Teaching Team a Total Success

This week Joby and Heather Carmody are here to help instruct and train our church leaders and public school teachers in the areas of:



Inclusive education

New Concepts in Mathematics

Preaching Seminars

Parenting Seminars



We met Joby in seminary and it is a pleasure to get to know his multi-talented wife as well! Joby is pastoring a United Methodist church outside of Indianapolis and Heather teaches middle school mathematics in Indy.

Thanks for your prayers for this dynamic couple. We are excited about the seminars that they are teaching and we know that they will make a difference in the lives of Paraguayans!

VBS 2008

Last week we had our VBS program in Obligado. Our theme was, "We are Jesus' Helpers" and we talked about being His hands and feet wherever we are. We read missionary stories and encouraged the children to serve.

Our fabulous AU intern, Erica was a huge help. She assisted us with games, puppets and loving on the kids.




Fun with bubbles



Craft time!


We had 185 total kids participate this year and the closing ceremony on Saturday night packed out the church! Our hope is that our children's ministry in Obligado continues to grow and touch new little lives and their families.

Assaulted

I (Julie) was at a conference this week in the capital. I arrived in Asuncion in the early morning and I waited at the bus station for a few hours before I had to catch a local bus to get to my meeting. The last sentence I wrote in my journal before leaving the station was, "God, keep me safe today and protect me." 6:30 a.m. happens to be a peak traffic hour because businesses open at 7:00 a.m. I jumped on a very crowded bus and went to pay the bus driver when I felt someone touching my purse. I looked back and a middle aged man was touching the zipper of my purse! I gave him a dirty look and he threw his hands up in the air as if he was innocent. Then, the man on my left and the man on my right started pressing into me. I looked up at the bus driver in desperation and he told the men to move on back. They didn't move, they just kept squeezing me for what seemed like five minutes and I held onto my purse and carry on bag so hard that I had marks on my hands for a whole day! Suddenly I see my cell phone drop to the floor and quickly bend over to pick it up. I look down at it and at my purse in front of me and it's closed. I yell, "Someone cut my purse!" really loud and the 3 men jumped off the bus. I relax a little and when I do other things start falling out of my purse. I looked inside and even though my purse was cut to pieces, those three big men got NOTHING!

I thank God that He kept me and my documents safe. After being here for six years this is the first time I've been assaulted. I am just grateful for God's continued protection on our lives.

Growing People

We have an intern here for seven weeks from our alma mater. She is interested in missions and working with the poor and she is "testing the waters" here during her summer break.

I am enjoying seeing her learn, grow and struggle with the language. I love debriefing with her difficult experiences and we struggle together trying to work through the injustices that we see and breath here every day.

I see her naivety and smile, because I see myself in her 10 years ago. It's so beautiful to see her passion and her energy. I have been able to share about my multitude of mistakes cross-culturally and I am grateful for the opportunity to pour into this promising young woman.

What is mentoring? Christian Mentoring is a one-on-one relational experience in which one person empowers another person by investing their God-given wisdom, experiences and resources. It's a phone call, drinking coffee together and listening to the other person share about their struggles, questions and doubts and encouraging them to keep walking forward in their faith journey and helping develop a godly character.

The truth of the matter is, I know I need to be pouring into young women more than I am doing. I see the younger Millenial generation and there are so many neat things about these 20 somethings. Yet, I see that they need guidance, just like I did (and still do). If fact, many youth today are in deep trouble and have no positive role models to follow. They are yearning for connection and meaning and mentoring can fill that longing in a younger person.

To mentor someone is a sacrifice, because it takes time. It is not something done in haste. I have to admit that I can get very selfish with my time. I am mentoring our son obviously, but I believe my responsibility to mentor extends beyond the walls of my home. Our society tells us that we should be independent and strong on our own. However, God's word shares us that growth should be celebrated in community. (Titus 2:3-5) We are on this journey together and I want to do a better job helping someone else along in the different landscapes that life presents.

I am investing into one young Paraguayan woman here named Michelley. We have become good friends because she comes over twice a week to do her laundry, using our machine. However, this week she and her husband got their own machine and to be honest, I was a little sad. Our tea times while her clothes were spinning will be over. I'll have to be intentional about inviting her over periodically just to talk about life, marriage and faith. There are so many things we invest our time in. This proverb hit home for me:

If you want one year of prosperity,
grow grain,
If you want ten years of prosperity,
grow trees,
If you want one hundred years of prosperity,
grow people. -Chinese proverb

My question to you is this- Is there someone that you could be mentoring right now? Do you have someone older to mentor you? If not, consider asking God to show you someone you can pour into and someone that could walk alongside you too!

New Line of Work

On Thursday a neighbor came over holding his hand. He had a very deep cut from a machete accident and needed first aid. I silently gasped when I saw he had wrapped it in a dirty old t-shirt! I quickly got our gauze, iodine and rubber gloves. When I told him he needed to go the med center for stitches, he jumped back and said, “That will surely cost a lot of money.”

He was adamant about not going to the doctor, so we’ve been dressing his wound for the past three days. This man has no first aid supplies and I’m thankful he thought to come to us for help. We can’t force him to get medical attention, but at least we’re keeping it from infection. Ya never know what hat you'll be asked to wear on the mission field!

Poverty in Paraguay

We were awoken at 11:30 two nights ago with banging at our door. We didn’t answer, thinking it could be a drunk. My heart just sinks every time we got a nighttime notification. The last two times we were jarred awake from our sleep, accidents and death were involved. Everyone has our cell phone, so if it was legit appeal, they’d call. Sure enough, five minutes later we got a phone call. Our housekeeper’s brother called to let us know our housekeeper was in the hospital for kidney stones. She would need to be operated on and the surgery would cost $1,000!

We told them that they should check other hospitals (this was a private hospital and they charge a lot more than the public institutions). Yesterday, I drove Susana and six of her family members an hour south to another hospital that charges half the price for the surgery. Of course, they don’t provide blankets and gloves, so I brought those along (I learned that through a crazy experience three years ago).

Her pressure was too low to operate, so I’ll have to go back today to help check her in so she can be operated on tomorrow. Since she and her family do not have any kind of health insurance, she will be relying on us, her patrons, to provide for her. We told her we’d be able to pay half the surgery and her family members would need to come up with the other half.

However, I laid awake last night wondering how her family would pay the other $250 that is their responsibility. They are all day wagers who just live day by day, $250 is over one month’s salary! Susana’s husband is in Buenos Aires being checked on for an illness, so he’s been out of work for 2 months. They have six children and they are late on their property payments by 12 months. We’ve bailed them out so many times before, but we constantly struggle with balancing our duty to them and allowing them to take responsibility for their lives. They are all alone.

The government doesn’t care about the working poor.

There are few to no social institutions to help the impoverished in our region.

The church doesn’t give them a hand.

We are the only people they know that can assist them.

Sometimes I just want to wash my hands of their aches and pains, since we feel so incapable of solving their problems. Giving money is just a short term fix. These folks need education, low-cost health care. Somebody has to address these growing problems in Paraguay. The poor need a network of support so they can get on their feet. The sickening truth is that there is none to be found.

This is just one more reason why I feel like our next direction is micro-enterprise and community development. We are restless in spirit as we think of what needs to be done to bring about social reform for Paraguay’s 2,000,000 that live in poverty. We want to make a difference here and it's overwhelming to know where to begin.