Encarnacion Exploration, Part 2

Shortly after arriving, I got a hotel close to the bus terminal and splurged an extra five dollars for a room with air conditioning and cable (the first of both luxuries, I can proudly say, I had had in six months). I wasn’t disappointed by the extra commodities, either, as the air conditioning ran at a constant and frigid rate throughout the night and the cable had CNN in Spanish along with some of my favorite American cartoons translated.

In the morning I boarded a bus which, on its way to another big city, would pass directly by the ruins. My ride, as one of those extra passengers without a seat that I disliked so much from the day before, was a quick forty five minutes before I got off at a deserted stop with signs pointing to the ruins of two different Jesuit missions at Jesus and Trinidad. Although at first glance the stop looked empty, a second bus waited beyond one corner to take me the extra ten miles to the town of Jesus. This bus line, leaving when it was full, passed its entire trip on an unpaved road a maximum of once every two hours. After passing through the quiet but dusty Paraguayan village called Jesus’ town, the conductor let me off at the end of its route where a fence for the Jesuit ruins marked the boundary of the historical site. I walked an extra two blocks to the entrance, where for a dollar fee I was granted admission and, upon request for a tour brochure explaining the site, was given a pamphlet on the broader industry of Paraguayan tourism.

Although information on the Jesuit ruins was unimpressive, the architecture that remained of the mission town was anything but. The main attraction was the huge earthy basilica, three stories high and partially reconstructed from the deep-rust colored stones originally cut and carried from miles around, which stood firmly planted on a plateau like some medieval fortress. Outside the church walls, the stone architecture still bore Christian imagery carved by people converted from distinctly unchristian ways of life. Inside the church, the emerald-green grass spread like a fine carpet over the sanctuary, and the now-truncated pillars that originally supported the rafters seemed to be like so many well-ordered altars. At the head of the church stood the artificially-supported stone of the original altar, which undoubtedly witnessed so many thousands of masses and so many thousands more of natives coming to share at the table of Christian Truth and Faith.

I was able to pass all over the sight without any boundaries and without the company of any other tourists. The place was completely quiet and empty, as if the spirits of the Jesuits and natives long passed on still guarded and protected the town as a sacred and secret space. The only other people I saw, except for all those ghosts that I easily imagined were still worshipping, learning, selling, and socializing in the ruins of the church, school, marketplace, and plaza, were some living Paraguayans cutting the massive fields of grass with tiny gas lawnmowers. With their broad hats and Paraguayan style of clothing, though, it wasn’t too difficult for me to imagine them as some of the original inhabitants. I explored and imagined with great reverence and delight, even climbing the thirty-foot bell tower to see all the ruins together with the Paraguayan countryside spread out before me like so many panoramic photos in National Geographic. There, all I could hear was the wind, which seemed to whisper in my ear of forgotten times and histories and peoples and faiths.

After my two hours of imagination and exploration ended, I caught the bus’s next round out of the village and, after it let me off, walked a bit further to the other ruins at Trinidad. There, I spoke with the gal in charge of the site who I imagined was an idealistic and eccentric student of Paraguayan history, but who was in reality an unassuming college-age youth sipping terreré with her two friends on a hot country day. I asked her about the Jesuit missions, and what her opinion of them was. In Lamabaré, I had talked with many people—both Protestants and Catholics—who told me that the Jesuits organized the missions to exploit natives and steal gold to send to Rome. I wanted to know the truth, which I was willing to equate with her own opinion of the Jesuits, because I figured that the gatekeeper of the missions would be the best person to know.

I was surprised and pleased when the history she told me was much different than what I had heard. These huge and productive missions were no exploitative slave plantations as some imagine and slander, she recounted, but instead self-governing and self-supporting communities of natives under the guidance of only a couple Jesuits. These missions really did help the Indians and actually brought the indigenous peoples many good things. Although when I watched The Mission with some of my future-Jesuit friends at Georgetown I thought the Hollywood production idealized too much of the Jesuit-organized native communities, this gal told me that the movie was pretty accurate and that the towns really did work well for everyone’s benefit.

Many of these social goods that the villages provided, manifested in the architecture of a well-to-do culture and the adornments of a Christian lifestyle, could still clearly be seen in the ruins of both Jesuit towns. Although I thought the first ruins I saw were mighty impressive, the ruins in Trinidad were even more extensive and long-standing than those in Jesus. European-style sculptures in the church adorned everything from the statues and baptistery in back to the altar and preaching-stand up front. The bell tower, a complete structure separate from the church, still stood tall and proud watching over all the many Roman-style arches and porticoes of ruins surrounding it.

I left Trinidad in the middle of the afternoon as the sun began to burn through my two applications of sun screen and my lowly hat lost all its good function in the brightness of the blinding light. After buying a souvenir hand-cut stone representation of the Bell tower pencil-holder for only two dollars, I boarded a bus back to Ecarnación where I once again left for Asunción. After a long day of sight-seeing, learning, and imagining, I was tired to the bone and ready to rest. As the bus’s gentle swaying rocked me into a steady and sound sleep, though, I had one more opportunity to pass through the extraordinary Jesuit villages. This time in my dreams, however, I was actually able to see and hear and to touch and smell the bustling eighteenth-century society; to meet and converse with so many dedicated priests whose Holy-Spirit inspired work brought the teachings of the church to a new continent; and to marvel first-hand at the wonder of an entire native people group recently and miraculously converted to Christ.

Encarnacion Exploration, Part 1

Tuesday morning of Holy Week I left for Ecarnación, a cosmopolitan city by Paraguayan standards located a drive that ought to be only about five and half hours away from Asunción. The reason I say that the drive ought to be only five and a half hours, though, is because it took us nearly seven and a half hours to get there. Paraguayan bus companies refuse to leave the terminal until every vacant seat has been filled and then, after they leave for the destination city, they pick up every other person along the way who wants to travel. These unfortunate passengers have the bad luck of standing the entire trip, but I’m certain it’s a well-deserved form of karma punishing them for lost time on the trip.

Be that as it may, the bus to Ecarnación at one point had nearly two and a half dozen extra people crammed into the isle. One family, a group of ten indigenous tribesfolk who boarded the bus without seats, stood out particularly to me. Their skin was a dark but brilliant bronze, their cheek bones stuck out like knucklebones, and their hair was equally black and bowl-cut (except for the oldest son, who had a mullet). Paraguayans generally make fun of these sorts of people by saying that they appear so indigenous that they’re only missing the traditional feathers of native tribespeople to complete the look. The grandma among the bunch, though, really was so indigenous that she even carried around the feathers, for luck.

I normally wouldn’t notice the family, but the grandma, who wore a colorful patterned skirt along with a holey t-shirt through which you could see her bare chest indistinguishable from her bare belly, didn’t have a seat. She made it all the way to the back of the bus where I was, too, without anyone offering her their seat as is the respectful Paraguayan custom. Being the culturally-savvy and Christian traveler that I am, though, I offered this dear old Indian woman my seat and stood up with her many children and grandchildren. After a long while some seats cleared and I was able to sit next to my Indian grandma. She tried speaking to me in Guaraní, the national native Paraguayan tongue, but I had no idea what she was saying. Still, she seemed content to talk to me as long as I shook my head and feigned understanding. At one point, a Coke vendor boarded the bus selling drinks to the thirsty travelers. The native grandma tried to give him her lucky feathers in exchange for a cold Coke, but he laughed and refused.

The bus continued on its interminable ride all day long through the unending Paraguayan countryside, full of ranches and estates and tens of thousands of cows grazing on the grassy plains. The land reminded me of old westerns I’ve seen, and at one point I thought I even recognized the ranch from the show Ponderosa. It was beautiful and open and free, though, and real farm country, too, like there is in western Ohio with big tractors and impressive combines and every other sort of farm implement. I saw real cowboys rounding up a herd of cows, along with every other imaginable form of frontier living.

Around five-thirty in the afternoon we finally arrived to Ecarnación. My purpose for the trip wasn’t to meet an indigenous grandma or see the Paraguayan prairie, though, but instead to visit the Jesuit ruins, about the only must-see thing in Paraguayan guidebooks and an officially-declared United Nations World Heritage Site. Located thirty kilometers outside of Ecarnación, the ruins are the remnants of a great missionized society that the Jesuits organized in the 17th and 18th centuries. Here, the Pope’s priests brought together tens of thousands of native Americans into quasi-European social structures and ways of life. The towns were hugely productive and hugely beneficial to the tribespeople, giving them Western society and Christian values and a share in productive work. A 1986 movie starring Robert Dinero­­, The Mission, offers a unique perspective into the stories of these missions and their ways of life. As the movie also shows, however, the Jesuit project was eventually shut down because the great power held by the Jesuits became a threat to the established imperial governments and the latter’s wanton appetites for colonial exploitation of the native populations.

