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.