Home at Last.

After being home for a couple weeks now, I think I know how Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz" felt after coming back to Kansas: everything is the same, but home is really pretty sweet. Anyways, sorry if that was too cheesy or sentimental for you but I just didn't know how else to intro this blog. We are now back though and we are safe and sound taking our de-worming pills and finishing up the rest of our malaria pills. Since we last blogged, many adventures took place. From Arequipa, we went to Nazca where we sand boarded on a bunch of dunes and got ridiculously sandy including nooks and crannies (too much info...sorry). From there, we went to Lima and stopped for a couple nights with intentions of heading out towards the Amazon shortly after.

For those of you who are diligent readers, you will know that the adventures started out with a craving last summer to go to the Amazon. So this was a big deal to FINALLY be able to venture out. It took us about 20 hours to make it to the edge of the Ucayali River where there is a city named Pucallpa. We had planned to get on a cargo boat where we would arrive in Iquitos--our destination for 3 nights. In fashion, our boat left 21 hours late meaning that we had to spend an extra night on the boat at the Pucallpa "port." I put "port" in quotes because this hardly represented at port. Most of the places that the boats would stop along the Amazon was a dirt beach that the captainwould run the front of the boat into until it was beached enough to stop.

Anyways, so we spent the next 4 nights in the boat eating chicken and rice almost every meal and loving the hard life. By hard life, we spent many hours reading and finishing our books from our hammocks. Tough. Oh, but we did have to listen to a baby monkey that wore a diaper screech every morning just outside our cabin on the boat. (I don't really feel like explaining why there was monkey in a diaper so I will let you use your imaginations).
In Iquitos, we had many adventures including hanging out with monkeys that climbed all over us, playing with sloths, holding little aligators, and even letting Anacondas sit around our neck. (Okay, so it's true, I hate snakes so I was the only one that refused. But hey, give me some credit, I held a smaller snake for a little while...and almost wet myself).
Eventually, we flew back to Lima where we had a chance to try paragliding for 20 min rides and some surfing too. So that concluded our travels.
All in all, I think we would all agree in that it was an adventure of a lifetime.

If you want some pictures and you are still out there reading this and care for them, you have to ask for them. Here is one to appease some of you...
For those of you that have heard rumours but never have known...


...It is true, there are snow cones in South America...

Oh ya, and I put two pictures so that way you are all pleasantly surprised.

But sincerley folks,
Thanks for those of you that faithfully supported us throughout this trip. You have been HUGE to us. In fact, if there is one major thing that we have learned, it is that missionaries need support. Not just the whole cliche money and prayer, but also simply knowing that you care. A simple email or encouragment letter can go a really long way. So thank you so much for your support--It meant more than you know.

FYI: Once again, didn't proofread. Sorry about the confusions.

Quick Update.

We know it has been a while but don´t worry we are all alive. In the last time we have been sandboarding, on a 5 day boat-ride to the Amazon, played with monkeys, held anacondas, paraglided, and surfed. We are here in Lima for 2 more days and we will be home on the 9th. Sorry we don´t have much time but that is probably ideal for those of you who don´t make it past the first 3 sentences usually because we are too boring. We will try to elaborate a bit on this when we get home and post some pictures too. Thanks to those of you who have bothered to read and comment. Always is nice...

Alpacan Sweaters

If you were wondering if we survived the ¨World´s Most Dangerous Road¨ from the last blog, you can now relax--we are fine. Just one flat tire was about the only complication. Don´t worry Mom, I was at least 6 feet from the cliff when the tire went flat. After La Paz, we went to Copacabana which is a small city on the edge of Lake Titicaca. Within an hour of arriving, we had found a sailboat rental area. These sailboats were one of a kind for sure. There was only one sail, no jib but still a wooden mast and boom. Sure enough, we decided that for about 8 bucks a person, we couldn´t resist this adventure. So we woke up at 5:00 in the morning and went down to the shore and sailed off to the ¨Isla Del Sol¨ or the Island of the Sun. This trek only took us a while on the way there because of bad head winds, but we recovered by spending the night on the island. On the way back, it only took us about 3 and a half hours because the once head wind, worked in our favour.

