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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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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Training Week

Training week is almost done.  It has had a strong African flavour to it as most of the missionaries training here are going there.  I am the only one going in the westerly direction.  We are made up of British, German, and Nigerian.  As one of the singles I get the riotous experience of sharing the Hobbit-like, low-slung converted attic room of the SIM manor house with 2 Brits.  Here is a picture of the much-loved room:

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Tripod Babel

SIM training week.  I learned I was a plant, amongst other things.  Dandelion huh?  Plant as in a character type in a team.  A plant is the imaginative one with ideas but head in the clouds.  We each had to answer loads of questions and compile our results which would then reveal what team character we naturally are.  Our results were tested with various team-work activities.  One group activity was to take 75 thin, 1ft long wooden sticks, 3 large paperclips, some string, thread, and selotape and with these raw materials construct a tower in 30 minutes which could not only sustain the weight of a big bag of Minstrels, but also winch the bag to the top of the tower.  The team who achieved the greatest winched height became the winners of everybody else's Minstrels, so there was a lot at stake.

As Plant I imagined a 12ft tall skyscraper that touched the ceiling, built in the form of a tripod.  Very head in the clouds.  As there are certain scientific laws that Plants don't consider much, it turned out the vision had to be scaled back somewhat to live in science's constraints.  It ended up a feeble 5ft high which could only scrape a low-flying chin rather than the clouds.  It still won and the team won the Minstrels!  My tongue now hurts from sugar-overdose.

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