A ¨Mary¨Time

Monday I continued my grand tour of Paraguay and visited Caácupe, the center of Paraguayan Catholicism and the place where stand both the country’s most famous basilica and the most-venerated statue of Mary, the Virgin of Caácupe. Every year on December 8^th, the Catholic feast celebrating the Immaculate Conception (Mary’s, that is) brings several tens of thousands of the devoted to Caácupe on a pilgrimage by foot. They end up in droves at the basilica, where they ask Mary for all sorts of things and petition her for all varieties of favors to be granted. The town is an important place to understand Paraguayan Catholicism, and, in effect, to understand most of Paragauyan culture, too.

The Monday that I visited, Caácupe was a quiet and simple town in the hilly countryside. The sun shone brightly and the sky was crystal blue, but plenty of green trees provided shade as the bus passed through the hills. The ride took about two hours, but I enjoyed getting out of the city a little bit and seeing the campo. The basilica and surrounding town itself is located on a large hill, so the church’s huge globe-of-a-dome can be seen from miles around. I disembarked right in front of the basilica, and proceeded to scope out the area.

The first thing I noticed surrounding the plaza of the church were the dozens and dozens of santerias, stores selling images and statues of the saints along with all varieties of rosaries, holy bracelets, and Virgin of Caácupe souvenirs. There were even blue plastic water bottles, Aunt Jemina-style, in the form of the Virgin for about $8 a pop. It all reminded me of the scene in the movie Luther, where the famed reformer is sickened by the outrageous sales of religious articles and the vendors who take advantage of unprudent religious fervor. My reaction wasn’t so strong as Martin Luther’s, but I could see that the shopkeepers definitely made a good business off of the pilgrims who come to see the famed statue of Mary.

One thing I did find revolting in Caácupe, however, was the sale of pornography in booths right next to the santerias. In a town where every penny is made by remembering a holy virgin and her purity of life, there was filth and pornographic trash sold side by side with images of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. It made me sick to see how great a fall from its original Christian ideals Paraguay has taken, and how hollow indeed a society’s faith can be to allow such promiscuity to exist right next to and even intermingled with things considered so holy.

I realized too, though, that I’d be a huge hypocrite to say that Paraguayans are the only ones with this problem. After seeing the way good and evil coexisted so easily and so blatantly side by side in the shops of Caácupe, I was convicted that I, too, so often tolerate inner and disgusting sin in my life alongside all the good and outward Christian things. The Apostle James’s poignant question was pointed at me and Paraguay both—“Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs?” The answer, of course, is that “Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.” Good doesn’t come from evil, and evil doesn’t come from good, and they should not and cannot exist together in either Caácupe or my own life.

After walking around town and thinking about these things for a while, I finally entered the bright white basilica, which looks like an extraterrestrial colony set among the natural green and red hues of the city streets and parks. Inside, the walls were painted with an equally intense shade of white, but brilliant colors poured through the beautifully-stained glass windows. I was taken back by the simplicity of the basilica: I had expected to find a complex and gothic church with images of saints and the smells of incense and burning novenas everywhere, but I found a puritanical whitewashed sanctuary with strict benches and signs that prohibited lighting candles. At first, the only thing that told me for sure I was in a Catholic basilica was the papal banner hanging on one side of the altar up front.

Proceeding forward, I gingerly stepped through the church not wanting to disrupt anyone’s prayer or to look too much like a tourist with my camera in hand. As my eyes focused on the area beyond the altar, though, I could plainly see the famous Virgin of Caácupe. She stood on top of a little globe and wore a fancy crown and blue-spangled gown, representing her place in Catholic belief as the queen of saints in heaven and of the living church on Earth. Her hair was light auburn and curly, and her skin a very pale white. Set as the object of veneration among a nearly homogenous Paraguayan people with black hair and darker skin, she seemed very out of place and looked like a cheap European imported representation of the Mother of God. I was disappointed to see that the idea of beauty for Paraguayans, as represented by the Virgin of Caácupe, consisted in what seemed to me to be artificially light skin and European features.

A final thing I noted, then, about the highly-esteemed Virgin of Caácupe was that in real life the statue only stands about three feet tall. I had seen short imitation models of the statue around Asuncion, and I had always thought they were shorter just because they were copies of the real thing. Come to find out, though, up close even the real thing still just looks like a very big doll (sort of like the giant Barbie princesses I used to see in toy stores). Although so short and perhaps childish-looking in physical stature, however, the Virgin of Caácupe looms as a much taller and influential figure in the hearts and minds of Paraguayan Catholics as a guide, help, and succor for them and the nation.

Birthday Bash

It’s Holy Week here and around the world, and in Paraguay that means a week of vacations in remembrance of Jesucristo’s death and resurrection. Nearly everyone from the church is taking advantage of the time to visit relatives, so I, too, have decided to use this holy week for a vacation to see and hear the sights and sounds of the country I normally don’t have the time for. The things I’ve done the past few days will take up a few pages to explain, but I think they’ll give you and me a better understanding of Paraguay and her culture.

The first big day was last Saturday, the 15^th, and coincidentally my birthday, too. Paraguayans make a big deal out of birthdays, and the custom is to greet the birthday boy or girl with kisses and blessings and all sorts of show. Everyone asks for weeks ahead of time what your birthday plans are, and then for days after the fact they ask how it all went down. As for me, I hoped for a quiet birthday without much show, so I decided to visit Pilar, my Georgetown friend serving with a Catholic organization about an hour and a half bus ride away in Itagua.

I got off the bus around eleven in the morning along the main route, where Pilar was excited to greet me and show me around town. Itagua is known as a center for fancy Paraguayan needle and stitchwork, so nearly every local shop has windows full of beautifully colored and elaborately patterned fabrics. The town is far more colonial, and beautiful, too, than most of the neighborhoods I’ve seen in Asuncion. The central church and plaza are still the central parts of town where everyone comes to relax and do business, and the lazy streets are all lined with beautiful columned porticoes and Spanish-looking architecture. While Lambare, the neighborhood where I’m living, feels like New Jersey with its strip malls and endless, poorly-organized neighborhoods, Itagua seems like a beautiful, purposefully-designed New England village with life centered around the church.

Pilar then showed the ministry where she works, a serious neighborhood helps organization run by three serious nuns called the Good Shepherd. The ministry has several arms, each reaching out to embrace and serve the lives of many poor people in Itagua. One seeks to improve the livelihood of exploited women in the needlecraft industry, providing a co-op and network of help through which they can sell their crafts and earn fair wages. Another branch, the one Pilar is involved with, is a sort of microfinance enterprise that loans families money to raise animals and sell at profit, all the while offering the encouragement and training to continue growing a business responsibly. A third ministry, finally, matches poor Paraguayan children with donors from North America to provide the little ones with health care, educational materials, and decent daily meals in the context of a Christian community. I was very pleased to see all the ways these three Catholic sisters, and their three American volunteers, are so wrapped up and tied into serving the community as a witness for Christ. Their work, like the school project in Lambare, is having real good effects on the entire neighborhood around them.

After being showed around the ministry center and nunnery and actually being invited to a second lunch with the Paraguayan nuns, we went to visit a family being helped by the loan/education program Pilar helps coordinate. We went with the purpose of seeing the family’s first pig, Bonita, before they butchered her and sent her carcass off to market. When we arrived, though, we were already too late. The butchering had taken place at 6 in the morning, not at 6 at night as Pilar had thought, so instead of getting to see a real live breathing pig, we were invited to have a bite to eat. The family had kept and cooked Bonita’s fatty skin with some corn flower, making it into a delicious treat along with some boiled mandioca and red wine. Pilar and I were disappointed not to see the pig alive, but not too disappointed, because we left mighty happily with our stomachs full of rich fresh pork.

After our visit with the family who butchered their pig, I returned home to Lambare once again and went to Saturday night church, where everyone greeted me with great emotion and smiles upon my completion of 22 full years. Afterwards, I spent my evening just as I would have liked to: quietly, with a few friends, and with plenty memories of a birthday well-spent in Paraguay.