The sunset from the "Isla Del Sol"

After this adventure, we took off for Cuzco, Peru on another freezing cold, overnight bus where we connected to a train to Aguas Calientes which is at the base of Machu Picchu. If you have seen pictures of Machu Picchu, you probably think it is neat, but we are witnesses to the fact that it is way better than it looks from the pictures. It is much bigger than you would think from those indications. Thank goodness we loved it, because they make you pay an absolutely ridiculous price to enter. We also had a chance to hike the giant mountain called ¨Waynu Picchu¨that you see in the background of this picture amidst the clouds.
From here, we were only able to get tickets for a first class train that only took us half way to Cuzco. We were pretty choked at first but we reluctantly accepted to take these tickets because there is no other way of getting away from Aguas Calientes except this train. Needless to say, our scruffy faces and dirty, stinky clothes and backpacks did not necessarily fit the norm for first class. However, we were pleasantly surprised with the most ridiculous entertainment which included a man with a mask and a stuffed llama around his neck dancing around followed by a modeling show to techno dance music. What a riot.
Skipping ahead, we are now back in Cuzco where we will be here until Sunday evening. Yesterday, we all bought sweaters that come from Alpacan fur which are ridiculously awesome to say the least. Anyways, from Cuzco, we will take another overnight bus (probably freezing cold again) to a city called Arequipa where there are huge volcanos and the biggest canyon in the world. It is more than twice the size of the Grand Canyon.
That´s about it. Here are some pics as promised.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2100862&l=74a39&id=116205194

On the Road, through the Desert.

Well, it is official, we are now backpacking through South America. But first, let´s backtrack a bit and tell you a little about our Pastor seminar that we did on our last day in Paraguay. We woke up early in the morning feeling underprepared and wondering if the dark, dreary clouds were going to turn to rain. Well, long story short, the rain came and poured. We adapted though, and kept pushing through the theoretical stuff in hope that it would stop raining and then we could do the practical drills if it stopped. Well, our speaking went well and people were really responsive but the rain wouldn´t stop. At one point, we made a joke to the people that the rain wouldn´t stop us in Canada from playing soccer. Well, I don´t know if that is what spurred them on, but either way, they felt the material was valuable enough to do the drills even in the rain. Funny enough, the rain was worse than we had ever seen as it was probably a sort of tropical downpour and Bryan and I were both wearing white T-shirts. Bad News. Oh well, overall a great success and we were stoked to be finished. Oh ya, we also have some hilarious pics that we hope to post one day of that youth group game where you put the lifesaver on a toothpick that sits in your mouth. Then, you have to pass it off to the next person´s toothpick without dropping it. If that is confusing, we basically watched these people ¨almost kiss.¨ Very amusing.

Now let´s bring you up to speed with what we have done so far. Our first 50 hours or so included about 35 hours of busing with a little bit of waiting in bus stations. We bused through Northern Argentina, into Southern Bolivia to our first major stop in Uyuni. The bus ride from the border of Bolivia to Uyuni was only about 270 km but it took us over 10 hours which included: cliff hanging bus rides, amazing scenery, driving through shallow rivers and creeks, randomly have to change buses in a city for some reason, and getting stuck in the desert sand for about 30 min where we got out and pushed. I am proud to say that 4 out of the 10 people pushing were us Canadians...proving that Adam has large biceps.

Anyways, Uyuni is a town of about 14000, and basically built strickly for tourism to the largest sand flats in the world. Here we went on a 2 day tour where we stayed next to a volcano that had about 10 families living in the town. There is so much we could say about this but basically, we were 3800m about sea level and then climbed a bunch of the volcano to about 4500m (that is about just under 15000 feet). It erupted 20 000 or 30 000 years ago whiping out the people. We also went to this cave where there were 5 mummies (a family) that was killed by the ash) but somehow their bones are still existant. Kinda hard to believe and the tour was in Spanish but we understood this more or less.

Anyways, last night we took an overnight bus to La Paz and we will be here the weekend. Hope to get pics up later and hope things are good back home...

PS. Too lazy to proofread, hope that this makes sense.

Last Days.

We are wrapping up our final week here in Paraguay and slowly working on our good-byes. But that doesn't mean our schedule is light by any means. This past week, on Saturday, there was a huge storm with winds up to 150 km/h. Us boys were actually at an outdoor church concert. To be totally honest, we were not entirely intrigued with the music; however, the backdrop of the concert consisted of countless lightning strikes in the distance that constantly lit up the sky. It appeared as though the storm was just a dry lighting storm, but all of a sudden we felt one rain drop. Similar to B.C. (except usually worse), when it begins to rain here in Paraguay, it pours. So within about 1 min of that raindrop, everyone was running from the torrential rain to the indoors of the church. Us boys actually had to leave early anyways in order to catch the last bus back home. Ya we got soaked but that is all we saw of the storm really. The winds were not as bad where we were.
As we learned later though, it ripped apart some areas. For example, the soccer complex/soccer club that we are doing the pastor seminar at this Saturday received 1 million dollars of damage in the 6 minutes of the storm. A building was ripped apart. At the time, the building had 80 kids in it, but they were able to escape before the building collapsed on them.

