Passion for Paraguay

We are currently preaching a series on the "I Am" statements of Jesus.  This weekend I'll be talking about "I am the True Vine." John 15 is one of my all-time favorite Bible passages.  I love grapes and I can just visualize a bountiful grape vine just bent over with the weight of huge, luscious grapes.  My mouth is watering for those juicy morsels right now! What is more difficult to grasp is the idea of pruning the grape branches.  Yet, if you know anything about gardening, you know that in the winter time pruning has to be done in order for an abundant crop come harvest time.  The most powerful image I think this passage portrays is the concept of a young branch being grafted into its source.  Jesus took lifeless branches and grafted us in as His children so we could produce fruit in abundance.  We have absolutely no life outside of Him and can do nothing when we're separated from Him.  I believe remaining in Christ means being tied so tight...

OVERFLOWING with thankfulness for all that God has done for us this year!  Our hope is that you too are giving thanks to our Father for His many blessings on your lives today.

Sometimes life gets so crazy that we have little time to talk in adult language.  So, almost every day sometime before dusk (about 30 minutes before classes begin) we stroll through the wheat fields and let the boy and the dogs prance like dear in the wheat while we push the stroller, wax philosophic all while drinking our yerba mate tea .  This is what keeps me sane some days.    This is the picture we took from our window this week.  I will miss the golden wheat fields that greet me every morning, but there is something so beautiful in watching the harvest.  It's the same joy I get when I see that one of my orchids finally has a bloom and the anticipation of waiting for it to open.  It's the growth process that builds my excitement in both cases.  We've been watching the wheat grow for months and the harvest represents that the time is come for the wheat to be used.  The harvest is a celebration of hard work and of the time that is n...

Timmy came out of our room with his "papi's" commander shirt on.  He asked if he could put on his hat and belt too.  We started to laugh at him giving orders like Norberto does every Saturday in the Explorer's Club.  Then Timmy said, "I want to be a Commander when I grow up, just like Papi."   Timmy loves his dad and he copies everything he does. He walks like him. Talks like him. He eats the same foods (especially too much dulce de leche on his bread) He wants to help him with every project. He even pees outside on the trees, just like dad. (I'm not saying I like it though). and he told us just yesterday that he was Papi's best son and he showed me his little thumb that matches His Papi's unique thumb.  Yes, Timmy.  You are your Papi's best son.    So, Timmy made me think.... "I wonder how I'm doing at copying everything my heavenly "Papi" does?"  Do I walk like He does? Do I talk like He does? ...

The last three days have been some of the most difficult and exhilirating of my entire adult life.  They were full of joy, fear, sadness, doubt to name just a few of the emotions that gripped my heart while I was with our daughter in Asuncion. I took an overnight bus to be with her when she got up in the morning.  In order to see her beautiful morning smile I needed to face my fears of walking in the same terminal where I was assaulted in 2008- my purse knifed by three thugs.  I arrived safely and I walked into her foster caregivers home at 6:00 a.m. and saw her there sleeping and in perfect peace.  Thank you God for this amazing gift!  I spent the next days learning about our daughter's daily life and routine with the family that so graciously cared for her  and helped her to understand the love of a family, a real home.  I was so humbled by their hospitality.  They are a modest family yet they gave me their bed, and their bedroom while the c...

This is a three year old fruit tree in our back yard.  At the top of this tree you can see the first tangerines it has ever produced.  You can imagine how excited we were after watching that tree grow for three years to finally try those juicy, little treats!  However, while we were waiting for the tangerines to fully ripen, we had some people stay in our home while we were gone and they ate ALL our fruits and we didn't even get to enjoy them.  After getting over our initial frustration, we realized that there seems to be a lesson in this somewhere.  We decided we had "unwillingly" given our first fruits offering!  We gave of the best that we had. Proverbs 3 says it like this, "Honor the Lord with your possessions, and with the first fruits of all your increase; so your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine." The neat thing about first fruits is that you know that there is more to come.   You give up somethi...

I've been reflecting this week on the recent robbery I faced and I wanted to share a few more interesting details: I didn't have my cell phone with me when I went to bed the night before the attack.  My phone was charging in the kitchen, but I got a late night call from a friend and brought my phone to my nightstand, just close enough to reach when I was bound and gagged. My sister-in-law had her cell phone on silence when I made the phone call to her at 6:25 a.m.  However, at 6:22 she had to go to the restroom and when she came back to her bed she saw the flashing light on her cell phone with a new message. I was extremely calm and at peace during the entire ordeal. Our little guy remained asleep during shouting and more yelling (I'm still hoarse) and the dog barking and the crashing of chairs...you get the idea.  He still has no clue that a bad man was a few feet from him and did him no harm. He sensed something happened since we didn't sleep at home at night, b...

