Un mes de mi vida.

So. Once again I fail at the blogging. It has been OVER a month since I've written anything about my life/adventures. Sorry all blog followers! (Let's be honest, interest has been dwindling anyway... you know who you are...)

So here is a bit of an update!

First things first- I WILL BE HOME IN 2 WEEKS. Yes, that is 14 days. From tomorrow. Wednesday July 30th, 2009 at 8:37am I *should* be cruising down the Charleston airport- barring any unforeseen airport dilemmas- with too many carry ons and a giant floppy Paraguayan hat, just in case people don't recognize me. Then I go into full-fledged Christa-and-Brandon wedding mode. (YAY!) My life is crazy. I love it.

As to other things that actually have BEEN happening in my life as opposed to things that WILL be happening:

• I went to a heavy metal Christian concert in the city a few weeks ago. It was interesting. I actually liked one of the bands but then the screaming/screeching got a liiiittle too much for me. But it was a really cool way to evangelize to people who normally wouldn't be into the "Christiany" concert scene. This group actually has an entire heavy metal church, and one of their associate pastors killed 17 people and was in jail for 20 years or something. Talk about an amazing testimony!!
• Latin American Idol came to town. No, I did not try out. But don't think I wasn't tempted. Although I did realize just how Americanized I am (duh) when I came back and was so excited to tell some of my friends about it and they looked at me with blank expressions... nice.
• The school has OFFICIALLY begun it's first phase of building the poliodeportivo!! Translation: multi-purpose sports/music/classroom building. It is a HUGE deal for the school and desperately needed to continue to expand. So far it's coming along very well! Still raising funds though, so if you feel lead to give I'll give you a giant hug in 2 weeks when I come back. :)
• We had Dia de la Familia last Saturday! The school has it every year in July when winter break starts and the whole family takes part. They start a few weeks before and do games for the parents and kids and encouraged a cleaning project for the school area around the neighborhood. It was so amazing to see everyone taking part and it really helps people take more pride in where they live. Trash is such a huge problem here, it's nice to see trash cans on the corners and fresh painted sidewalks and fences and even some flowers! (The little blue man picture now holds a trash can outside my front door). Everyone worked really hard. Then last Saturday we had the day of games! We Americans sang out national anthem since it was July 4th, too. We had hundreds of people come, the streets were filled and it was a long, exhausting day completely worth the pain. And, thank You Jesus, the rain started right AFTER everyone had cleaned up everything and put the last of the stuff back inside. :)
• I'm on winter break for 2 weeks! Very strange phenomenon, winter break in July... Well, a week and a half down already. Last week I went with Carol, Donald, and their daughter Cora with 2 of their friends who came to visit from Texas (shout out to the Lone Star State!), Eric and Deb, to see the Jesuit Ruins! The trip was fabulous and proved to be a bit more challenging than originally expected. In the form of speed bumps. There must be hidden cameras all over Latin America just to laugh at the people who miss their whale-sized speed bumps and fly over them like Evel Knievel. But seriously, the ruins were gorgeous and we had a great time!
• Today we took the 7th and 8th graders to the Expo. It's kind of like our fairs, but with less rides and more promotiony stuff. But we still had a great time! We rode the ferris wheel (while praying it wouldn't fall apart), saw the sweet-smelling cows, sheep, and horses, and just poked around for a few hours. And of course, ate.
  

Now I'm just hanging around and finding things to do, movies to see, books to read, people to visit, and sleep to catch up on, for the next few days until school starts again! Then it's time to start packing up the last 6 months of my life... please pray as the days start closing in! Pray for the people I leave behind, and for what lies ahead. And for a safe trip home! I'm kind of worried my awesome Paraguayan hat will get crushed. That would be tragic. I would also love to not have any problems changing planes or going through customs/immigration...

Ok, I promise to update again before I leave. Que Dios les bendiga!

Birthday and Back Aches

If you know me, you know I love birthdays. Especially mine. :) With this past week being my birthday week I was geared up for all sorts of birthday fun. But Sunday night I get a call that there is a medical mission group here for the week, could I PLEASE come help translate since no one speaks Spanish??

I have been praying for the opportunity to help with a medical team the whole time I've been here and jumped at the chance! I was expecting to learn new words and have a good experience, but as usual I can never prepare myself for the awesomeness that God has in store.

I went into it a little nervous that my Spanish wouldn't be good enough or that I wouldn't be able to understand the patients (and a couple of them were pretty difficult to decipher!). I was put with Shane Palmer, a chiropractor. I think he started out as nervous as I was... But we both did pretty well, even though we were unprepared for the whirlwind week that it turned out to be! They even had to hold some patients back from him, he was so busy!

It was amazing to witness the relief people felt when they realized that someone could help them. Years of harsh living and work conditions, with no chance to hit up the spa once in awhile like we do, or even just have a day of rest, (and in many cases terrible diets) take a serious toll on these peoples bodies. But I can't describe how it felt when we realized there wasn't much we could do.

We saw a 9 year old boy who had an infection in his hip several years ago and had surgery. Now the part of his hip that needs to grow is no longer there, resulting in one leg shorter than the other and not much anyone can do about it. He needs at least one more surgery in a few years and a possible hip replacement in his 20's. I was the one who had to translate that to tell his mother, who is probably struggling to survive week to week, and watched as she broke down. We all cried with her.

We saw a 27-year-old woman who had nearly unbearable pain from rheumatoid arthritis. She could barely hold her 2 month old baby.

There was a woman with pneumonia so bad she could barely breathe and should have been in a hospital long before she came to visit the clinic.

We saw a few people with herniated disks in their back but didn't know what it was and had gone untreated for years, doing irreparable damage to their bodies.