Chicken Sacrifice... For Real

I saw a sacrificed chicken along the route of my morning run today. It sat bloodily prostrated-- as if someone had squished it with a big foot from above-- on a ceramic saucer at the crossroads two blocks away from my house, just across from the place where yesterday morning a Palm Sunday service was held. It definitely freaked me out a bit, and reminded me that I’m in a place where the spirit world is very present to many people and where things like demon worship and witchcraft still take place.

My neighbors told me recently that the house next door to my own used to be a place of cultic rituals. Today, a Catholic family lives there with one daughter who’s even an evangelical. They told me, too, that they once found goat heads nicely arranged on their own front lawn, left by some angry relatives who also happened to believe in and pronounce evil curses. Bringing in the spirit world to deal with family disputes seems to take sibling rivalry and familial jealousies to an even higher level.

As for me, though, I trust that all these demonic powers have no power of me. I believe that they exist, for sure, and I even fear and respect them, but I also have the faith and trust that the Lord I serve has “disarmed all the rulers and authorities and put them to shame, by triumphing over them in the cross.” I know that, by putting my hope in the death and resurrection of Christ, all the powers of evil and death have lost all their powers over me, so I have nothing to fear as I pass by sacrificed chickens and hear rumors of all sorts of dark things. I plead the protection of the holy cross, the instrument through which, as we remember Christ’s passion this Easter week, God defeated all the dark spirits in the world.

Egg... All over my face

So, I realized yesterday that I’m the worst teacher, and maybe the worst person, in the entire world.
In the second grade class, there’s a girl named of Suely (Sway’-lee) who always has a terrible attitude. While everyone else at the start of class is eager to shake hands as we practice the word of the day, she coldly withdraws and refuses to greet me. While everyone else is doing their best work, she circles whatever answer is convenient and easiest to her without the slightest concern for truth. She’s apathetic and grouchy and hardly participates with the class.
Because of her strange and rude behavior, I responded in like unchristian manner. When she flippantly turned in her workbook, hastily and wrongly worked through, I tossed it back at her and told her to do it correctly. When it seemed like she purposefully chose the wrong answers, I upbraided her time and time again to do her work right. I got frustrated, mad, and was very curt with her: “Why don’t you ever try to do anything right?,” I asked her more than once. “You need to learn to do your best,” I told her angrily several times.
Come to find out, though, Suely doesn’t know how to read.
I wish her teacher would have told me a month and a half earlier-- before I got so upset, that is, and undoubtedly shamed this poor girl so terribly so many times in front of all her classmates. Now, though, I’ve got my big old foot in my mouth and there’s nothing I can do except apologize and be more understanding. Once again I’m humbled, but this time I feel like scum, too. I don’t know everything and I’m so human. Shoot.

I got a taste of some heavenly culture yesterday. There was a free Baroque music concert at the large and locally-well known Concordia Mennonite Church, so I made the special hour and fifteen minute trip for a rare but glorious showing of classical music. I wasn’t disappointed by what I found, either. Although completely out of step with the current Lenten season, the choir performed Johann Sebastian Bach’s Ascension Oratorio, a beautiful piece that portrays through musical composition the full range of emotions experienced by Christ and his disciples as the Lord ascended into Heaven. I myself was carried away in my imagination by the magical arrangement to one of the great concert halls of Europe, or perhaps the National Cathedral that I already know in Washington DC. Either way, the concert, with music some three hundred and fifty years old, was a tremendous gift in a country where pop music and pop everything is ever and always the rage.

It was a great gift to be in a place, too, where I didn’t look or feel so out of place. The Mennonite Church is full of Germans or Germanic-looking people-- folks of tall and proud stock with blonde hair and freckles and crystal blue eyes. There were even a bunch of older men who wore plaid and khakis, like me and my own people from Midwestern Ohio. For once, I was normal and fit in with a group of folks who looked just like me.

On the Paraguayan street, everyone always stares at me because I’m not Paraguayan or mestizo-looking. In the Mennonite church, though, I felt like my presence and my Germanic traits were expected. Rather than being an object of cultural curiosity, I was just a person among other blonde-haired and blue-eyed persons. An older fellow even tried to start a conversation with me in German, to which I responded politely in a mixture of Spanish and English. It might sound strange because I’m a fourth generation American, and I’ve even been wondering since yesterday if I have some secret and primal racism hidden deep within me, but I was really content and really peaceful to be among a bunch of German folk.

I’d be neglecting a very important detail about the concert, too, if I didn’t mention the fact that the most powerful person in all of Paraguay was in attendance. Yes, that’s right-- the American ambassador to Paraguay himself was at the church. There was an entire CIA security detail there to protect him, too: men with cool ear phones, super-sharp suits, and buzzed haircuts that looked like they were ready at a moment’s notice to karate-chop or shoot any one who messed with their American diplomat. They looked very out of place amid the simple and pacifist Mennonite congregation, but they made me feel safe and happy that there were a bunch of other Americans nearby. After the concert, the diplomat was quickly whisked away in a dark black Cadillac with police escort like many I got to see in DC. I never imagined I’d see an American diplomat in Paraguay, and you might even say I came here to escape some of the power and politics that I saw everywhere in Washington, but hey, what can I say? It’s hard to avoid smart and powerful people, and the things that smart and powerful people like to do (like go to Bach concerts in Paraguay), when you seem to yourself to be a smart and powerful person.

After the performance ended and I saw my diplomat leave, however, I was gently humbled and brought back to reality once again. There was no Cadillac escort to take me away, but a big dirty public bus that I waited nearly twenty minutes to catch. I then headed back to my three room, rents-at-less-than-$100/month-with-only-one-fan-and-a-stinky-toilet apartment, and put my folded clothes away in improvised drawers of old fruit crates. The sounds of Bach and high culture continued to swirl around in my mind and lift my spirits to the highest levels of the heavens, but everything else around me testified to the fact that I was very much a part of the lowly earth. Still, on a night like last night, I wouldn’t trade my place for any other in the entire world. I’m pretty sure living my young life on purpose for God, along with all the adventures and difficulties of living it in another country, is about as close to Heaven as I’ll ever get.

Tears Are Pride Leaving the Body

I definitely used to be one of those kids. I’m sure you probably knew me in school—the brown noser; that one dork who always got the A’s in every subject and who always did everything he could to please the adults around him. He was a strange one, for sure: that smart kid who obsessed over his grades and whose sense of self-worth was so strongly tied to good marks and praise from teachers. You probably could never understand when he cried over an A- on his fourth grade math test or when he faked sick in kindergarten to avoid talking to his teacher about a matter that really never was his fault, but for him, these sorts of things were world-shattering horrors.

As for me, though, I actually was that strange elementary school kid. I cried in Mr. Rossi’s class after I got a 92% on a math test (to this day most folks still don’t know that oranges weigh 2 pounds each and that people drink their coffee at 120 degrees Farenheit), and I pretended to have the stomach flu when I didn’t want to talk to my kindergarten teacher about something I was coerced into saying on the school bus (a bad-influence-of-a-friend told me to tell another kindergartener that I wanted to have sex with her. As an innocent five year old, I really had no idea what that meant, but apparently my rotten friend, this girl and her mom, and the school principal did). Yep, I was that smart and suggestible and proud kid. I did my best in everything, was very self conscious about it all, and, when my best wasn’t good enough, I cried.

All of this long personal history puts me in a unique position of empathy with those same sorts of kids that I’m getting to know now that I’m a teacher. There are a few students who try so hard to please me, just like I tried so hard to please my own teachers. There are a few who will do just about anything to get a good mark, even giving up their recess time to study English, just like I tried everything I could to put an extra plus sign after my A. After only three weeks teaching, too, I’ve already seen a few students in my classes cry when, like me in elementary school, things didn’t go there way.

As a teacher who was there in their place at one time not so long ago, I can empathize with them. I know well the feeling of disappointment and self-hatred after even a minor failure. I, like one of my first-time English students who is stressing out over a new foreign language, spent many nights of my innocent youth worrying over classes and whether I’d ever be able to accomplish the tasks set before me. I cried many times at discipline and correction, too, never wanting to be wrong at any time in public. I was easily-humiliated, and easily affected by how others thought of me.