On Sunday, Paraguay just set the world record for having the biggest Asado (not sure about spelling) but it means BBQ. It included over 50 000 people eating over 25 000 kilos of beef. Unfortunately, we were unable to attend because it would have taken five hours upon arrival to have a taste of the steak. But all was well because we were still full from a massive BBQ that we had at our house the night before with several local Paraguayans.We are now working hard to prepare our seminar for this Saturday. It will run from 9-3 and essentially it will be Thomas, Bryan, and I trying to explain to 150 pastors how to run a soccer camp including issues like: registration, multi-day camps schedules, drills, silly games, and devotionals. If you think this is an intimidating task, you are right. For those of you who are diligent followers of what we are doing here, you might already know that we finished a 35 page document that explains this. Now we essentially put it to pratical use and train. Prayer? Please.

On Saturday, we finish off our time here in Paraguay by attending a Christian Rap concert that everyone has been talking about since we first got here. Should be...interesting. Actually, I am sure that we will have a great time with everyone as this will be our last time to "hang out" with the majority of our many friends here in Paraguay.

Sunday morning, we leave for our travels. Oh, and by the way, Mark (my brother) has arrived as of yesterday which is very exciting. We will take him along with us to our final visits this week to the Soup Kitchen tomorrow, the Orphanage on Thursday, and then to the seminar and concert on Saturday. It will be a crash course on the kind of things we have done here for him.

That is about all and from all of us: Thank you very much to all you who have been taking the time out of your busy lives to read up about us, comment on our blog, and pray for us.

Wonder to Wonder

All is well in the world of us boys. We visited two wonders this past week. The first of these a natural wonder, the second, a very man-made wonder. On Tuesday, we left Asuncion for Ciudad del Este which is a border city with Brazil about 4 hours away. None of us had visas and Judah forgot his passport at our house. Sounds like an impossibility to cross the border right? Not with our good-looks and charm. Ok, maybe that is a stretch, in reality it was the lack of border checks when you cross this border in a local bus. We had no questions asked and we had no problems.
Next, we bused to the Iguazu Falls which consists of 275 falls along 2.7 kilometers of the Iguazu River. These falls are quite incredible and we were spending most of the time trying to find out which one of the falls Indiana Jones went off in the latest movie. After the day finished, we climbed in the bus and the torrential down-pouring of rain began right on cue.
The next day, we visited the Itaipu Dam. This 25 billion dollar dam employed 30-40 thousand people over about 15 years. It holds enough concrete to build a ten-metre wide road from here to New York. That is a lot of concrete. Now I must say, concrete is not the most exciting thing to look at but the creation was still a wonder. As a result of this dam, many animal refuges were built to preserve the animals. One of these, we were able to make it out too. We were the first people to show up in the day and we got a free tractor ride and a free horse ride too! Very exciting for me (Adam) who has never been on a horse before (embarrassing I know but exciting all the same).
We made it home safe yesterday evening and got back into the swing of things today doing more planning for the soccer seminar with the pastors on November 1st. We also await the arrival of a new member of our team...my brother: Senor Mark Knowlson.

Here are some more pics: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2098139&l=a9ccb&id=116205194

