First Sunday in Paraguay

Today I attended my first Spanish-language church service.  It was attended 5 minutes late as a localised power outage made my ride get stuck a while a few blocks away behind an electricity-run gate.

But getting there I found that I understood about 32% of the songs, 7% of the sermon, and 100% of the reason why they have 2 major air conditioning units blasting the congregation from North and South.  Even with the air conditioning there was no true climate control, it was only climate wrestling and we were on the valiant but losing side.  The service was attended by Hannes, a Swiss SIM worker who uses his mechanical skills to help people in Paraguay.  Him being from the north of Switzerland -a place of high snows and cold weather- similar at times to Edinburgh, I expected him to be feeling like an ice cube in a microwave, but Hannes came in wearing a black jacket, darkjeans, and dark socks (3 things I will never even think of wearing here).  He was dressed for a mild British winter despite it being 35C outside.

‘It gets freezing in here,’ he said, so he dresses accordingly.  However, even the Paraguayans didn’t attire themselves in such a manner but wore roughly the same few things as me: t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops.  After much interrogation from me regarding dealing with high heat I got to spend the day with Hannes and the American family, and 2 Taiwanese kids for my last day of getting used to the surroundings before work really starts.

We played football with a square football (I won’t explain), got beaten up by a laughing small girl named Romy, had lunch, then went to a huge park in northern Asuncion called Botanica, a park filled with trees and a zoo which is never open at the right times.  It was still 35C and the park had thousands of people all staying under the shade of the trees.  Even the couple of football pitches in the expansive grounds were played upon in only the shaded corners.

We drank tereré under one of the biggest and therefore most shaded and cool trees.

Hannes (now dressed for summer) and Romy in the tree.

This is the park on the map.

I am now on a bus to Yuty, a nice air-conditioned, uncramped bus, the kind of bus that is highly favoured unlike the daytime buses which are stuffed full of people and chickens like a hellish kitchen.  You don’t want to be on a daytime bus, I was told.  You’d stew.  The worst time for travel is 10am to 3pm when the sun is hottest.  I’m glad I’m on the night bus instead.  Well, I was glad, and I was meant to be on that bus, but the plan changed and now, due to a series of unfortunate events, I am leaving at 8am tomorrow morning on the 5 hour journey which nicely fits inside the (closed) window of the furnace hours I had hoped to avoid.  The Christian life isn’t always the comfortable one.  However, as Hannes and I parted ways earlier, he shared how when he first came here and was learning Spanish, he couldn’t communicate and nobody knew his native German so he felt very alone, but it was ultimately a positive experience in the hands of God because He made it a time for Hannes to become closer to the One who could understand the German language, and being alone: Jesus.

Before I go out to the countryside, here are a few pictures of my base in Asuncion:

Down my street is this awesome car.

A little off the main street (Santisimo Sacramento) I found a crew of chickens roaming around.

Along the street I walk often is a gaping hole in the sidewalk that goes over a river.

There are a bunch of dogs that hang in the SIM garden, including this cute puppy.