Audio Bibles for Paraguay (San Francisco) [Part 1]

On Friday afternoon I was asked if I wanted to “go tomorrow”.  I took this to mean church as Tom has invited me to go with him to church on Sunday.  “Sure!” I said.   “OK, we’ll be leaving at 1:30 tomorrow morning.”   Something didn’t quite sound right about that.  I didn’t realise I was a day early for church.  What I had immediately said “Sure!” to was a 1-day mission trip.  Various church members from a couple of local churches had signed up to go by bus to San Francisco to hand out Audio Bibles, and now I was going, at 1:30am. They had hired a bus to do the journey in.  It needed to be a tough...

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Sin Prisa y Sin Pausa

There hasn’t been much to write about these past 2 weeks as I’ve been in Asuncion the whole time editing.  I can’t make editing sound interesting, so I won’t try.  There also haven’t been many interesting things happening around here except another night-time thrill-ride to Asuncion airport to pick up a bunch of students from a Texan Bible college (on the road at 2:30am I had the great sensation of pressing the brake when approaching an intersection and nothing happening, then almost driving into one of them 50ft trees they have growing out of the centre of the slow lanes in dual-carriageways in Asuncion).   The Bible...

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Sales, Food, Leaving, & Babies (pictures)

It's the 14th of May marking the 201 year anniversary of Paraguay's independence from Spain (also the anniversary of Israel's rebirth -that is the day the first world leader, Harry Truman, recognised the reborn nation). Here are some pictures from the last week or so in Asuncion... Asuncion Christian Academy has a once-a-year sale that has become a big event. People set up stalls of second-hand stuff in the basketball court. The McKissick stall. The Stout stall. The Reich stall. Since coming to Paraguay I haven't had a decent self-made meal save for egg fried rice I made a fortnight ago, and this home-made pizza yesterday....

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Paraguay's "Mountains"

I've written a few times about how flat Paraguay is.  For a time the biggest 'hill' I experienced was hiking the 5 meter rise from the local supermarket back to SIM HQ.  By God's grace I've been able to see a large amount of Paraguay (North, West, South and East!) and I have finally seen some hills.  Interestingly the missionaries refer to them as 'mountains' despite them being nowhere near mountain height, but travelling 200km over flat terrain, a rare hill does seem a lot like a mountain! This first picture is from the summit of a man-made hill (the bridge West of Concepcion that heads into the flat Gran Chaco region)....

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A Farewell to a Faithful Family

The Dreiling family from the United States of America have served God in Paraguay for 20 years.  Their 3 kids grew up here as MKs before returning to the US for university.  Paul and Becky Dreiling are now returning to America to take up positions in the SIM office there. Only about a month ago one of their US-based kids thought it would be good to fly out to Paraguay to spend their last week there with their folks and importantly leave with them.  Within days all the kids were wanting to come out alongside their spouses and the Dreiling's first grandchild.  As you need a visa to enter Paraguay from the US it was a race...

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