Just another Day in Paraguay

This was the week that Jesus Responde had been preparing for about 2 months for their Festival de Esperanza. This festival ran on Thursday and Friday night and Saturday in the morning and in the evening. The amount of people that came to this festival was amazing, the total number of people that came this weekend was over 55,000 people. The week was full of intense work that was both tedious and long. We spent a good amount of time setting up all these chairs in this mid-sized soccer stadium. Believe me, trying to get this rows straight was a job in itself, it's harder then it looks.
There was good entertainment on the nights. They had a rapper that pumped up the crowd, and also had these two guys rocking on their guitars. I think the main event for these people was the Argentinian singer that made everyone flap their arms like angels, like in "Angels in the Outfield." I got a kick out of that, the crowd loved him for some reason. We were also on crowd control for the last night which was an experience, I definitely heard a couple of those taser guns go off in the crowd when the securtiy was trying to get the crowd to move back to their seats. We were given passes that said "Organizador" which I am sure you know what that translates to. Well, these passes meant that we were supposed to know what we were doing. More importantly to us, it meant that we could go anywhere in the stadium that we wanted. But as Spiderman was once told, "With great power comes great responsibility." So we were supposed to know how to answer people's questions about anything they wondered. We would be lucky to understand and even luckier if we gave an answer in understandable Spanish. I have no doubt that people wondered why there were organizers that didn't speak the language. Just another thing that we found ourselves laughing about. Anyways, our time there was really cool because we got to see a lot of people respond to the gospel at the alter call and pray with pastors.

With two more weeks here our time here in Paraguay is coming to a close. This coming week we'll be taking a little trip to Brazil and Argentina, to see some amazing waterfalls ("Iguazu Falls" which if you saw the new Indiana Jones movie, it is the one that they miraculously survive from 3 plunges over the edge of these falls). On top of this, we may even do some hunting.

Opa!!

Well our time at the orphanage is now finished. Things went really well overall, and now that it is over, we realize that we will most definitely miss the kids and youth there. For those of you who have ever worked at camp and been in cabin for a week, you will be able to relate to our feelings of leaving the orphanage. It is kind of like the last day of a week at camp and you are excited for some real peace and quiet but then when they actually go, you do have some mixed feelings.

On Thursday night at the orphanage, we were invited by one of the older guys to his school about 15 minutes down the road. He was involved in a night that included all forms of dancing. Some of these were traditional Paraguayan dances and some were hip-hop. But nothing beat out the rendition of "Grease" where there were the boys and the girls dancing to "Greece Lightning" and "Summer Lovin." Us Canadian boys were bellowing out the lyrics that we recalled from when our parents played the movie for us when we were knee-high to a grasshopper. And then at some other point in the night, some Paraguayan girls from the orphanage grabbed each one of us boys and started dancing with us before we had any chance to be embarrassed that the attention of the people had turned to us and away from the stage.

We did not have a subtle good-bye on our Friday evening at the orphanage either. There was a skit that they had prepared for us which was in Spanish and no we did not understand everything but we were still almost on the ground laughing. It included a few of the women that were over 20 from the orphanage (a couple nearing 40 years old) who were all over these guys in the skit who were supposed to be the "Canadian boys." You can imagine how amusing this was to us.

Then after the skit, they turned on the radio to some hip-hop music and once again, we were yanked out of our chairs and forced to dance for the group. This included some of our coordinated camp dances from the summer which they loved. It also included a dance off between us three Canadian boys. After all this, Thomas and I (Adam) got up and did a skit for them while Bryan took pictures for us. Again for those of you who worked at camp, Thomas and I worked together to do the Phoenix Dirk Banana skit. They loved it, and as soon as we finished, a women and man got up from the orphanage and impersonated our skit.

After the group prayed for us, we decided that it was time to speak to the group. A couple hours before this, we had scrambled to come up with a short speech in Spanish that would express our gratefulness to the people at the orphanage. Now this was a risky idea because our Spanish is usually barbaric at best so the meaning may not come out the way we intended. Sure enough, this came true and got a great reaction. In the speech we were trying to say "Thanks for the food, it was always delicious. So we wrote, "Gracious por la comida, estueve siempre ricisimo." Now, if you know Spanish, you are probably already laughing because the verb "estar" is an irregular and we forgot that the same rules didn't apply that we had learned. The word we were looking for was "estuvo." Close right? Well what we said instead was "Thanks for the food, I was always delicious." Thomas was the victim of saying this statement. The joke after was that the girls at the orphanage thought he was delicious anyways. Needless to say, the people at the orphanage had plenty to make fun of us with as we were leaving.

This week we are once again fully occupied. From Tuesday afternoon on, all of Jesus Responde and us as well are fully dedicated to the upcoming festival. It will be a blast and its going to be an experience of a lifetime...

A Belated Post

Here is a blog that was attempted to be posted last Monday...we will get another one up soon that is more updated.