Since that time, though, I’ve learned a lot. I’m a lot more thankful for what I have these days, and I don’t always think about what I don’t have. I’m not so easily moved by what others think is right, and am a lot more confident in what I think is right. This doesn’t change the fact that there are still standards and truths and sometimes I get them very wrong, but I’ve come to know that I’m just a human person and I make mistakes. Slowly, I’m getting better at accepting that. I know, too, that’s it’s a good thing to be humbled every once in a while and to believe that there are a lot of people a lot smarter and a lot better than me.

Knowing my own life and how much I’ve learned through so many painful lessons, I can’t help but be pleased when I see my own students learning these same things. It might seem a little strange that I smile when one of my best students misses recess for misbehavior, but I know they’re learning the important lesson that no one is better than the rule of law. I might seem to be a different sort of teacher when I’m glad to see a very bright student shedding a tear over her bad grade on a quiz, but I’m content to believe that those tears are very important and never shed in vain, demonstrating to her and the world that no one is perfect. Discipline and correction and humble pie certainly makes all of my students and me much better people. No one is perfect or invisible, and we’re all in need of a world of correction and training. Although it’s tough for me and my students to hear sometimes, we’ve all got a long way to go, a lot of humility to learn, and maybe some crying to do along the way, too.

There´s a Fever in the Air

Ain’yu feelin’ it? Thaysuh feevuh en the aye’! Thas raught— Ahhh sayed, uh feevuh!!

A yellow fever, to be exact. All of Paraguay is “feeling” it, too, with some six confirmed cases in the San Pedro district, one case here in a suburb of Asuncion, and sixty-six more people thought to be sick or dead with the tropical disease, although their cases have yet to be confirmed by medical authorities. Thus la fiebre amarilla, or the yellow fever, is all the rage in newspapers, chat around water coolers, and just about every other place where ideas are communicated in this sometimes crazy and sensationalized culture.

This time, though, the people may have good reason to be worried. Yellow fever, like Dengue and malaria and a host of other illnesses, is a virus carried person to person via a species of black and white tiger-striped mosquito. In a tropical environment like this one, it’s not uncommon to wake up with legs and arms covered by these ugly insects. Once infected, though, the virus’s host is stricken down with a terrible fever that lasts for a few days. After this dreadful period of time, the person may seem to feel better and improve on the outside, but the sickness continues to secretly wreak havoc on the inside, causing internal bleeding and eventually multiple organ failure. When the kidneys shut down, the body becomes poisoned and the skin turns yellow; hence the name, “yellow” fever. What makes the fever even more notorious is that once you get it, there’s nothing doctors can do to help you except to alleviate the symptomatic pains. About half the people who get yellow fever die from it.

Usually the disease is confined to remote jungles and extreme boon docks. When I traveled to Egypt, for example, I didn’t need a vaccination to go to Luxor in the center of the country, but had I gone all the way south to Aswan the immunization would have been advisable. Likewise, there was no yellow fever warnings for travel to Paraguay when I was making my plans to come here. Had I decided to go to the tropical Amazon in the wild Brazilian frontier a yellow fever vaccine would have been important, but here in the more civilized Asuncion it was never considered a necessity by me or the U.S. Department of State.

Now that’s all changed, though. I’ve been forwarded two emails from the American embassy saying it’s a good idea to get vaccinated, along with lists of all the places and times in the entire country offering vaccinations. The Paraguayan government, for its part, has done a very impressive job of responding to the health emergency, and already millions of vaccinations have been made available and administered. Nearly all my students along with their families have been vaccinated in just the few past days, and there’s even talk of a vaccination squad coming to Colegio Privado Adonai in the weeks ahead to immunize everyone else.

Some naysayers say that the yellow fever is just another example of a media hype and public frenzy, full of news and talk and gossip but devoid of any real threat to public health. Last year, for example, Dengue fever was all the rage (you can even read about it in Ellen’s blog), but already the public fear of that disease has completely passed. Supporting this point of view, too, is the claim that the men from San Pedro who contracted yellow fellow recently traveled the Brazilian interior where they ate infected monkey jungle meat. Basically, you might say, those guys deserved to get yellow fever.

Still, I’m not taking any chances. Pastor Pedro preached on Sunday that we all ought to take advantage of the free government immunizations, and I’m always one who’s inclined to listen to authority and be easily swept along with the currents of public opinion. Hence I went this morning with the two Caballero boys to get vaccinated at the health clinic in Lambare’.

Outside the clinic’s fences was a carnival-like atmosphere, with vendors selling food and people smiling all around. There were hundreds of people lined up in a regimental-style to confront just as many and similarly-arranged nurses battling to give the injections. We gave our own names and neighborhoods to some young men keeping the registers, and then proceeded to join in with the vaccinating throng. The wait wasn’t long, though, and within a minute or two we all three were holding our arms in after-injection pain.

I’m not sure how official or sanitary the improvised clinic was, but I was careful to watch my nurse take the cap of a new needle and then discard the syringe when she was done. It only took a little pinch and two minutes, and suddenly I was able to count myself as one of the millions recently safeguarded from the terrible wiles of yellow fever. For once, it seems as if the Paraguayan government has been effective, efficient, and especially helpful, even if it is only in giving a sense of security and peace of mind to so many citizens feverish with the fear of a certain yellow fever.

New Schedule

Please forgive me as it’s been a while since I last updated my blog, but life has gotten much fuller for me since classes started two weeks ago. Since you’re all probably wondering what I’m up to, I’ll give you my typical schedule along with some commentary, too.

5:45-7:00: Wake up, have a cup of coffee, read scripture and Lenten passages for the day, pray a while, make my rounds through the house. This is the foundation for my day, so I’m really thankful that I don’t have to be at the school until later (most teachers’ schedules at the school start at 6:30). Once I get my fill of coffee, the Word, and a little bit of the Church Fathers, I’m ready to face whatever might come my way.

7:00-7:30: Run around the big block of our neighborhood a couple times. Shower. I’m trying to stay in shape, running off all the extra carbs I get from too much bread and rice and noodles. Showering is always a good idea after running in the tropical morning heat, when temperatures even this early can be in the mid to high humid 80s.

7:30-8:30: Get dressed. Plan out and review my lessons for the day. Go to school. A good lesson plan = a good teacher. I have four plans to make every day: 2nd, 3rd, and 5th grades, along with conversation classes on topics of my choice with 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grades.

8:30-8:50: Round up all the kids on recess who misbehaved in English class the day before so they can sit with me on the bench and serve their punishment time. I’m pretty strict and am not afraid to discipline the kids, who can be really unruly. The third time I tell a kid to be quiet or sit down in class, it’s already too late—they’ve lost some of their recess time the next day. I like the system, as it gives me the chance to spend quality time with misbehaving students.

8:50-9:30: Mill about the school socializing and making last-minute class preparations. I think parents and students like to see the English teacher out and about. I’ve heard a lot of moms and dads especially like Adonai for all the North Americans who come to visit and teach.

9:30-10:10: 2nd Grade. About 18 eight-year olds who are still learning how to control themselves. Most respect and maybe even fear my authority a little bit, but some don’t want to listen to or do a single thing. About half the class time is getting the class under control.

10:10-10:50: 3rd Grade. About 22 nine year olds, several who are related to one another, in one giant chaos of a class. This group definitely receives the brunt end of my disciplinary wrath. I’ve removed four of the worst students from the class (three of whom are cousins from the church) to write sentences outside the room, and more than half of the class has lost recess time to me. About 2/3 of the hour is spent getting the class under control.

10:50-11:30: 5th Grade. About 21 eleven-year olds who are much more fun and interesting than the younger kids, but still need correction and guidance often. They can take notes on their own and are already well on their way to becoming young adults, so it’s usually a pleasure staying with them.

11:30-12:10: Leave the school. Check my email. Eat lunch.

12:10-12:50: Weekly conversation class with the older grades. Some of the classes I like, some I don’t. Some are at really awkward and annoying ages, and some I’d like to consider my friends. All these classes consist of me speaking loudly and clearly in English, and I nearly pass out for all the breath I’ve lost in the tropical heat. Right now we’re doing a unit on American cities.

12:50-1:50. Leave the school. More lunch. Take a short nap.

1:50-2:30. Round 2. 2nd Grade. A lot smaller than the morning class- around eight kids. I’m still really sleepy from my siesta and it’s really hot in the middle of the afternoon. I and the kids just want to sleep, but it’s much easier to learn because the kids are so much quieter. As with all my afternoon classes, I often run out of things to do.

