The Kids in Barrio San Jose

A few hours ago, I went to visit my friend (and neighbor) Denisse. When I got to her house, she still hadn't gotten home from school. But, I did have another little friend over there. Her name is Paola. At any time of the day, you can walk outside and be sure to find Paola walking around somewhere by herself, or playing with the kids in the road. She doesn't look hispanic at all, and could easily pass for an American redneck kid. You know, the kid that's always playing outside and that's always covered in dirt. But aside fromt that, she is quite the kid, with an interesting story. Every now and then, I think about when we first moved here. Sometimes we would turn around and there Paola would be standing...she would always figure out how to get into the house without being seen. At first she wouldn't hardly talk to us, but we soon found out that she has a lot to say. Her mother was working for our neighbor, and recently passed away. (I can't remember when, but I believe it was in the past year.) The neighbors that took care of her took her in to raise her, but they have their own things going, and I imagine it's hard to keep up with a 5 year old that thinks she's 17. She spends a lot of time at Denisse's house and may come and go as she pleases. So today when Denisse wasn't home, I decided to hang out with Paola for a little while. We sat in the dirt road infront our house and talked. She had a bag of cocoa's that she was playing with, which ended up turning into an English lesson. I asked her if she wanted to count her cocoa's in English and she said "Yea! One, two, three, four, five, seven." It was the cutest thing. I tried forever to try to get her to say "..six, seven." and she got it a few times, but after that the "seven," turned into "sevenen." Haha. After a while, another neighbor kid came up. His name is Ulysses, and he's 4. The three of us played soccer and hung out, and then I ran inside and got my camera. The longer we were out there, the more kids that came, and they all wanted to take a picture. It's so cool hearing little kids running around screaming your name. :)

So, enjoy the pics as I enjoyed taking them, of the kids in "barrio San Jose." "Neighborhood San Jose."

Halloween was Hot

Wow has it really been 4 months already?? I can't believe it. Nor can I believe that in November, while I'm typing this, it's over 91 degrees in our house....that doesn't have an AC. The weather differences are really odd, and I'm still not used to the fact that the seasons are opposite.

Halloween was my Grandfather's birthday. And one thing I remember every year is that it's ALWAYS cold or chilly that night. So Saturday when I looked at the thermometer and it was almost 100, I was totally shocked.

Every Saturday night, we have youth service at church. Last saturday night, we had a "vigilia," (vigile) service until midnight. Since Halloween is an extremely new thing here, a small part of the service was set aside to teach about what it was and how it became to be a "holiday." It was so interesting, and I never knew that even Jack-O-Lanterns have a meaning behind them.

Sunday after service, we had Communion and a foot washing. That's my first communion with grape soda (cool idea) and I've definately never done foot washing so that was cool too.

Sunday Fun

Yesterday was quite wonderful. After church service all of the youth came over to hang out, listen to some music, and have, popcorn, brownies, and terere.
After snacks, our friend Carlito that leads praise and worship sometimes for service asked to play Ken's guitar. After a few songs, they decided to take the music out to the front patio. Carlito and Sesi (another youth) did a duet of some praise and worship songs, and Ken brought out the congas. The music was so beautiful and drew in a small audience. The crowd across the street that is normally watching a soccer game was on the porch, and some of the neighborhood kids lined up on the sidewalk to watch from a short distance.

Learning

After two weeks, today, I finally finished a small goal that I set for myself: reading the entire New Testament of the Bible! I have learned so much that I didn't know, and the stories I did know, I got a better insight on. I have also been reading another book called "For Such a Time As This," by Lisa Ryan. It's a book about Esther and how to be a "modern day Esther," and do things that aren't always easy to do, but you do them because God wants you to. It's been a wonderful book so far, and I feel like I have a better idea of Esther and her life, and how she might have felt back then. The Bible is so much bigger than I ever imagined, and every day I see more and more that there's more to this Jesus thing than the ten commandments and Noah's Ark...