First off we thought we would let you all in more on what we are doing currently with AIA down here. Well let us tell you, we have somehow been designated to design a template for soccer camps to be run here in Paraguay. Ok, I mean we all have some experience with camp life from work in the past it should not be that big of a deal I guess. That is how it started anyways, but it slowly evolved into something slightly bigger, which of course was helped by Thomas always nodding and saying "ya sure we can do it". Now we have the task of putting together a material packet on how to run a soccer camp. On top of this we also are running a training seminar for around 150 people on November first about how to run a soccer camp. Isn't it funny how God gives you tasks bigger than you can handle so that we rely on him more. Anyways, that is what we are currently working on for AIA, which is super exciting and intimidating at the same time. As far as it is concerned we could definitely use some prayer for this work, and it will be much appreciated.

But now for some more light hearted stories. Today as we were a bit out of commision from sickness which kept us from going to the orphanage as planned. But throughout the day we had a little adventure anyways. So, here in Paraguay grass grows rather differently than in Canada, its also planted differently. A little side note on that, when we were at the orphanage last week we had a chance to plant grass and it is not how you would think. The process involves going to a patch of well grown grass and pulling out individual pieces, root and all, one by one. Then you take this pile of pulled up grass and stick it in the ground in a different place, one by one. It is quite the process very difficult and grueling work. And the funny thing is with kids always running around who knows if the grass will actually even grow. But back to the story about grass. Well our lawn at our house has been growing for a long time now, there are some pieces of weed or some kind of plant life that was up to about our waist. Not anymore! Judah went came home at one point during the day and walked into the house holding a machete. Being young men we automatically got excited at the sharp object. Well anyways we got to go out into our jungle of a backyard and start hacking down the grass, and amazingly enough it is cut and looks semi-respectable. Even more amazing is that during the day there were only two cuts and one was from opening a can of peaches. Needless to say it was a thrill.

The final story that must be told, and this is only cause I(Thomas) wrote the blog and feel it is important is one of dinner tonight. Long story short, I cooked. For those that know me know that is shocking. I made some spaghetti and tomato sauce from scratch. I would love to say it was absolutely delicious, but that would be only due to pride. However, it can be said it was not

Dios les bendiga.

P.S. It is Thomas' birthday today. Happy Birthday and Feliz Cumpleanos Thomas!

Our Chaco and orphanage experience

Here are some pictures.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2096180&l=ba641&id=116205194

Since our last time we've had some amazing experiences: traveling to the Chaco, working in an orphanage this past week, and finally getting a chance to play with the National Women's soccer team...well I wouldn't call it playing on our part...

All three of us were excited for our weekend trip to the Chaco, until we got there. We knew that it was going to be hot, but it was super hot, like over 40C. We went to our friend's ranch and they had this lagoon for swimming. We spent a good couple of hours just swimming and having the occasional mud fight which gave a exciting taste in your mouth...but was easily washed out with a few circles of the terere cup. We spent the rest of the weekend at a friends house and it was nice just to relax for a day.

At the beginning of the week we were a part of yet another Athletes and Action soccer event which was a huge 6 hour event. 4 churches of about 30 kids each, mostly boys, and some of the National Women's soccer team were there at this event. We refereed and cheered on some talented young kids during their games. Adam and I (Bryan) played soccer too only we were stuck as goalies for the women's games. They were really good, some even had that really competitive edge, you know? the kind if you don't try to save a shot you get a huge "dare glare" (which means: I dare you to let another goal in... just see what happens). I definitely didn't try on a couple of shots, and I let a couple go in just to get the spine shivering glare.

For the rest of the week we worked in an orphanage. Let me give you a little background of this orphanage. This orphanage has been in operation in this particular location for about 3 years and was originally a family's mansion and a high class German shepherd breeder kennel. This orphanage is huge! Our time there was amazing, and thank-you for your prayers in this. There are also 2 Americans: Ben, who is from Kansas, and Natalie, who is from California. These two are working at this orphanage for 3 months.

There's always so much to do at this orphanage. We're living there, so just hanging out with the kids for an afternoon is a fun time.
We've been also helping Ben with this garden; fencing it and clearing the trees out of the ground. I'm sure we'll have more to say about the orphanage since we are spending another week there. But for now, our weekend is looking tranquilo. Thanks for your encouragement, emails and prayers...

