Spiritual Retreat Conference

This past week I was at the SIM Spiritual Life Conference in the wilds beyond the town of Paraguari.  It was great gathering together everybody as well as teachers from the United States.  It was 4 days in mid-winter in a collection of little huts that had no heating.  It was, in the freezing conditions in the woods, what Calvin's dad from Calvin and Hobbes would have labelled 'character building.'

We had great teaching from from the life of Saul's son Jonathan and his belief in God despite overwhelming odds whereby he and his shield-bearer scaled a hill to attack the Philistine army by themselves as Jonathan's father Saul worried and procrastinated.  It also was a good time for the missionary kids as we had games of rugby (instructed by the South Africans) and soccer, as well as airsoft shooting games for the teens and adults.

Here are some pictures of the week:

Teaching and worship time at the conference.

Hannes playing airsoft using pistols which shoot small, hard, plastic pellets.

Dr. Jeff taking aim.  He later shot me perfectly in the back of the head when I stormed his base.  It jolly well hurt!

Geoff, one of the teachers, wearing a hat as protection the day after I shot him in the side of the head.

Hannes led the MKs in a grub-hunting mission, here breaking open a rotten tree trunk for grubs.

Tyler, happy after finding some huge grubs which were later eaten at the campfire.

A fallen telegraph pole was converted into a game for the MKs.

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River Audio Bible Distribution (prayer request)

For a few months I have mentioned the 14-day Audio Bible distribution to be done up a major river to the North to reach some of the remote communities (inaccessible by car).  I was very excited at the prospect of being able to film the American Bible college team and others doing this amazing work of bringing the Good News of Jesus to the ears of people who maybe had no access prior to God's Word (and certainly nothing in the native Guarani language to listen to for those who can't read).
It was set to happen this month, but for several reasons including crew overlap, and boat rental problems, it has had to have been postponed for several months at least, though hopefully not forever.

The closest I got to the river was driving over one of its bridges.

When we try to do things for God, sometimes He closes the door through circumstance.  God also raises up others to do the task.  So could you pray that if it's not God's will for SIM to do the river audio Bible distribution, that He in His might may raise up another group to do something similar, that native Paraguayans may hear God's call to evangelise their countrymen and women, that they may know that the time is short and desire to invest everything they have in reaching their brothers and sisters in this beautiful country.

It is only the work done for Jesus that lasts, for everything else in life that people spend their lives toiling over will be burned up come the end of the age.  Please pray that Paraguayan Christians would understand this truth, gain an eternity perspective, understand the time is short, and set about their work for Him joyfully and with much eagerness.

To know the time is short, consider Jesus' warnings about the coming of the end of the age (Matthew chapter 24) and the signs that will signal it: the increase of wickedness, natural disasters, and wars and rumours of wars.  The world is being gradually set for that one-world economy and currency Daniel saw as we see nations fail under their own around Europe and America.  We see prophecy about Egypt and Syria from Isaiah 17 and 19 coming to pass these very months, and the joining of Iran and Russia against Israel just as Ezekiel records in chapter 38 and 39.  Don't be asleep, but be alert and look into these things.

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SIM MK Adventure 2012!

Last weekend I got to go along with the sometimes annual Missionary Kid Adventure SIM puts on for its collection of boys.  The last one they did was a river-rafting adventure and there were swarms of mosquitos which covered them and turned them black.  Fortunately this time they weren’t doing something so unpleasant as venturing into mozzie territory, instead it was a mountain hike/camping trip in the wilds somewhere close to Villarrica.  I’ve pointed out before how there aren’t mountains as such in Paraguay, but occasionally there’s hills which on the otherwise flat expanse do look like mountains.

Despite being 30 minutes from a city there were scarcely any people on the hike route, and the path up through the hills wasn’t quite well-worn.  It’s surprising how few locals seem to explore their own country, but at the same time it was nice to be close to isolated for me having spent the last few weeks mainly in the busy city.