Janie and Renee, the 2 nurses pictured above, did an amazing job with triage and taking symptoms despite the language barrier, and prayed for so many of the patients. It was such a blessing that they were able to help so many people. In 3 1/2 days the doctors saw about 680 patients and gave out I-don't-even-know-how-much free medication, toothbrushes, combs, bible verses, necklaces and bracelets, and candy to the kids. They had church services every night. Another team from the same group helped build a new church building so the congregation wouldn't have to meet outside anymore and got it about 80% finished, and another team went to a daycare and did VBS there every day with the kids. This group from the Florence, Alabama area was amazing. They worked all day without complaining, and were a pleasure to get to know. They even sang me happy birthday and I shared my cake. :)

At the end of the week I was dead tired but completely inspired as well. It was an emotionally, physically, and spiritually exhausting experience but one that left me just a little less self-absorbed and a little closer to the people of Paraguay. And although I still love my birthday, for the first time it took a back seat to the rest of the things going on around me and I was strangely ok with that. :) Dios te bendiga!

Oops.

So. It's been almost a month since I've updated this thing. Woops! So here are some updates/thoughts/prayer requests I've had in the past few weeks:

I've been sick 2 or 3 times since last updated. Apparently my kick-butt immune system continues to be a serious pansy in Paraguay. Hit up the ER 2 weeks ago with a fever, an awesome cough, and stellar headaches. Don't worry, I'm obviously fine. But I could definitely use some prayer for health! It's been very difficult me to be the sick one. I'm so used to being healthy and not needing to rely on people for things. It's been difficult for me to ask people for help when I'm sick, but it's been a real learning experience literally having to rely on others. Still stubborn though. :)

Speaking of health, I know I've talked about the health care here before and the hospital situations but every week it seems I'm learning more about it and becoming more horrified with the way things are done here. There is a girl in 7th grade at the school who has asthma problems that apparently are starting to affect her heart. But her family can't afford the medicine, and they can't afford the hospital care. She's out sick pretty often, and has made several visits to the hospital. Last week Sue and I went to visit her and pray for her, and she was sitting in a front room with only an IV for fluids since she'd been vomiting. They wouldnt do anything else for her unless her family could pay up front. We held a "Hamburgeseada" for her and sold hamburgers to help pay for her medicine. Please keep her health and family in your prayers. And definitely pray for the health care down here. There are just so many horror stories...

It's been rainy and cold the past week or week and a half. And by rainy I mean crazy, torrential, rivers-in-place-of-streets type of rain. Something we have desperately needed but good grief... It finally got sunny today and it was gorgeous. And since we're in the beginning of winter down here, it's getting cold too! My apt doesn't have heat except in the bedroom (thank you Jesus for that!) so I keep bundled up most of the time. Since we had sunshine today its much more bearable, but I have a feeling its only going downhill from here! Should be interesting... Prayers for warmth! I'm mainly dreading showers in the freezing cold. eek.

This morning we had the land dedication for the Poliodeportivo the school is starting to build! It's a huge project that's been planned for years but they've been building in stages and then the price went up, but it's finally going to go up! It will have a gym area open to the community and more classrooms to expand to 9th-12th grade, something we desperately need. Still trying to raise funds for it, if you want to give, email the Director, Sue Givens, at sue@paraguayschools.org. Also, only 2 out of the 56 kindergardeners have sponsors to attend the school. This is obviously a big problem! We are working on getting sponsors now, so if you want to sponsor a child or know someone who might, email Sue at the email above! There is a website (it's poorly done, they're in the middle of updating it I promise!) at http://www.paraguayschools.org/. Feel free to leave me a message here and let me know and I can give your some more information!

Bendiciones!

*Here are a couple of pictures from the dedication this morning*

Here is the morning half of the school, there are about 260 in the morning and another 260 in the afternoon. You can see part of the school building behind everyone.

Diggin' the dirt!

Yes, they let me use the shovel! And then promptly asked me if it was my first time... humph. :)

El Campamento

This past weekend was a 4 day weekend for teachers and students in Paraguay. They had off Thursday for Teacher Day and Friday for National Workers Day. A little silly that they get off both days, but no one was complaining... except maybe Sue, the school's director. :) Thursday I went with Sue to visit a sentimiento (shanty town) about an hour outside of Lambare. If you remember, in the shipment from the states the school received new(er) computers and have been giving their old 90's version IBM desktops away to some schools Sue has connections with. VERY few schools have access to computers here, especially schools in sentimientos. It was an eyeopening experience. I had never actually visited homes in one before, and definitely not a school. You can see in the pictures what a dismal state these are in. The school only recently got water and electricity and has only 4 small classrooms for pre-kindergarden thru 8th grade (I think!). Since they got water access they are also finally putting in a bathroom. The teachers work hard but are poorly trained or equipped to teach with this kind of environment, although Im not sure how you would train anyone to teach like that. They have few materials and no money to buy any.

The rest of the weekend was spent at a weekend retreat for the "jovenes", or young adults (ages 17-39) at the campground an hour and a half outside of town that is owned by the Methodist Church here. I had a great time! Met lots of people from other churches, was thrown fully clothed in the pool twice, participated in crazy games, competed in the "mr./ms." portion and sang and danced my lil heart out in front of 50 people (no, this white girl did NOT win!), hardly slept at all, and we had lots of awesome worship and great speakers. Well, the parts that I could understand, that is. :) Yes, my spanish is much improved but when they start throwing Guarani in or talking 80 miles/hour I get a bit confused. It was great! Here are some photos for you!

Me and Willi, my dance partner!

La Fogata! Bonfire! It was kinda cold that night...

Perla and I, soaking wet