2:30-3:10: 5th Grade. Only 10 kids, mostly pretty good and laid-back. By this time, I’m not so sleepy anymore. The young bachelorette teacher of this class always smiles at me as she leaves the classroom in a wow!-she’s-got-a-great-smile-and-is-really-pretty-too sort of way.

3:10-4:10. Rest from classes. Tutor Caballero boys in the library. Brandon and Gabbie go to an all-English-speaking Christian school in Asuncion, so I help them out with their math in the English language. A young guy from the church recently asked me to help him with his math homework in Spanish, but I had no idea how to explain it in English. Tutoring in English brings down at least one barrier to understanding.

4:10-4:50: 3rd Grade, last class of the day. Although I’m nearly exhausted, this class is a lot of fun. A huge variety of personalities in only eight students. You might say a pray for one of them—Santiago--, who really acts as if he’s possessed by some demon spirit of disobedience and has missed school the past week for his actions. He scares the girls in the class.

4:50-Evening: Home. Home at last, home at last. Thank God, I’m home at last. I’m learning a lot from teaching, am enjoying it immensely, and am seeing the HUGE impact teachers can have on students’ lives, but it’s really tiring and I’m always thankful to have made it through another day.

Home

I finally got a space to call my own. For those of you who didn’t know, before I moved last week I had been living in the church for two months. I had my own place there in a classroom with all the necessities for living- a bed, a refrigerator, and even an oven. I was just like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, you might say, except I didn’t ring any bells, my back’s somewhat straighter, and I’m much better looking. Be that as it may, living at the church was a place where I was able to get to know the church community well—almost too well, for sure. Throughout the summer months there were always people there, and moments of privacy and quietude were few and far between. Luckily, I had two Argentinean brothers from the church keeping me company for safety and sanity’s sake, but it was still a time of much frustration in my life for the complete lack of boundaries between personal and public appearances.

The problem on my part was neither financial nor a lack of desire to move out. I’ve received much support to be able to rent a very decent place for Paraguayan standards, and all summer long it nearly killed me that I was bumming off the church and without a place of my own. I felt needy, dependent, and very incapable as a missionary. So intense was my desire to leave the church that I spent two months searching every neighborhood within the distance of a twenty minute walk from the church for a place to rent. I went out for hours at a time in the severe Paraguayan heat with my thermos of water in hand, barely able to communicate in Spanish but, by some amazing grace of God, conveying to so many dozens of people that I needed a place to live. The problem, however, was that these same so many dozens of people responded with blank stares and empty answers when I asked them if there was any place available nearby. For the life of me, I couldn’t find any place to live. There were several close calls, but always the opportunities closed before I could do anything and I always left empty-handed. I think I knew a little bit how Jesus felt when he said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Part of the problem may have been the long list of requirements and special conditions that the search required. Safety was a priority for me and all my American things, and I wanted a place that was close enough to walk to the church. I have the privilege of staying with two other guys from the congregation, so I needed an apartment that could house three guys comfortably along with all the visitors that come on the weekends and on missions trips. Finally, to stay on budget, I needed all this for under $100 every month. I often found places that met three or four of these conditions but seemed woefully lacking in the fourth or fifth area. There was a nice apartment that was cheap and close and safe, for example, but where the landlady only wanted two people to stay. There was another house that was big and cheap and close, but that was located in a rough part of the neighborhood and had no fence. Everywhere I went to look, I only met tons of dead ends.

Throughout the process, I got more and more discouraged. As the start of school year approached and my deadline for moving out of my classroom drew near, I thought for certain I’d be out on the street or sharing a small, sleeper-style room with a friend who was already renting. I was upset, because I knew that as a missionary I ought to have a suitable place to have people over and to be hospitable. Like my mom, one of my gifts is hospitality, and I knew I’d be nearly broken if I couldn’t exercise it. I also knew for certain that God wanted me to share my life with others, and that He certainly could provide a suitable place if He wanted to. The God I serve is, after all, the same God who said, “Every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.” My request wasn’t so big as a thousand cows or all the animals in the jungle, either. No; I just wanted a little place to live.

Thankfully, many people continued to encourage me in the search for an apartment and in my faith, too. Karen reminded me time and time again that God often works in last-minute ways to provide for all our needs, and does this to build up our faith in Him. I was skeptical and upset with God, but couldn’t argue with her proof: she reminded me of what God had done (and of what I had personally and recently seen) for the school by providing all the monies for the construction project just a few days before work crews from the States arrived, and also for the $17,000 in student scholarship money just a few days before we had to notify families as to who would and who would not receive the necessary help. The theme, she said, was this: God is good, knows our needs, and we’ve just got to trust that He’ll work things out in the end; even when it’s the extremely last-minute end of things.

Today, although I don’t want to admit it, I have to testify that Karen was right. I’m sitting in the miracle of a perfect apartment this morning that has two huge bedrooms, a bathroom, a nice kitchen along with a back patio and lawn, high safe fences, is within a two minute walk of the church, and rents for only $70 a month. I couldn’t be happier. A week ago Thursday a lady from the church told me about her own miracle: she had been praying for a cheaper and better place than what she had, and God had mercifully provided her family with the stewardship of a large home. They had heard of the opportunity on the radio and, out of 200 applicants, were chosen to house-sit. They would be vacating their apartment quickly the next day, so she wondered if I was still looking for a place to rent. I sure was, I said, since school started next Wednesday and the teacher whose room I occupied was awfully antsy to start decorating. Thankfully, that same day this kind lady referred me to her landlord and by the next day she was packing to up move out. Long story short, the landlord offered me his miraculous place, I signed the papers, and now I have a contract to live here through January.

Thus, God came through and provided in a wonderful way for me. When I was unable do anything on my own with two months worth of effort, God did everything for me in a single day. When I wanted to compromise safety or budget or convenience to rent a place quickly and imperfectly, God provided everything for me in abundance and perfection and while also teaching me mighty lessons in patience and waiting on Him. I’m still not certain why it took so long for me to learn the lesson, but I’ve seen once again how God can work in the last minute in superrich ways. My faith has been grown through no choice of my own, and I can see for certain that, “for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Tell Mother I´ll Be There

I went to an Ash Wednesday service last night in a grand old decaying Asuncion church. The magnificent ceilings had once been painted sky-blue, but more recently had begun to chip off into a yellow oblivion. A couple pigeons flew around in the peaks of the cross-shaped edifice, as if to remind the church-goers that the service would be held partly outdoors for the bad shape of the crumbling architecture. In fact, it seemed like the ancient cement pillars were the only things that kept the entire ceiling from falling down. Yes, the roof was definitely rotten; but I felt safe because the mighty columns were firmly planted and in spectacular shape.

Although the church building appeared as if its term had nearly expired, the congregation inside was full of life, warmth, and the always-renewed vigor of ancient tradition. I had visited the place another time before, so I recognized a few of the congregants from the earlier trip. Among these stood out to me a group of older mothers, grandmothers, and aunts who sat at the front of the church. This mixture of women, some looking like they came from high Paraguayan society and others appearing as if they came from simpler ways of life, met together ahead of the church service to pray. Some were bent over and nearly-crippled with advanced osteoporosis, while others were able to hold their heads high and dignified when not bowing in prayer. Some wore incompatible outfits of gray and green paisley skirts with red and orange flower-patterned shirts, while others matched perfectly with their nice peach makeup and form-fitting cream dresses. Nearly all wore sleeveless shirts for the heat and had sagging arms because of their age, although on some arms the loose skin was much heavier than others.

What impressed me about these women was not their appearance, though, but rather their devotion to intercession and prayer. Most of these women come every day to the church to pray for their loved ones, and I have to believe that their daily practice is an extension of their motherly instincts to watch out and always be concerned for the physical, emotional, and especially spiritual well-being of their families. Their daily prayer vigil testifies to fact that they care, that they love, and they are seeking true happiness through eternal salvation for their husbands, children, and relatives. During a special part of the service, personal prayer requests were read before the congregation. Among these petitions were mentioned the names of many unsaved family members, undoubtedly wayward sons and daughters who weighed so heavily on the hearts of their devoted mothers.