We climbed the major hill on the first day and were blessed with hot weather instead of the forecast clouds with the possibility of rain, for with rain the track would have been unclimbable -in fact parts already almost were due to some steeper parts of the path turning into little streams.  From the top of the hill was a quite amazing view of Paraguay.  As it had rained the night before there was little in the way of mist in the air so we could see for miles.

From there we hiked down the other side of the hill in a long valley which was dotted with little farms, and reached our campsite.  It was a field by a stream with a lot of brightly coloured chickens running around, and at night it was very cold in the tents -at least for me.  I’m not sure why I’m struggling so much in Paraguayan winter, because it’s around 16C most days (I should add that this cold snap is meant to just last a couple of weeks, then it's back to mid-twenties again), and I’m used to running around Edinburgh’s 5C in a t-shirt.  I think I just became too acclimatised to the strong heat of Paraguay’s summer.

Next morning we did cliff diving into a deep river pool whose depths haven’t been plumbed.  As I can’t swim and don’t seem to float very well, and since I had the good excuse that it was my job to film the adventure, I didn’t jump the cliff myself!  But it was great to watch.

From there it was up another lesser hill towards a large yet largely unknown waterfall.  At the top of it we could stand on the huge rocky outcrop next to it, not quite realising how dangerous it was.  Part of the river at the top of the waterfall had a small levee thing which held back a vast quantity of water which the local would release once we reached the base of it.

We all had to shout and give the thumbs up to the guy at the top of the waterfall.  The amount of water that spilled over the edge was quite amazing and we were hit by a fast-moving wall of spray.

Waterfall prior to spilling.

Waterfall spray

In the dense 'jungle' next to the waterfall.

We had one more night in the wilds, well, almost wilds, for next to our 2nd similarly deserted campsite was a small place for parties and a birthday party was getting underway when we arrived around 5pm and the music boomed out until around midnight when the forecast heavy rain that was meant to hit us all that day finally came with a long lightning storm.  Epic.  It was a very blessed 3 days, good Bible studies, and everybody had great fun, except poor old Hannes who couldn’t come at he had teaching duties on the Friday.

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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 bus as it’s only tough ones that make it down the dirt road segment of the journey south of Cazaapa.  At 12:30am it arrived, and I was taken aback as it was a regular Asuncion city bus, all brightly painted similar to Jeepneys in the Philippines, only 3 times the size.  From what I gathered this was the bus of a church member, one which would for the rest of the week be used circling some route in the city.

The buses here are great.  You stop them by pointing a gun-like finger up across the road.  You pay the very reasonable sum of 3,000G (something like 20 pence).  When you want to get off you need to get to the back of the bus and pull a string attached to the ceiling that runs forward to a bell near the driver.  Once I was heading to church and I squeezed past the people standing in the middle of its wide aisle, and went to pull the string only to find there was none.  I couldn’t signal the driver, and I couldn’t shout to stop without using the kind of vocabulary that would cause a mass panic as I’d be announcing an emergency.  I had to wait for the bus to slow down, then I jumped and hit the ground running.  In hindsight this was rather foolish as there could have been a telegraph pole right there for me to crash into.  Paraguayan buses: Adventure.

On early Saturday morning, about 20 people were on this bus and we set off into the night.  And my goodness, I regret wearing just shorts for the journey.  This was the coldest night not only of my stay in Paraguay, but also the coldest in my life I think!  As soon as we were out of the city a thick mist fell, and it was freezing.  In fact it probably wasn’t freezing, or any worse than in Scotland, only I was in shorts, which wasn’t wise.  At times the visibility on the road was reduced to about 30ft, and I imagined little reports in next weeks Asuncion newspapers mentioning a bus crash of Christians.  To fill us all, or perhaps just me, with dread, we passed a car fully engulfed in flames on the lay-by!

