Passion for Paraguay

On April 17th, 2012 everything seemed find as a typical day in my life was passing. On April 18th, 2012 everything changed within a few seconds on our way to Asuncion We had been traveling for a little less than hour on what would have been a six hour trip to Asuncion, our capital city, when at 5 am, we hit a parked truck with no signs, lights or reflectors, sitting on the highway. I will not go into details here. But that moment changed my life around and the way I see things today. I have replayed the images of that day over and over until I thought I will go crazy. My head was hurting constantly. I had wished over and over to never gotten into that vehicle that day and instead stayed home. But I cannot go back, even if I want to. The weeks after April 18th turned into my valley of shadow and death. I struggled with my faith, with guilt, purpose and the meaning of life. If it wasn't for my loving family, my church and Gods love to me, I am not sure where I would be today...

April 17, 2012 was another normal busy ministry day, just like today. I spend half of that day with a group of pastors and leaders. In the afternoon, I went to pick up some documents for Anahi, in the city of Encarnacion, about an hour from our home. We were working on a side walk for our house, so at about 4 pm I took Timothy and Anahi with me to get some supplies before our trip the next day. That evening Julie made pizza. I played with Timothy for about an hour with the new toy we had both created. I kissed my boy good night, and prepared some stuff for the trip we were going to make next morning very early towards Asuncion. Life was good, we were in the midst of great projects with the church, we were also serving at the radio station and managing the new bible training bi vocational center we had created the year before. Neither one of us had the fog-est idea that this would be our last day together as a family of four, our last dinner, our last time to say goodnigh...

As we were preparing for this trip in 2016, I realized that this was going to be a different one. Why? Because Nancy, Mark and Nicole have never been to the states.  Traveling with a bigger family and overcoming the barriers most non-Americans going to America face, can be quiet a challenge. As I look back, this trip allowed our family to come together in a new way, since we needed each other and needed to learn to cope with the language barriers as well as cultural differences. We learned a lot about each other.  Getting Mark, Nicole and Anahi into a great Christian School made all the difference. Their circle of friends increased overnight and their comprehension of English improved dramatically.  One of the highlights was snow skying with the kids. It was the first time for Mark and Nicole to see snow. They loved it. Our friends at St. Joseph took us out for a wonderful day on the hills covered with snow.  For Nancy it was a learning experien...