In the congregation that meets in Lamabare, too, there is a group of women that prays every day of the month for specific needs in the church. As one of the missionaries, I’m privileged to be counted among a prayer request in the monthly cycle. It’s a comfort—a real comfort—to know that there are nearly a dozen women from the congregation praying for me. I really believe that the prayers of all these women are efficacious and important, both for the salvation of their families and the well-being of the church. I know for certain that I’m where I’m at today because so many women—from my own dear mom to my aunts to my spiritual mothers from the church—have taken the time to intercede on my behalf. I know, too, that these women are just like the pillars supporting the crumbling church I visited: as long as they’re standing spiritually tall and praying firmly, the rest of the church, however badly it looks, will keep on standing, too. As long as there are a few good women praying, I trust and believe that families will continue to come to know the Lord and the Church will continue to advance as the Kingdom of God is grown.

Un Poco Mas Gordo...

I got my haircut yesterday evening, and it’s really short: soldier short, you might say. Although I’m serving in a church with pacifist roots, I definitely look like a military man with my nearly buzzed-off head. If I had been a member of the ACCA church a century ago, they probably wouldn’t have accepted me with my haircut’s connotations, along with those of my great-grandfather’s generation and their Eastern European moustaches.

Whenever I get my hair cut so drastically, people always feel free to tell me how they feel about it. In the States, there’s been a long-standing debate amongst my lady friends as to whether I look better with my hair really long or with my hair really short. I’ve always taken their opinions seriously, but for laziness I’ve always alternated between one extreme or the other (except for when my hair is still growing and I’m just right in the middle, that is). I always disappoint some when I cut my hair and please others when I do, so I’ve learned the past few years that I can’t please everyone.

Usually folks, regardless of whether they like me looking more like the Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale or the Heath Ledger in Ten Things I Hate about You, react with surprise to my new-do and tell me how much different I look after the change. Most of the time I receive comments about how much younger I look without my not-so-nicely-trimmed sideburns. One government professor told me last year I looked like a sixteen year old without my shag. Every time that people do remind me that I got my “hair cut,” though, I correct them and tell them that “no, I didn’t get my hair cut, I got my hairs cut.” I think my dad’s the one who taught me the joke, so he always says “hairs cut” the first time. The joke, unfortunately, doesn’t translate into Spanish. I’ve tried.
Anyways, this morning at school I got a comment about my haircut from a Paraguayan that I’d never heard before. Pastor Baldo, the school chaplain, told me that he liked my haircut, smiled, and then said it made me look “un poco mas gordo,” a little more fat. Now, I admire and respect Pastor Baldo a lot—he’s the shepherd for a congregation of extremely poor Christians in a terrible part of Asuncion, and has no doubt seen and perhaps known as much poverty as Mother Theresa-- but we’re not really that close. It wasn’t like my brother or best friend joking and saying that my haircut made me look fat (which I’d expect them to do): no, it was like a respected pastor saying to me that I looked chubbier without my longer hair.

I’d always suspected shorter hair made my face look rounder, but that’s not my point. The point is that here in Paraguay, it’s perfectly normal for people—for pastors—to come right out and say what they think about your or mine or his or her appearance. There aren’t so many taboos about hurting people’s feelings, especially in regards to body image. When describing and distinguishing people one from another, for example, it’s common to call them by their physical characteristics. On the soccer field, the chubby-kid-of-whom-know-one-knows-his-real-name is simply called “el gordo,” the masculine fatty one. When visitors come from other countries, they often get nicknames too, like “la flaca,” the skinny feminine one, or “la gordita,” the feminine diminutive fatty one. There’s a restaurant downtown, which undoubtedly would cause much trouble in the U.S., called “La Negrita,” the feminine diminutive black one, with an antebellum cartoon of a black woman for its Ronald McDonald. Here, however, the restaurant’s name bothers now one. People are known by their physical characteristics, and that’s just that. Pastor Baldo thus meant no harm in saying I looked fatter, because that’s just what it seemed like to him and that’s just what he wanted to say.

So, if you ever visit Paraguay and someone tells you that you’re skinny or fat or short or tall or black or white, don’t take it personally—it’s a cultural thing. It’s different, for sure, but it’s helped me not to take myself or my body image too seriously. I’ve been maintaining the same weight and skin-color since I’ve gotten here, but there’s always plenty of people to tell me I’m getting skinnier or fatter or lighter or darker. In the end, I reckon people can tell me their opinions and it doesn’t really matter all that much to me. I’m just gonna keep on living like I do, growing out my hair and then cutting it back like I do, and doing my best not to let anyone else get in the way.

Teacher Culture

Well, it’s official: I’m a teacher. I know I shouldn’t be so surprised, as nearly my entire purpose for coming to Paraguay was to teach English, but this realization caught me a bit off-guard last week. You see, I went to my first teacher’s conference, a cultural experience in and of itself, and what you might call my own personal initiation into the world of teaching. The conference, a short bus ride away in another suburb of Asuncion, was organized for teachers from Christian schools all over the country by a Christian book publisher. It was held in a mega-grocery store supercenter with several conference halls perfect for lectures and workshops and practicals.

My first impression when I arrived was how out-of-place I looked in line waiting for my conference materials. There were only a dozen or so men out of a dozen hundred or so participants, and of these I was easily the tallest and blondest, too. In a game of which-one-doesn’t-belong-with-the-rest, I was the easy-to-find and sure-fire answer to the not-so-difficult puzzle. Although I looked and felt so strange among a group of so many Paraguayan women, though, there was something quietly reassuring about being in a group of teachers. I felt relaxed, like things would be taken care of, and that I’d learn something from all the nice folks around me if I cared to. I felt like I was at home once again in elementary school amongst a group of mentors just like my own dear teachers of school-years past. I’m pretty sure I even saw in the crowd my own first-grade teacher, Mrs. Roush, alongside many precious other educational characters that have had such a great impact on my life.

I realized, too, that the looks, attitudes, and even the personalities of teachers transcend cultures and countries. The relaxed-but-professional clothing, the cloth tote bags, and even the uniquely teacher haircuts of these Paraguayan educators proved they shared a common culture with their North American counterparts. The way they spoke one with another, their friendly glances, and their proud, but not too proud, postures betrayed the fact that they were all educators. The teachers’ interest in learning new methods of teaching and excitement at prospects for creativity in the classroom, finally, showed me, too, that they were all of a very special and unique sort.

The main-hall lecture consisted in the recounted history of the many psychologies of modern learning, starting with Pavlov’s behavorialism and ending with the more recent constructivist approaches to education. The smaller lectures proved even less inspiring, with more-or-less demagogic professors teaching common-sense methods for classroom instruction while at the same time always lamenting the quality of education in the Paraguayan school system. I had the chance to attend one such lecture on story-telling within the classroom, and ended up leaving some hour and a half later with very few practical things that I could put to use as an itinerant English teacher. Despite the impracticality of the conference, however, I’m very satisfied that I had the chance to attend. I had the double privilege of being invited to a mysterious and obscure “teacher in-service-day” while also being initiated into their top-secret culture; a culture, I learned, that transcends even the boundaries of language, frontier, and time.

Penny Bargains

I can remember more than a decade and a half ago when my family started building a big old garage at our home on Blake Road. My Dad, the mason in charge, put a cornerstone dated 1990 in an especially visible place out front. Before he laid the special brick, though, he gave us kids the chance to put a real shiny new penny in the mortar for good luck to go along with whatever wish we could make. Most kids, I’m sure, would ask for a bike or a puppy or maybe summertime all year long. For me, though, I could think of nothing more important to wish for than the health of Grandma Donahey, the mom of my mom. She had been sickly for as long as I could remember and more recently hospital and bed-ridden, and as her young grandchild I was overwhelmingly burdened for her well-being. And so, with the fully-trusting and fully-given-over heart of a five-year-old, I made a secret but powerful prayer for the health and life of my grandma.


With my lucky penny firmly cemented in place and my wishful hope steadfastly determined in mind, I figured that God had to do something for me and my grandma. Surely He could see how important my shiny piece of metal was and would know, too, how important the wish was for my soft and vulnerable heart. I hadn’t asked for anything selfish, after all, but instead sought so earnestly something so good for someone I loved so much. With such pure motives, surely God had to act in an amazing and incredible way, perhaps making my grandma breathe all right again without oxygen tubes so that she could get up and dance around and even play with me like other grandmas did.


Needless to say, my heart was broken and continued to break as Grandma’s health continued to decline. She never did get any better and never could really play with me at all, and ended up passing away a short two years or so after I made my wish. Although my lucky penny was still part of the garage’s foundation in 1992, I was suddenly seven years old and without a single grandma in the world.


