The second week we came to Santaní.  The family had a chance to see our lives up close and personal.  First we visited Segunda Linea to see the work in progress.  They are nearly finished with the construction and the pastor’s family is enjoying having a modern bathroom and kitchen sink. 

Jeff had an opportunity to pull a dead pump out of a well.  The pump at Primera Linea quit working, so Jeff, Ed and the church members pulled the old pump out of the 275’ well, no easy task – especially in our heat.  The day of the pump repair, the pastor’s family invited us to share lunch with them.  This was such a treat for our family to really be able to share and visit with Paraguayans.  We divided our sandwiches in half, and they shared their mandioca and cooked pork.  The older children were a bit skeptical about eating a sandwich, but the younger ones dove in!  Sandwiches are new to these folks, so it was interesting watching their reaction to eating meat and cheese between pieces of bread.  We really enjoyed their cooked pork, which was fresh from their own stock.

After Brenda and Jeff went back to the states, we had a nice, relaxing time with Kara.  We visited the Nuevo Horizonte School, and worshipped at our “Asuncion home church” in Santa Rosa.  It is always a pleasure to show folks from the US what living in Paraguay is like.

Here are our visitors, Jeff, Brenda, and Kara, during our Amazon trip.

As many of you may remember, we had a container shipped from the US with a hydraulic power system for our drill rig.  In addition to our new machinery, the container also had many boxes for other missionaries.  Well…the container has now been in port in Asuncion for over 45 days!  The amount of paper work has been mind boggling.  During November, we have sent paper work from Atlanta to the Miami Paraguay Consulate then on to Paraguay.  Our container is still being held at the port (after 45 days) waiting for the government to release their share of the paper work.  We ask that you all pray for the release of this shipment, we need God to intervene!

We are sometimes still surprised by questions we are asked by the Paraguayans.  This month was no exception.  After all the work teams that visited during our winter left, we distributed the left over VBS supplies to all our 9 churches.  One Sunday, the pastor at Tacuapi brought a glue stick and asked what it was.  Linda explained about the easier way for children to apply glue to their work.  Everyone standing around started laughing - it seems they had all thought it was roll-on deodorant.  The things we take for granted!