Someone must have checked weather reports and it turned out there was a big collection of blankets available which were passed out.  I wrapped myself into a sort of breathless cocoon inside my felt blanket as I perched on my chair, hoping it really wouldn’t take 6 hours to get there.

I don’t sleep on bus journeys, no matter how comfortable or warm.  Yet somehow, by God’s grace, I managed to sleep about 3 hours!  With me, I tell you, this was impossible, but with God, all things are possible.

We arrived in San Francisco with the thick mists still hanging in the air.  It made such a peculiar, otherworldly sight.  This was a town I’d only ever seen in the blazing sun, but now it seemed about as miserable as a dreich Scottish morning.

We were met at the Forest Door church (the one that has walls and roof made of swaying trees, and a carpet made of grass) by local believers, some who had been on the Audio Bible distribution over a month ago beyond Yuty.  This was a much bigger group than then.  Back then it was about 25.  This time there was about 50.  It was amazing to see!

For some the journey had been made to participate in their first form of evangelism, for others they had done this kind of thing for years.  Some were young (even a couple of pre-teens), some were old, yet everybody was part of the same family.  They were all out to put into the hands of every resident of San Francisco, a full Genesis to Revelation Audio Bible in Guarani that they could fully understand, which would mark the day when everybody in town could for the first time have access to the Truth of God directly, no longer relying on superstitious understandings of the Bible, or what had been twisted and handed down, or by the few incorrect things the locals priests would have offered in their own blindness.

I’ll write some more about the day of delivering them next, but first here are some pictures of the day up until that point.

To learn more about the Audio Bibles for Paraguay project, visit the website: http://audiobiblesforparaguay.org, and to support the work from a distance, donate via the project page on SIM.org: http://sim.org/index.php/project/91039

The city bus that safely got us there.

The unloaded precious cargo it carried: hundreds of Audio Bibles.

The volunteers start gathering at Forest Door Church.

It really was that cold!

Sorting out the boxed Audio Bibles.

During a lesson on how to work the Bibles.  The instructions would have to be explained to each person who received one.

What always surprises me is the number of Christian youths who turn out to assist these events!

One of the youngest volunteers gets help with his deliverer's bib.

Another youngster helping organise the pens on the chair for everybody.  "Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless." (1 Corinthians 15:58)  

The courier bags the volunteers will carry, each loaded with about 20 Audio Bibles.

A group photo before heading out.

A prayer by a Forest Door Church elder before leaving.

Dr. McKissick and David looking over the maps the latter had prepared so everybody could be reached.

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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 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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Swords and Missing Teeth!

After rather reluctantly leaving Yuty and the Reichs, I spent a couple of great days with the Floyds in a village outside Yuty.  Like Hannes, Tony Floyd uses his God-given gift of fixing stuff to great effect so I got to go on a couple of adventures with him to the nearby farms.  The first was brilliant: it was around 10am and the farmer was in high-spirits on the porch with a small bottle of something probably verging on the stiff.  When he found out I was Scottish, he said he liked the name as it reminded him of scotch.  He spoke Guarani so I couldn’t understand anything he said, but whatever it was he was saying he was heartily laughing at the conclusion to each sentence.  He was, in the terminology of Enid Blyton, an absolutely positive scream.

After Tony set to work on his busted washing machine, he vanished off only to reappear moments later brandishing a 100 year-old sword which he did some moves with before laughing.  However, I’m not sure now how to incorporate the whiskey, guffawing and sword-wielding footage into the SIM film.

Later we headed to the iron master who set to work on some equipment.

His tap from the cold water barrel he’d dunk the worked-on iron into was a watering hole for wasps.

He also had a bunch of piglets on his land and his wife saw I was filming them without much success so she dropped some corn for them which they turned their noses up at.  She then gave them a bowl of fruit which they didn’t move for but rather surrounded her as if wanting something better.

