Gran Chaco With NTM

This past week 4 of us have travelled to the North West of Paraguay into the sparsely-populated, arid Gran Chaco region.  The Gran Chaco spreads into Bolivia to the North and Argentina to the East.  SIM works south of Asuncion with subsistence farmers whilst a lot of NTM’s work is North with the tribal people out in the wilds.  As I’m working 2 weeks with NTM it gave me the only opportunity to see this part of the country and visit some of its tribes.  I’ll write some more about the tribes we saw at some point later, but as much of the adventure was set on the epic road trip there and back, I’ll talk of that first. Much...

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New Tribes Mission

These past 2 weeks I have been working with New Tribes Mission (http://ntm.org) and I have been all over the North of Paraguay with them visiting tribes and Bible translators and so forth.  There have been many adventures, but that's for another day.  However, here are some pictures of the sights so far... Seeing the often primitive shacks the tribal people live in is humbling.  The sense of community is the advantage they gain from the disadvantage of living conditions. Hair-combing seemed to be high on the agenda for most women and girls. Some tribe kids watching a dance performance. A tribe's older men folk form...

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Ycuá Bolaños

In my first week in Asuncion, some of the Stouts, Hannes and I went to a huge park in the centre of the city, and on the way we passed a large ruined building.  Even some of the lived-in buildings here look ruined to my eyes, but this one was different.  It was a supermarket, but had no activity, yet its large sign atop a great pole still stood out on the skyline.  Kelly told me about what happened there on August 1st 2004, the last day it lived: it was a Sunday when many families were shopping, and the supermarket was full.  However, a fire had broken out in the building, and the owner, with a clearly dim view of humanity,...

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