Almost Famous

Let us start today's blog off with a story that you might enjoy. It was Sunday afternoon and we had just finished our first of two church services. This church service was in San Antonio at the Hope Baptist Church where the soup kitchen is located. None of us had been to the Rio de Paraguay (Paraguay River) so we were curious to check it out. It was only a five minute drive from where we were and it was a beautiful day so we drove towards the river and pulled the car over and walked down to where we could see the water. The trouble is, there was what looked like a swampy area that stood between us and the River--bear in mind we were in our church clothes. I (Adam) was nearest to the beginning of the swamp area and to my eyes, it appeared that you just had to clear small area of mud until the ground was firm enough. However, I was not really expecting anyone to take that statement at face value. I was wrong. There I was, standing and taking pictures to see Judah, the most dressed up of all of us, leap and try to clear the ONE really swampy part. Well, as I am sure you have guessed at this point, it was more than that one spot, as a matter of fact, it was probably a good 500 metres of mud/swamp that I failed to analyze thoroughly. Judah lost one shoe, then his momentum carried him and his other foot hit the next patch hard and it was buried as well. Sure enough, when he tried to pull his other foot out, his shoe stayed submerged. Well at this point, Bryan (who had taken one step following Judah and then changed his mind before it was too late), Thomas, and I were trying not to die laughing. Judah had to reach in the mud and gather his entrenched dress shoes and then got back to solid ground. So here is the kicker, the mud seemingly is a form of septic drainage or something because wow, did Judah's feet stink! Here is a picture:

Okay, so moving on, that Church service, we each had a chance to preach. We don't usually attend this church but they had asked us to be there because there was a big fifth anniversary service. Also, one of the boys that comes all the time to the soup kitchen for dinner was getting baptized so we wanted to be there--that and there was a huge free lunch after which included each of us getting half a chicken to ourselves (not even joking).
When we were asked to go, the pastor had mentioned that they might want one of us guys to get up and speak at the front. Well, at the church during the greeting time, the Pastor decided that he wanted all of us to speak. So we spent the time during the music to scramble and think of something to say. As it would turn out, we had no lack of words as we talked for about 15 minutes (translated through Judah) and we tied into what one another said quite well. We even received some "Amens" to top it off.

On top of our daily schedule here that keeps us busy, it sometimes feels like we are celebrities. Every youth that we meet invites us out to some event that we couldn't possibly miss. Also, just yesterday, Judah received two phone calls from pastors that we have never met that wanted us to come speak at their church sometime. Yesterday also included Bryan and Thomas going to a school and helping our Spanish instructor teach English at the school she works at. Sure enough, a girl asked the guys if we would come speak at her church too. Oh ya, and a week and a half ago, we snuck our way onto national TV too for a good 7 seconds. Ok, not quite celebrities but the adventures continue...

This weekend we are actually going travelling to Filadelfia (a mennonite colony) for fun, and then on Tueday we move into an orphanage for the next two weeks. We will be living there on the weekdays which will be a brand new challenge but we are excited.
Ciao!

Noah

Hey everybody,

This past week, we have been working at a hospital in the mornings and working at a soup kitchen in the evening. The hospital work is not what any of you are expecting I am sure. We actually have been painting kids pictures on the walls of the cancer ward. Pictures of Noah's Ark and of cute little cuddly animals. You know the elaborate colourful pictures. Of course, us very unartistic boys are delegated the giant brown parts of the ark, or tons of green grass so we can't butcher the paintings. The middle age Paraguayan women do the elaborate difficult stuff.

In the evenings, we have been working at the soup kitchen still and playing tons and tons of soccer. Once again, these young Paraguayan boys have made us Canadians look like clowns. This soup kitchen is one of 121 soup kitchens in the country. Yet it is special to us because we have had the amazing opportunity to spend this last week and next week with them. For most of the kids that come out, this is the one positive influence that they receive. Many of the kids are discipled through the amazing volunteers that run it and genuinely love them. Tomorrow morning (Sunday), one of the boys who became a Christian through the program is being baptised, and we might be doing an impromptu sermon (it was the Pastor's idea). Anyways some pictures will be uploaded on a photo album ... and here it is http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2094912&l=8896f&id=116205194

Catching Up

Sorry that it has been a while since you have heard from us, but we thought that we would let you know that we are all alive still. But who knows how long that will last with all of the adventures that we have had. So Sunday was a great day in catching up on sleep as I(Thomas) slept in until 12:00. I know everyone who knows me including Adam and Bryan say that it´s no surprise, but I still enjoyed it. Although we were late for church it was still fun and we met new people that made fun of our Spanish and Guarani(the native language). Anywho enough with the boring stuff... over our time here we have been distributing food and showing the Jesus film in schools. This was great for learning Spanish as we had to use a only Spanish most of the time.

