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.