Do you ever get a garage sale find that is a real gem?  When we were on furlough last year I hit the garage sales in our area (whichever city we were in) every Saturday morning.  Well, I found this study book for 50 cents and brought it home.  I decided to start it last week; it's on the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and it is so rich and full that I'm gleaning all kinds of insight out of it for personal growth and for teaching purposes.  Yesterday's study was on Hagar.  I have never given her much thought.  Truth be told, I've had a negative perspective on her my entire Christian life.  She's the Egyptian slave who bore the "other" son to Abram.  That son (Ishmael) was the father of another nation that historically has made life difficult for Christians.  Ishmael was born because instead of waiting on God's perfect plan, Sarai took things into her own hands and handed over her maidservant to her husband to bear him a...

"The saving purposes of Christ among the nations and in our neighborhoods will not be accomplished unless Christians choose to suffer." -John Piper, Desiring God I read those words this morning and I felt instantly convicted.  When do I ever choose to suffer?  Not enough.  I spend more time choosing comfort and ease instead of choosing to sacrifice or even worse, suffer.  When I think about suffering I think about great Christian martyrs like William Tyndale, Jim Elliott, Dietrich Bonfoeffer,the Whitmans and countless others. I recently read the story of the life of John Hyde, missionary to India.  John Hyde knew sacrifice. He would pray on his knees for 8 hours a day crying out to God for the lost around him.  His doctors say that the strain of his burden for the lost drove his heart into premature failure and death. In fact, bewildering his doctors, his heart had shifted from the left side of his chest to the right hand side.  Frequently, he wou...

Good stuff to chew on this morning: Nowhere in Scripture do I see a "balanced life with a little bit of God added in" as an ideal for us to emulate.  Yet when I look at our churches, this is exactly what I see: a lot of people who have added Jesus to their lives.  People who have, in a sense, asked Him to join them on their life journey; to follow them wherever they feel they should go, rather than following Him as we are commanded.  The God of the universe is not something we can just add to our lives and keep on as we did before.  The Spirit who raised Christ from the dead is not someone we can just call on when we want a little extra power in our lives.  Jesus Christ did not die in order to follow us .  He died and rose again so that we could forget everything else and follow Him to the cross, to true Life.   -Francis Chan, The Forgotten God.

The renewal for women in ministry that I attended near the capital two weeks ago was fantastic.  We studied the composition and the 5 divisions of the Psalms and specifically delved into Psalm 103. Personally, I love the Psalms; there is one written for almost every emotion.  When I am down I read them, when I'm upset or doubting God or needing forgiveness I read them.  When I am joyful and thankful I read them. What stood out to me in our in depth look at Psalm 103, a covenant Psalm, is the Hebrew word, Hesed . Hesed is loving-kindness; it is faithful, steadfast love and loyal commitment.  It describes who God is and how he deals with us.  Even though we are uncommitted, faithless and full of sin, God's love for us is permanent and unconditional. The Lord is compassionate and gracious,  slow to anger, abounding in love.   He will not always accuse,  nor will he harbor his anger forever;  he does not treat us as our...

I haven't always been a modest dresser. When I was in high school I let the fashion of magazines such as Seventeen and Vogue and my circle of friends influence my dress more than what God had to say about the issue. While I was more careful in my dress after marrying my college sweetheart, I still would like to show off my curves when we went out. It wasn't until I moved to Paraguay that I realized that different cultures have different understandings of modesty. Shorts that were considered "normal" in the U.S. (mid thigh length) are not considered appropriate here. Most women do not wear shorts. If they do, they are knee-length. When I went back to the States on our first summer furlough, I was so used to wearing long shorts and capri pants that I was a little taken aback seeing women wear the short-shorts I used to wear. My goodness, they were exposing almost all of their leg! It was then that I realized how blind I had been to the strong cultural current of...