I think I learned then a mightily powerful lesson: God doesn’t play by my rules. He doesn’t have to heal people because of lucky pennies, and He doesn’t have to change things because I feel a certain way about them. He doesn’t have to relieve physical suffering because it makes me feel bad, nor when making His decisions does He have to honor my innocent pleas for the well-being of those I care about. The world can be rough, I found out early-on, regardless of all my best wishes and most ardent prayers otherwise. Sometimes what God decides to allow just doesn’t make sense to me.


I had no idea, and I still don’t have any idea, of what God intended by allowing both of my grandmas to die so young. Like Job, though, I figured out that “God can do all things, and that no purpose of His can be thwarted.” Also like Job, I learned that in my pride and foolishness I had demanded too much of God in the healing of my grandma. I had tried giving a mandate to the All-Mighty, and received back for it a lot of nothing that I had required. As His creature, I had told my Creator what was best for my grandma and for me and what He had to do for her on my account, but I had “hid counsel without knowledge and uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”


All of which brings me back to today. You see, I’ve got a new shiny penny in my life and a new unselfish request, too. My new lucky coin is the time I’m spending here in Paraguay—a year of my life doing good and exciting things for others. It’s bright and nice and new and impressive, too. My new unselfish request is pretty moving, also -- a constant burden and heartfelt prayer for the reunification of my family. Like before, it’s a pressing and hard situation that requires healing and life and the grace of God. Like before, though, once more I’m realizing all over again that my shiny penny isn’t working.


Before I left for Paraguay, I let God know of some pretty important conditions for my going: namely, that although there were so many worries in my family at home (shouts of anger from siblings, whispers of divorce between parents, wailings of fearful abandonment from a bed-ridden ailing grandfather who hasn’t made a good confession of faith in decades) I’d still go to Paraguay if He could make sure to take care of them all. I’d go away, give up plenty of comforts with all my ambitions, and lay a fresh coin in the mortar so that He’d have to fix up familiar things in healing broken hearts, putting back together messed-up relationships, and bringing back to faith those who’d left it. I really believed God owed it to me.


Now that some time’s past and things haven’t gotten any better back in Ohio, though, I’m in a hard place where I’m learning again that it’s awfully foolish of me to try to tell God what He has to do. All the expectations of everything I ever imagined being fixed in my family have been shattered, just like the time when I put a lucky penny under the cornerstone of a new garage, made a wish for my grandmother’s health, and then she died. I feel as if I’m losing all over again a certain child-like innocence to my faith (or is it presumption?), as if my expectation for practical graces at work in the world around me are completely unfounded and, as Job says, without knowledge. I know it know it sounds like a sad story, but really, who am I to question why God can’t be paid in pennies?

Visit to the Campo

I took the chance this weekend to visit San Pedro, a town six hours away in the campo—countryside-- where a couple decades ago was born the Apostolic Christian Church in Paraguay. I traveled with Juan, Oscar’s nephew, and stayed the weekend at his grandmother’s house, where I was welcomed to the Caballero homestead with incredible hospitality in the midst of immense pastoral tranquility. Some general observations and pieces of my trip to share with you all:

I saw some Mennonites in the Asuncion bus terminal. There’s a large Mennonite population here, much like there is in very own Ohio, who work as farmers and practice their steadfast pacifism in the north of the country. The lady Mennonites I saw wore traditional bonnets, dresses, and stockings, while the men wore overalls and simple button-up shirts. Since they work so hard, the Mennonites here are very productive and very rich, too. One Mennonite lady I saw reminded me so much of my own very Germanic-looking Great-Grandma Kemp that I couldn’t stop staring at her.

There are two bus lines with similar schedules that go to San Pedro. The bus line we took traveled through the night, leaving around 10 and arriving around 4 in the morning. It was the nicer bus line, with air conditioning and very few stops. The cheaper bus line suffered a terrible crash a week ago where everyone on board was killed, and some were even decapitated. The bus drivers were drinking and making merry in the New Year festivities and not paying enough attention to the route, which is currently being paved for the first time and is very dangerous.

We were welcomed to our destination at four a.m. with big hugs from Juan’s grandma, Abuelita (little grandma). She was just getting up for the day, and resolutely gave me her bed to sleep in for the rest of the morning. She wouldn’t have it back the entire weekend, either, insisting Saturday night that I have her bed to myself while she shared an old mattress on the ground with her daughter. Abuelita lives on her own with a few granddaughters, surrounded by the smaller homesteads of her now well-grown children. She keeps a tremendously large garden that looks like it ought to be taken care of with a tractor, when really it is all tilled and planted and weeded and harvested by hand or with the help of a horse every once in a while. She has fiercely bright blue eyes—an extreme rarity in Paraguay—and a wise old face permanently wrinkled with so much wisdom and compassion. I’m not sure if she knew I was coming ahead of time, but she welcomed me nonetheless as a grandson to her home. We were hardly able to talk together, as she nearly strictly speaks the indigenous Guarani tongue, but the welcome she communicated to me was far stronger than words in any language could express anyways.

Saturday we traveled to the river about a half an hour away to buy some fresh fish to carry back to Asuncion. We took motorcycles, the cheaper and easier mode of transportation than bulky autos. I sat behind a Caballero uncle as we sped through the beautiful Paraguayan countryside on a nicely paved road. I don’t know much about Che Guavera, I certainly don’t like Communism, and I’ve never seen the movie Motorcycle Diaries, but I felt a certain connection to the young South American rebel leader as we passed freely along through the fields of sandy red soil. We didn’t wear helmets, either, which is another Paraguayan (and dangerous, too!) tradition, reaching speeds of 55 miles per hour with our heads completely unprotected. Once, when I thought we were going way too fast, I purposely lifted my head up a little and lost my cap. It was a good excuse to stop and slow down, and I didn’t even have to show my driver that I was a really scared and sissy American.

Saturday night we went to a recently chipped-off-the-old-AC-block church service meeting outside of a home in San Pedro. The church there (the first in Paraguay!) has recently gone through a very painful division, splitting families down the middle and a small community into two even smaller groups. Being associated a tad more with the new faction, we visited their weekly service on Saturday. I thought the freedom and informality of the service was beautiful and certainly like the early church in its original wooly form, but I thought how terrible it was that the foundation for starting a new church had to be built all over again because of human divisions and arguments. Sunday morning, then, we went to the old and original church. We were welcomed there, too, and as the new North American missionary I did my best to show that I wanted no part in any factionalism by giving a small offering for the very-public tithe.

Sunday afternoon I drank pure milk straight from the cow’s teats for the first time ever. It was warm and buttery and delicious, and I thought how terrible it is that some Americans are thrown into prison for selling such a wonderful delicacy. Cows here are a sure and solid investment, and the number of cows a person owns reflects just how much power and wealth they have, too. I’m thinking of buying a cow as an investment of sorts, one to be managed by friends from the church who live in the countryside and one that reproduces itself every year or so. Then, when my herd reaches twenty or so, I can sell 19 at great profit and start all over again.

We returned back home on Sunday night, nicely fattened by a weekend of great food and leisure. At times the campo life was boring, but it was always beautiful and full of relationship. There were family and friends and time and visits and everything else in the world that’s important, although so many commodities of modern life were missing. There was sunshine and stars and flowers and cows and little horse-drawn carts and so many other things to give so much pleasure to a tecnoeducadvanced North American. I really took a great deal of delight and rest from my short time in San Pedro and hope to return soon to see and take in even more of the simple country life.

A Nice Visit

A typical Paraguayan visit:

Sunday, 10:30 am: Invitation received. The Señora: “Why don’t you come over to our house sometime this week?” Me: “Sounds Great. How about lunch on Tuesday? How does 11:30 sound?” The Señora: “11:30? Way too late. Let’s make it 10:00.” Me: “OK.”

Tuesday, 10:40 am: Having completely forgotten my lunch appointment, I realize I’m now over 40 minutes late. I make a quick call to the Señor. Me: “Senor, I’m really sorry I completely forgot about lunch today. Is it ok if I come over now?” The Señor: “Sure, no problem. Our schedule is completely open. Come on over.”

4:15-4:30: The Señora insists I have some of her pudding, which is still two hours from being chilled enough to eat properly. I eat it warm anyways, and it’s very delicious anyways, too. I say many thank-yous and then begin to leave. The Señor and Señora invite me back again another time to spend an entire day visiting with them—a day when, as they kindly say, I won’t have to worry about putting any of the tools away.

