Stranded in Asuncion with New Tribes Mission ~ Jocky in Paraguay

I was supposed to be travelling north into the Grand Chaco region of Paraguay from Sunday onwards, but there has been a huge rainfall (50cm) there flooding a lot of dirt tracks making it inaccessible for a few days, but there was a lot of Asuncion-based NTM work to be done the week after, so the weeks have just been changed about.

So on Sunday some of the work entailed heading to a large Baptist church in the city with connections to NTM and interviewing a Paraguayan girl who went on a mission trip with NTM recently (which is rare as Paraguayan churches are yet to really grasp hold of mission work, although some early steps are highly encouraged and joy-filled, such as the Audio Bible distribution I wrote of a couple of weeks ago).

The whole Baptist church took a step where most British churches don't go, and went out with invites to the Luis Palau crusade happening in a week at Asuncion's Jockey Club. Luis Palau is an Argentinian evangelist, very much the Latin American Billy Graham, so it's exciting times and so great to see so many churches go out and let people know. The Paraguayan believers don't do the job with sour faces as I know British people do, they go with joy at working for the Lord, so it's ace.

Besides filming a bit of that, I went with Mike, his wife Trisha and kids to the peninsula in the large river between Asuncion city and Argentina. To get there you can either take the ferry, or, even drive it in a major four-by-four. The trouble with the latter option is it means driving through one of the largest slums in the city. The city was quite quiet as we made our way to the peninsula because the 2 big football teams in the country were playing that evening, and in the slums there was a festive atmosphere as people crowded together to watch the TVs (and everybody seemed to support the team called Guarani which is based quite close to SIM -they have a strip like Juventus and Newcastle, and I'd rather support one of the underdogs, but that's just me).

Through the slum we had a good look at the downtown area of the city from a good vantage point. The end of the peninsula is actually a club with extensive grounds, sports facilities, basketball and tennis courts, water slides, a huge 2-storey pavilion, and somewhat typically, it had all fallen into disrepair and whilst having space for 800-1000 people, there were about 15 of us.

On the way back we stopped before the slums to photograph and film the river boats and fields swarming with dragonflies. It was at sunset, so magic hour to the photographer (my pictures are just vidcaps, so not ideal as still images as always), and since we were surrounded by the totally placid grand river, the mosquitos came out in their hundreds and attacked in hordes. I must have been bitten 40 times in just a few minutes, although only one bite was long enough to cause the usual pain.

In the rush out of the car to get good shots, then running back in swatting off the mosquitos, I managed to lose my mobile phone. I had just an hour before been presented by Trisha with a month's credit for it which she then installed, so it's the ideal time to lose it if it'll be a benefit to someone in the slum. God's hand is in these things.