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 college group are doing summer work similar to what I got to do at the Faith Mission Bible College, only they got to travel further than I did (Ireland isn’t far from Scotland).  It took them something like 3 days to travel here, which is more than it took for me from the UK.  The group of 5 are spending 2+ months here with SIM and New Tribes Mission.

I’ll be filming the activity they are involved in, that being the audio Bible distribution up the river from Concepcion in June, and they’ll be at the SIM Paraguay winter retreat in July the week before I head back to the UK.

Besides this I have dropped around to the New Tribes Mission 2-week seminar with Mike to film some of it and the work they are all doing.  For these past 2 weeks, until last night, a bunch of New Tribes Mission people were staying here at SIM HQ, including the lady I remember seeing in a NTM video from Papua New Guinea (you can see it here: http://usa.ntm.org/content/mission-videos-and-mission-photos/148/footsteps).  She gave a presentation at the church last last Sunday too, and it was very heart-breaking.  She spoke of how the tribe she worked with were taken through the Bible in something like 40 lessons over several weeks, and the day came when they reached the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the whole village fell silent, none had anything to say, no questions to ask, just silence.  

Days later she asked one village lady what she thought, and she said through tear-filled eyes that she understood that Jesus had died for her.  Much of the village said words to that effect over the next few days, and they were all dealing with the weight of that knowledge, a weight which actually lifted the burdens of their sin.

At the NTM event I was about to speak to SIMer Greg Stirling (right) and ask him why he was there, until I realised it wasn't him, just his NTM doppelgänger!

The event brought out one of the families from the East I got to film.

At the church there was a celebration of mothers for Paraguayan Mothers' Day.  All the kids got up and spoke a bit of why they appreciated their moms.  Romy, one of the MKs said she appreciated her mom's patience with her.  I'll say!  Minutes later Romy beat me up in church again!

The New Tribes Mission presentation about Papua New Guinea.

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New Year

It’s a few minutes before the New Year and I am supposed to be at a party with friends from my last year, which includes the hike up the nearby city-centre hill to watch the fireworks at midnight, but I am held up on the wild edge of the city at the Bible college.  The college has a big, warm library, and as the whole campus would have been empty, I thought I’d spend a few uninterrupted hours there in the peace and warmth studying.

It turned out I wasn’t alone: Timothy had returned for the new semester (17 days early) and the studying turned into a video game afternoon.

Wan turned up and we got a pizza meal deal and hung out in the common room.  When I joined the college in 2008 they had a poor selection of U-rated movies.  During the 2 years, Daniel (a gun-toting Canadian) and I checked out various little shops for gun-toting movies.  We ended with a selection of around 40 which we left hidden in a box in one of the endless attics of the campus.  The best attic happened to be one that was like something out of Alice in Wonderland as each ‘room’ of the attic had a gap to the next, and the gaps got progressively smaller until one I could only just contort myself through.  They hadn’t been disturbed, except by dust, in over a year, which showed the current students weren’t as adventurous as ones in the past.

We selected a very Christmasy/New-Yearsy video -Die Hard.  After this Wan introduced me to an American cartoon series double-bill which was doing a Star Wars special followed by a whodunit, which is now itself followed by a live-action whodunit.

While Timothy and Wan simultaneously conquer Europe and watch a moustachioed detective on a second screen, I have tried to regain some focus and have been checking out various resources on that far-off land of mystery, mainly journals by those working in its jungles and towns, and I am beginning to realise how far off and exotic it all is.  Things I have learned that I’m not excited about: it’s very hot, there are gigantic spiders that children play with (rather than flee from with arms raised), the earth is reddish in colour, insects are large, and there are man-eating creatures roaming about.  I once saw a possessed dog, and a rat, but these 2 things are the only things I have been afraid of here.  I’m sort of glad it’s still 2011 as it keeps me far away from all of this.

Added after midnight:

An explosion took us surprise at midnight!  Though out in the sticks, we could feel the detonation of fireworks rippling up through the night to us.  Interestingly 4 minutes later the locals staged their own primitive fireworks show.  New Year is slightly delayed out here, or the fuses are longer.  2012.

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Paraguay 2012!

After discipleship training school, Bible college and a year as an intern I’m spending a half year adventuring in Paraguay as a media scout.  I will post videos and tales here, as well as any pictures of killer animals spotted from safe vantage points.

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