Passion for Paraguay

Today is a wonderful day in Paraguay.  It is " Dia de la Amistad " or Friendship Day.  Everyone greets each other in a warm and special way.  People exchange small gifts, have parties and send each other lots of text messages to express how much they appreciate each other. Here are the flower arrangements that we made for our friends with a special verse:  "Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves"  Romans 12:10 While we can't send you flowers today, we want to tell you how much you mean to us.  Your friendship has strengthened and encouraged us.  You sharpen us and make us more loving, more giving, more trusting and better listeners.  As Emily Dickinson said, "My friends are my estate."  You are a rich inheritance and we don't want to ever take you for granted.  We love you, dear friends and thank God that He's placed you in our lives!!

This last week has been a whirlwind of activity.  We turned in our paperwork to the adoption agency and lawyer on Tuesday and now we do what we have learned to do well in Paraguay.  We wait. There is a chance that we could be named Anahi's guardians before the adoption is complete.  Please pray for the Lord's will to be done.  Now that we know our sweet girl, we can't stand living without her.  She is a precious gift from the Lord. I was looking back in my journal last night to see if I had written anything on the day of her birth. ( I only write about once a week or so.)  But indeed, I did write something... September 21, 2010 "Is anything too hard for the Lord?  That's the verse I studied today in my Patriarch's lesson.  No, Lord nothing is too difficult for you!  I believe in your divine power and your ways.  I am praying for my miracle and entrusting the details to you, sweet Jesus."   I got teary-eyed as I read what I wrote.  Little did I kno

Yesterday was one of the best days of our lives.  It all still feels surreal and while we don't have time to tell the whole story right now (we're running around town doing paperwork), we'll tell you that she is God's gift to our family. We met our little girl yesterday morning and she is beautiful.  Shé s 10 months old today (Sept. 21, 2010).  She's got big brown eyes, is very happy and active and crawling a LOT.  She has two little teeth on the bottom and what was the biggest surprise is that she's blond!  Even the social worker says that doesn't happen in Paraguay.   She immediately opened her arms to Norberto and gave him a kiss, as if she knew she was in her daddy's arms. We can't take her home until we do paperwork and the judge signs her over to us. That's why we didn't write earlier, we've been all over Asuncion trying to get everything done.  We hired a lawyer and are hoping that we can get her w/i the month, but it

Friends, after almost giving up hope on hearing from the adoption agency (you may recall that we've been waiting to adopt a Paraguayan orphan since Nov 09), they called last week and told us that of 90 families on the waiting list, they've narrowed it down to 29.  They said that we would most likely be parents to another child by the end of 2011. Then, they called us back today......and our hearts almost stopped.  We are to report in Asuncion at the adoption agency on Wed. at 9:00 to meet our little girl !!!  We don't know any other details at this time, but will certainly keep you posted.   We are excited beyond belief.  God has answered our prayers.  We will post (hopefully with pics) after we meet our sweet princess.

And the new name for our peanut products is..... Man í Guaran í (it rhymes) Thanks so much to everyone who gave some GREAT (and hilarious) marketing ideas.  We chose Suzy,'s brainstorm.  She's a college friend, a fellow MK (missionary kid) and a mother of quadruplets.  You can read her blog here .  We will be debuting our new product label in the next week or so.    P.S.  Please, PLEASE continue to pray that our nut sheller gets "unstuck" from Cleveland, TN so we can continue forward with our micro-enterprise project!

I know I'm a little behind on posting, but I have an excuse, which I'll tell you about soon.  But first, you can't live in Paraguay and not have a party spirit!  Here's our celebration for Norberto's 40th birthday last week.  We made his favorite food, which is gnocchi's (noquis in Spanish) for lunch.  It's an Italian potato pasta, and while it's a little laborious, it's so worth the effort.  Here Timmy's using the special wooden gnocchi maker, but you can get the same look using a fork. We planned a backyard BBQ with friends, but since the forecast called for freezing weather and storms, we had our little shindig at the local restaurant.  Since it was so stormy, we had the whole place to ourselves!  We had some games, led by Norberto's brother Marcos, followed by some entertainment.    The Kurrle Quartet made their appearance with some great songs, including one humorous song dedicated especially to Norberto.  This is one of the game