Hubby and I have made an agreement not to talk about sensitive issues after 10:00 p.m. It’s a rule in our household because when we were first married our late night talks would turn into fights and we would say hurtful things, because we were tired and our reasoning senses were shot. We eliminated almost all arguments with that simple rule. Exhaustion takes the best out of a person. Another new book on the market,talks about the high burnout rate among pastors. In reading reviews of the book, the author says that lack of sleep is one of the main causes of burnout. I’m reading this book that also deals with the correlation of sleep deprivation and discouragement. It’s a book for overactive people who are seeking to strengthen a love relationship with the Lord. Being in the ministry, I feel the demands of people’s needs constantly. Daily, we hear claps at the door to pray, to chauffeur people around, to do weddings, funerals, to lead Bible studies, to counsel just about any pro...

As I was hand washing our clothes today over our outdoor washboard sink, I instinctively grabbed another pair of pants from my basket and as soon as I looked at them, huge guilt feelings came to my mind. Why would I feel guilty about washing a pair of my husband’s old pants? Well, these pants go back to our Pre-Paraguay days when we were first married. We were getting our start in adventure racing and for his birthday I wanted to surprise him by buying the best adventure racing pants on the market. I scrimped and saved to make an extravagant online purchase (still a novelty in those days). Yet, they were so expensive; he didn’t want to wear them! Since they are expedition weight, they are too heavy for Paraguay’s heat. I feel guilty today and I know I won’t ever buy $100 pants again for Norb, myself or anybody. Not because I don’t like to buy quality. I do. Not because I don’t think he’s worth it. He is. Since moving to Paraguay, I have seen too much pover...

I (Julie) finished my first book of 2009. Admittedly, I started the book in November, but I’m still going to count it toward my new year’s goal of 12. Is that cheating? I read, “Trusting God, Even When Life Hurts,” by Jerry Bridges. It isn’t one of those warm and fuzzy Christian books. The concepts hit the core of my struggle with several uncontrollable issues in my life. Last year was a difficult one for our family. We experienced loss, we saw broken family relationships and tensions and personally we suffered a miscarriage and work overload. Honestly, the message seemed to come at just the right time for me. The first chapter of the book is, “Can God Be Trusted?” an age-old question of humanity. His premise is three-fold: God is completely sovereign. God is infinite in wisdom. God is perfect in love. He uses the scripture from Lamentations 3:37-38 “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamitie...

I’ve been preparing for a talk on forgiveness for a womens' retreat, so it's interesting that this week this scenario happened where I teach English: My colleague walked into my class before the students arrived and shut the door. She began to sob as she revealed, “I can’t forgive him, I just can’t.” As my colleague poured out her heart, she admitted to me that not only was she miserable because of this anger; it was making her physically sick. I talked to her about what it means to forgive and explained that the source of our ability to forgive is God. Then, just a few days later a close friend called me up sobbing. She told me she found messages on her husband’s cell phone to another woman. She was devastated. I went over to her house and she asked me, “Why should I forgive him?” Me “Well, because God forgave you,” Her “I forgave him once before, but I won’t do it again.” Me “Yeah, I know it’s hard to forgive repeat offenders, especially when they hurt you deeply. I’m s...

Recently a family asked if we had any extra shoes we could give them. I do happen to have 2 pair of tennis shoes. One older pair for the garden and muddy weather and my good pair. I like my shoes. They are New Balance, a brand I can only buy when I’m in the States. This family of six, however has one pair of good shoes for the entire family. That means their four adolescents (1 boy and 3 girls) share the same pair of shoes. When I found out that extra piece of information, I was willing to give them my second pair. We have such abundance that it is so easy to forget that even a second pair of old shoes is an extreme luxury for others. I should be willing to give my extra pair of shoes, my shirts, my food, my clean water… to those who have nothing. But that’s not where giving ends. I felt like I am being tested even more on what my role is as a giver. Before we came to Paraguay we asked a veteran missionary what we’d need. She told us that we would certainly need an electric bl...

Timmy got a new Veggie Tales video this week from Grammy (thanks, mom!). It’s called “The Rumor Weed” and humorously depicts what happens to a small town when an untruth gets spread about one of its residents. Long story short: Huge damage! However, gossip isn’t just a silly issue for kid’s videos. It kills people. Recently at the Christian bookstore we run, a woman came in looking for a book on disappointment. I showed her a few possibilities and as she was flipping through the pages, she started to pour out her heart. She had been a long-time church goer at a church the next town over. However a rumor started about her sexual orientation AMONG HER CHURCH FRIENDS. Since she lives in a small town, the damage done to her character and reputation has all but ruined her life. She lost 30 pounds (and she is a small person), her marriage almost ended, and her relationship with God and the church was almost completely destroyed. As I began to listen to this stranger gushing with ...