11:10-12:45: Approaching the house, I ask permission to enter and am welcomed inside. The Señor, after realizing that I’d be late, has begun to repair the refrigerator door on the kitchen table. After 16 years (as long as they’ve been married), the refrigerator is coming apart. I am offered an egg and vegetable tart to eat so that I’m plenty full before we start to share terreré together. You’re never supposed to take terreré on an empty stomach. We pass time together making small talk as the Señor, shirtless, fixes the refrigerator. The Señora starts preparing lunch only after I arrive.

12:45-1:00pm: Lunch is ready. We have a typical Paraguayan meal: noodles with a hamburger-tomato-vegetable-potato sauce, cabbage salad with cut up potatoes and canned corn and mayonnaise and vinegar, and bread. We wash it all down with pineapple juice, made in the blender with one pineapple, some water, and a ton of sugar. No one talks during the meal. Paraguayans know how to eat, and when they do, there isn’t much chatter. The food is good. As usual, I ask for seconds, even though I’m full, to show how much I appreciate the meal.

1:00-1:15: The Señora asks me if I’m tired. I say not really, we fail at communication, and she offers me her son’s bed to take a nap while she does the dishes. Content always to accept the offer of a nap, I oblige and lay down. Since it’s so hot, the nap is short but good.

1:15-1:45: I wake up and go back to the kitchen, where the Señora questions how long my nap was. I tell her I feel great and refreshed, and then I go watch her sons play soccer on the family computer in the Señor and Señora’s bedroom. The Señor, trying to take a nap, is woken up by my entrance. Feeling like it’s the polite thing to do, he sits up and starts to chat with me. The soccer on the screen is in terrible slow-motion. The computer is too outdated for the fast-paced program.

1:45-3:00: The Señor leaves the room, off to take a nap somewhere else. The sons show me pictures on the computer of the church and camps and other special events from their life. We sip terreré. The Señora comes in sometimes from the kitchen, where she is preparing pudding, to chat.

3:00-4:15: I leave the bedroom and go out on the back porch to sit down. By this time, the Señor’s nap has ended and the Señora’s pudding is all cooked. We sit under the shade of a mango tree and sip terreré again, passing time together and talking. Feeling like the afternoon lunch has been a long and good one, thinking I’d like to check my email back at home, and not wanting to take up any more time of my gracious hosts, I politely tell them I’ve got to put away the tools I was using before I came and must return to the school before the room that holds the tools is locked for the day. The excuse to leave is not a lie, but it’s pretty lame.

4:15-4:30: The Señora insists I have some of her pudding, which is still two hours from being chilled enough to eat properly. I eat it warm anyways, and it’s very delicious anyways, too. I say many thank-yous and then begin to leave. The Señor and Señora invite me back again another time to spend an entire day visiting with them—a day when, as they kindly say, I won’t have to worry about putting any of the tools away.

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

The New Year

The New Year celebration came and went here without much fuss on my part. New Year’s Eve was spent at the church with about a dozen good friends from the Shurance and Caballero families along with a few folks from the church and kids from the community. It rained, which made me feel a little sad and homesick, but which also made watching some of the younger folks play soccer on a wet slippery field really entertaining. We waited until after midnight to have the best and latest New Year’s meal of sausage, roast chicken, mandioca, potato salad, rice salad, tomato and cucumber salad, and soda. As on Christmas, the city lit up at midnight with fireworks as so many thousands of amateur pyros lit off so many tons of explosive gun powder.

People say that every new year is a good chance to reflect on the year past and to also wonder at the year ahead. Not wanting to forsake any tradition, I’ve been doing some reflecting of my own. Last year at this time, I was at the Urbana Missions Conference in St. Louis wondering where in tarnation I’d be today. Needless to say, after much prayer and preparation, I’ve arrived here in Paraguay, ready to serve and learn. God was incredibly faithful in getting me ready to go and securing in my heart the desire to come here, and I’m so thankful for the certainty He’s placed in my heart that here is where I needs be for now.

And as for next year? Just like one year ago, once again only Heaven knows where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing when the calendar strikes 2009. With my family in turmoil at home and friends in places all over the States (neigh, even all over the world), plenty of things I’d like to do and experiences I’d like to have (not the least of which is finally settle down a little bit and maybe get a job, or wife), and an open heart and mind for plenty of tasks, I really could end up anywhere doing any thing.

I once thought that after high school life choices would be easier and easier to make, with certain pathways becoming more and more clear every day ( ie. get a Georgetown political science degree and girlfriend, go to law school and make her my fiancé, find a job and take her as a wife.) Needless to say, the way I imagined things has turned out much differently, and it seems to me today as if I’m right at the beginning again with so many possibilities and so many choices.

I don’t complain, though. To have so many options is a unique and beautiful gift, and something I don’t ever want to take for granted. Still, however, it’s a tough gift at times, and one that builds up my faith in the work God’s going to do in my life tomorrow as I keep on trying to do the work He’s got for me today. Thankfully, I know some things for sure that I have to do every day, since I know “what [is] good; and what doth the LORD require of me, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.¨ When it’s all said and done, perhaps the best thing I can do is to not let too much of me or own thinking get in the way of this necessary way of life. After all, “A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps..”

Not Quite Silent Night

Christmas in Paraguay passed much differently than any I’ve experienced before. Since the holiday takes place in the middle of summer and vacations, the fiesta turned out to be like a strange mix between the Fourth of July, Mardi Gras, and perhaps a little Christmas, too.

Our festivities began on Monday, Christmas Eve. We worked only half a day on the school construction, and then took off the rest of the afternoon to celebrate our Savior’s birth. Eric, Joel, and I took a bus to Mercado Cuatro, a shopping bonanza of clothing, artisan, electronic, jewelry, juice, and Paraguayan shops. The place was crowded and still open even at four in the afternoon on Christmas Eve; our bus line, too, would go until its normally-scheduled final 8 o’clock round. The area was crowded, as usual, but the celebrations for Christmas seemed to already have begun. Corner eateries with grilled sausages and roasted chickens and boiled mandioca and fresh juice and cold beer were full of merry revelers, drinking and eating to celebrate the human birth of God. Strangely enough, people weren’t rushing about buying gifts. Paraguayans give their gifts on January 6th, the day that tradition celebrates the arrival of the three wise men to the Nativity scene, with perhaps a more biblical foundation for gift-giving than the Santa Clause myth in North American countries.

Anyways, being North Americans and feeling like we had to buy something in the rush and bustle of Christmas Eve, we picked up some gifts for family and friends at home then went back to Lambare. Early evening, Eric and I had the chance to visit another church for their Christmas Eve service. Since Christmas Eve is usually celebrated with so much family and church services are usually so poorly attended on La Noche Buena, the Apostolic Church in Lambare gave up on Christmas Eve services a few years back. Thankfully, we found another church with a full service and thus remembered the Lord’s birth in grand liturgical style.

The later evening we passed with Ben, Vivi, and Joel at their place. We enjoyed a few rounds of cards, then had a full 10:30 pm meal of stuffed chicken, mashed potatoes, bean salad, chipa guazu, tomato-cucumber salad, and plenty of soda. Ben even made a celebratory cheesecake with cream cheese brought down straight from the U.S.. In the end, it was a perfect mix between the hot Christmas dinners of cold North America and the cool Navidad suppers of hot South America.

Around 11:45 the Paraguayans really started to celebrate Christmas. Fireworks started going off all around us, breaking up the night with the loud bangs of firecrackers and screaming whistles of bottle rockets. The neighborhood sounded off like a battle zone, with the noises of sharp fighting nearby and more muffled conflict in the distance. The blasts were loudest at midnight, when it seemed as if every Paraguayan household was suddenly setting off its entire arsenal of gunpowder in a moving salute to Jesus’ birth. The Nativity was celebrated with much noise and great joy, a fantastic show of Paraguayan social and religious unity in Christmas tradition.

After enjoying a bottle of traditional Paraguayan champagne-like cider, we all headed very-tired to bed at around 2:00 in the morning. It was the latest, and certainly most lively, Christmas I’ve ever enjoyed. Although many Paraguayans spend the holiday in excessive revelry, I think I learned a new colorful way to celebrate Christmas and found something good to hold on to for a lifetime.