On Tuesday night we had a great oppurtunity to follow up on our futbol experience in the mall. We went to a Paraguay vs Venezuela game at the stadium in Asuncion with 35 000 sweaty, fat, intoxicated fans that sang the same songs over and over again. Even though we didn´t know what was said we could sing along by the end. The great part about the area we got tickets for, is that there were no designated seats so a mosh pit ensued and we stood the entire game and fought to see the game. Since Paraguay won easily, 2-0, there were no real sketch moments with the fans as everyone stayed relatively calm and was just excited about a great game.

Wednesday night we went to a soup kitchen that collected food from us earlier in the day at Jesus Responde. Here we got to play more soccer with the kids and were a part of the meal that is served every night for around 100 kids. Although there are many places that do similar programs, the church here has something special to offer. Not only did the Pastor have an amazing story about God´s call for him to Paraguay, but the church itself grew substantially in just months and now through this feeding program they are trying to make the community more self sustainable. It was a pretty moving experience as Pastor Jorge really was appreciative of us coming there, even though we really did nothing, but also he wanted to send a huge thanks to Bryan´s dad and all the work that has been done through the Gleaners. Over the next two weeks we will be working here for the dinner program after we figure out the bus system.

Then comes a grand adventure that we had on many busses throughout the city. This is why we know that figuring out the bus system will be a challenge as we got so lost going around the city selling sandwiches. You need an explanation? Well, one day we ended up having lunch at this church that is housing for around 20 people just minutes away from our house, and somehow through much confusing Spanish they communicated to us that they wanted us to sell sandwiches with them on buses. Are you still confused, so were we. Anyways long story short, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, this church makes around 500 sandwiches and goes around town on buses selling them for about 25 cents each. This money then goes towards paying for many of the necessities that the church has: water, school, kids programs, etc. While selling the sandwiches we were split into separate groups. It was one of us with one of the girls from the church. Due to this we had to speak, and try to understand Spanish all day. Luckily our jobs were simple, we had to hold the bin of 90 sandwiches, not fall over, and be eye candy(if eye candy means getting weird looks as people curiously gave us their money).

We now have a tenative schedule for the rest of our time here in Paraguay. Over the next month and a bit we will be working in a hospital, an orphanage, with soup kitchens, and playing tons of soccer. Hopefully we will write again soon.

GOAL!!!!!!!

Okay so as you can probably guess, I am going to talk about futbol. Today (Saturday) was our soccer day. It was the day that we got to experience our first Paraguayan soccer clinic. There was about 25 kids that a church had gathered from the neighbourhood and they all came to a dirt field to play for a couple hours.

The kids were probably between the ages of 6-12 and we had a ton of fun playing just a friendly game among doing drills and other soccer related stuff. Then, at the end of the time, we had a game that was Thomas, Bryan, Judah, two women that play for the Paraguayan national team, and I, which we called ¨Canada¨ vs. the 8 or 9 kids that were a bit older (between the ages of 10-12) called ¨Paraguay.¨ An epic battle it was. But us Canadians found ourselves struggling to keep up with these extremely energetic kids who were half our size and age. We managed to pull off a 3-3 tie but wow, it was one difficult tie to earn.

Ok so now, here I was in my life, thinking that Canadians were passionate about hockey. After today, I realized that this passion is nothing compared to the way Paraguayans love their futbol. Today, Paraguay played Argentina in a World Cup qualifier game at 3:00 in the afternoon. Now first of all, Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina are the best teams in South America so you have to understand the intense rivalry already. On top of this, Argentinians are not really liked by anyone in South America it seems and so a combo of these two things, along with the fact that Paraguay will die for their soccer makes for one doozie of a game.

So we, of course, had to fit in with the locals and watch this game. We went to the mall (yes, the mall) because they play the game just about everwhere in the country when there is a game like this. In the food court, there was 4 TV screens where there was hundreds of people of all ages making an unbelievable amount of noise about everything that happened in the game. Most of the shops in the mall close down for the game as well. About 15 minutes into the game, Paraguay scored. Wow. It was ridiculous. The people were jumping and cheering and going absolutely insane while they sang some song that everyone knew. But then in the 2nd half, Argentina scored. Not good.

It was a 1-1 game but probably one of the craziest things I have seen yet. We are actually hoping to go to a game that will be in the stadium with 40 000 other crazy people.

That is all for now.

