.

All the best,

Jason