Hannes was also by to demonstrate his reception dish for stronger internet connection.  With a download speed of 0.3kb per second, it had been taking a long time to get even emails, but the Hannes Device produced a steady 80kb per second speed which spiked for a time at 120kb!  He quickly became a legend in the Floyd household.  Like the McKissicks and the Reichs, the Floyds have super-fun kids and they got a kick out of the device.

They had started the school term last week for the first time in this new village, but one day was the first day they had the school uniform, so there was the obligatory posing in the garden photo moment at 7am when they set off.

Later that evening, Daniel refused to eat a sandwich and it was determined that the reason for this was to avoid his wobbly tooth falling out.  We encouraged him to pull it out with floss for the camera.  With the tooth suitably lassoed, he gave a firm yank and the tooth shot out across the porch to somewhere on the cluttered workbench.

…or under the workbench.

Ultimately it couldn’t be located so he went for a surrogate tooth in the form of a chunk of cement.

And to end to post, here are some random pictures of a man on a horse...

...and a helmet-cam shot of a farm.

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Breakdown (150km in 7 hours)

Thursday was the biannual SIM Paraguay missionary meeting where everybody meets up in Villarrica (a halfway city between Asuncion and the most southern missionaries in Yuty).  For those coming from Asuncion it’s a boring drive along freeway and a toll road, but for those south of Caazapa it’s a 3 hour adventure rally over dust roads and rickety bridges in major 4x4s!

As I’m staying with the Reiches at present, I joined them coming up from Yuty in their 4x4 alongside Hannes.  Hannes and I were given the Yuty treasure hunt sheet which listed various things to look out for along the road, including things like person herding cows on a bike, and at least 3 people on one motorbike.  Other things such as tarantula crossing the road, and cactus I am yet to see.

The road there was dry coming up, so it only took the projected 3 hours, (2 hours on dirt, one hour on tarmac -see my map of the area above), but when we were in Villarrica the heavens opened back on the dusty road turning it into a thick mud.  This wasn’t good news for the Camerons as they were taking a 4x4 and SIM trailer [a 2-wheeled trailer that has repeatedly let everybody down who leads it, but that’s another story, or 5] loaded with stuff for their new Yuty house.  Dragging the two-wheeled Judas trailer along the slick, mud course was to be a 5 hour, 25kph slog.

We overtook them a few miles south of Caazapa where the mud started, sliding the vehicle sideways and leaping over the ruts.  At about 8:30pm, an hour after sunset (and 10 minutes after passing them) we got a call and they let us in on Judas’s new act of treachery: the tow bar ball had been severed and Judas had broken loose with half their kitchen and the contents of two bedrooms!

We turned back and saw the lights of the stranded Cameronmobile on the lonely road located somewhere in a flood plain.  The trailer was leaning back, detached from the tow-bar but jammed into the back of their RV at a 45 degree angle.

We soon realised the ball hadn’t been severed, but rather it had somehow become unscrewed, so the large bolt that unscrewed was the only thing missing from getting the parade back on the road, so Hannes climbed aboard the front of a vehicle which drove up and down the road a few hundred meters to find the bolt that had to have been shorn not far before.  But there was no finding it so the search party returned.

The tow bar ball was then affixed to the back of the Reiches wagon with the few tools at disposal.

It was a 1 hour search and failed rescue and transfer, during which the 4 kids made the most of the adventure location and held various track and field events.  The whole time we were utterly overwhelmed with flying insects from the plains.  You could feel about 10 hitting your face every second as you walked around.  None of them seemed to be mosquitos, fortunately, despite the watery location (they come from still-water locations).

From there we were extra careful with the trailer, and with about 50km to cover to Yuty, it was hoped that at a steady 25kph we’d be back for 11:30, but a steady speed was impossible.  Some areas we were stuck at 10kph with the trailer sloshing back and forth behind like a pike on a fishing line.  We arrived in Yuty at 1am on the dot, 7 hours after leaving Villarrica 150km away. 

Prayer point: God provides all things and owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  Please pray that He will provide for my current needs that He knows about.

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