Hospital Run and Lingue Baco (Cow Tongue)

The first day, we woke up super early which was great and we met Alexis, who is one of the directors here at our headquarters. He took us to two Paraguay public hospitals which was an eye-opening experience. Most of the time spent in one of the hospitals was in the maturnity ward. This is a huge ministry in the hospital. What happens is the pregant women come from all over outside the city with nothing but there clothes on their backs and have their baby. The majority of the ministry in the maturnity ward happens when the mothers are forced to stay with their baby because they had their son/daughter premature. Some of these babies are under 500 grams, which is a shocking sight. But these mothers are cared for very well and given food and clothes, and some of these mothers have to stay 2-3 months. It was a great place to be on our first day, visiting people and praying with some of them.
Later on, we met some of Judah´s friends (Judah is also part of our team, he´s the one that hooked us up with a sweet place to stay and a truck, he´s our good friend and leader) Judah´s friend Angel took us to this place where they served cow tongues and intestines and something that looked like cow brain. We all three were feeling adventurous, some more then others, it was chewy and tasty.

One of the exciting things that is happening for us right now is we´ve been asked to help A.I.A Paraguay with developing a template for their sports camps and working alongside the Paraguayan Women´s national soccer team. We were asked to help create the template for the camp because there has never been any sports camps in the history of Paraguay. There have been clinics--one in which we will be helping with this weekend--but there has never been the structure of a sports camp. We are told that our camp experience is exactly what they want. Pretty crazy...so we have our work cut out for us. Oh ya, and we are doing this alongside two people from ¨Transforming Paraguay Today¨(which by the way is the unification of Power to Change and Jesus Respondé). One of two of these people is the assistant to the first lady or something like that. She is really cool though and we were at dinner at the most expensive restaurant in the city with her and the other leader of AIA and they are very awesome people.

By the way, that restaurant had tons and tons of meat and was a very amazing place and it cost about the price of a good meal at Tim Hortons.

We three are Billygoats.

First off, let us explain the reason for the title. I (Adam) was waiting in line for Bryan and Thomas and I to get Burger King at YVR before our flight. When Thomas and Bryan came and joined me in the line, there was a nice American man who had a thick southern accent that was not impressed and he told us. When I tried to explain that we were all together but he interupted and said the following:



"You boys have manners like a billygoat." Thomas was flustered and Bryan had already walked away from the situation and I was trying to regain my composure after almost bursting out laughing.



Anyways, onwards we went, to Houston and then to Buenos Aires. This flight was a doozie as we had to go through the night and I do not sleep well in airplanes I found out. Thomas does. He snores.



In Buenos Aires, we managed to get ourselves into the city centre via taxi with our amigo named George (pronounced hoor-hay). In the city, we walked around for about 6 hours exploring the European architecture of many of the buildings. As it turned out, when we got back on the plane we were trying to read a magazine in Éspanol and found out that we saw 2 of Argentina´s top 5 attractions while we were there for the short time.

After our 13 hour lay-over in Argentina where we were running on less than 2 hours sleep, we got back on the plane for Asuncion...our final destination. We were warmly greeted by our leader Judah and by one of two leaders of Athletes in Action. By this time, we were leaving the airport just before midnight. Of course, before we could go to our home and crash for the night, we were taken to a taco stand. After that, we were taken to our house which is quite amazing. We have two floors and a few bathrooms and Thomas, Bryan, and I all have mattresses. That was a relief. We will try to post pictures of our house later because we´re having some difficulty posting pictures.

The first entry

It is 5 days before we leave for Paraguay and it has been a long time coming. It started as an idea around the Acacia fire pit at Stillwood camp last summer when we all had time off and were carving sticks. Naturally, when one carves a stick, they have a desire to go to the Amazon. It was a bit of a struggle to find an organization that would take 3 English speaking baffoons like ourselves, but long story short, Power to Change took us in. But don't worry, we will still see the Amazon during our travels.

As for now, first stop: Asuncion, Paraguay. We will be leaving September 1st from Vancouver to eventually land in the capital city of Paraguay after a couple lay-overs in Houston and Buenos Aires. Two of us have never left the continent, one has. Two of us have never lived out of the nurturing care of our mothers for an extended period of time, one has. All three of us know little to no Spanish.

Are we ready?

No.

Are we stoked?

Let's answer a question with a question...

If you miss the moon would you land among the stars?

or

If a song is not being played, does the song exist?

-From the boys