Milanesa Surprise

Yesterday, was my friend Denisse's parent's 17th wedding anniversary. They invited me to come over for dinner to celebrate with them. I really enjoy visiting with them because it gives me an opportunity to practice my Spanish a lot, and I get more of an idea of Paraguayan life. So, for dinner, we had chicken soup. It was quite different than the good 'ol Campbells, but it was good nonetheless. I have noticed several traditions in Paraguay that are not the norm. For example they eat a snack (Merienda) about the time we normally eat dinner, and then they have dinner at about 8 or 9 o'clock. Then they don't drink they're drinks while they eat...they wait until after the meal. Last night, they not only waited after the meal, but they waited 30 minutes after the meal, because they said that if you drink right after eating soup, it will make our stomach sick.
So, after soup, they brought out what they called a "Special Milanesa." (Think country fried steak.) The way they were acting, I could tell it was something weird... and then they kept saying "You're gonna die when we tell you what it is..." My first and only guess was horse. [it's illegal, but readily available black market style] Turns out, it wasn't horse but Crocodile! It was quite delicious and I took every bite down with a smile :)

Denisee

It's my goal to learn spanish. There have been so many times when I was back in the states that I wanted to strike up a conversation with someone from church that didn't speak English, and the only thing I could remember how to say was "Hola, como estas." (Hello, how are you.) And a very general reply. I took two years of spanish class in high school but it has been about 3 years and I have forgotten most of it. After I got here, some of the words and phrases began to jog my memory and I would remember stuff, and if I didn't know it, I would ask what a particular word meant, or what someone was saying. It's much easier to figure out what someone is saying than it is to speak to them though.
I am very proud to say that I understood a lot of Sunday's sermon. :) The general idea was what you can do for your neighbor, or to help your neighbor out. We just moved to a new neighborhood and I hadn't spent a lot of times with the neighbors yet, but I had met Denisse, the girl across the street that seemed very nice. Her Mom runs an almacen in their house, (it's like a mini store with food and random stuff to buy in it, they're very common in neighborhoods) and the girls and I have went across the street a few times to get snacks or eggs.
So, when I got home Sunday, I walked to Denisee's house and told her that I really needed to practice my spanish more and I was wondering if I could help her with English and if she could help me with my spanish. She said that that sounded great, and to my surprise, she pulled out a couple of chairs right there on her porch and started talking to me. I learned more about her life and about her school. If I didn't unerstand a word, she would slow down and tell me another word for it, until I understood what she was saying. Sometimes she would have to stop talking and get something if someone came to buy something from the store, and a couple of times she would bring us back a snack when she was done :)
I am so glad to have made a new friend, especially a friend that's a neighbor. Everyday, she tells me to come back the next day and we'll practice more. There's another language here [Guarani] that everyone speaks. They grow up in their house speaking Guarani, and then they learn Spanish when they go to school. It's kind of weird though, because if you go to the country area, there are some people that don't speak any Spanish, because they never went to school. After a little bit of yesterday's spanish lesson, Denisee decided that I needed to learn Guarani....hahaha. It's really difficult for me, and after the several hours that we were on the porch, we had an audience of all of the neighborhood kids watching. Everytime I would pronounce something, they would think it was hilarious. :) Guarani is only spoken in Paraguay, so I will only be able to use it here, but I'm very excited to get to learn it. It's a very beautiful langauge.
I also wanted to ask that everyone keeps Denisee's family in your prayers. Her grandmother is in Asuncion, the Capital, in a coma. They have gotten a lot of bad news about her condition, and they're not sure how much longer they have with her. Asuncion is about an hour and a half drive from here and I would think that it would be hard for them to not have their store open to go stay with her.

Moving!

After many prayers, Ken and Christie have decided to expand their ministry into the city area of Carapegua, right down the road. They found a very neat house that we will be moving into

Tuesday. It is very big and pretty. The downstairs has a big "salon" area in it that we one day soon hope to open up for a youth center on the weekends, and bible studies during the week. It also has many bedrooms upstairs that could house future mission students of Tape mission school [another cool Hagerman project! http://www.tapemissions.org/]

I am very excited about moving into a new place and meeting the people of the neighborhood, but I am definitely going to miss seeing the people around the campground everyday, but luckily we will still be back to visit to teach English class and do youth nights.

Tonight, I was enjoying some terere with Caroline on the front porch when I noticed some of the neighborhood kids swimming in the pond in front of the house. I have noticed them out there a few times and decided that I had to take some pictures of them. They we're more than willing to strike a pose, throwing up their "muscles" and grabbing their buddy, fighting to get my attention for the next picture. :) Then they wanted to look at every picture we took. It was a great time because the sun had just set and the sky was beautiful as always, with pinks and purples behind the palm trees. We didn't stop taking pictures until it was way to dark to take them, and then they asked if we could take more tomorrow. It was quite fun :)