The Fourth Week: Half Way Through!

This is the end of my fourth week here in Paraguay, which marks the half way point! Yay! This week has been full of adventure.

The week started by attending the SIM Spiritual Life Conference for a day and a night. It was encouraging to be part of the SIM family for awhile and to be fed spiritually. We had a traditional quincenera for a young lady who came down to serve at the conference who had her 15 birthday while here.

Unfortunately, after the 4th of July party I started feeling pretty sick to my stomach and woke up that night nauseous. For the rest of the week, including at the conference, I felt pretty sick for the rest of the week. There is a stomach bug going around, and I think that I picked it up. Thankfully I am feeling better now.

I taught classes on Tuesday and Wednesday. When I say taught, I mean I took over the class. I planned some lessons and posted some expectations in order to show the English teach some different strategies. It went really well. The 2nd grade class especially was a COMPLETELY different class. They were so well engaged and behaved! I hope that the teacher picked up some good ideas.

This Friday I left Villarrica for an Asuncion adventure. The best part of the adventure was getting to pick up Mark from the airport! I took the bus for the first time and figured out how to take the taxi from the terminal to the SIM director's house. It was super crazy because the pope was in town and we had to drive through all of the mass of people on the streets.

Mark and I stayed for a few nights in the SIM Guest House in order to experience more of the pope craziness. Saturday morning we went to a zoo and saw monkeys, toucans, parrots, really stinky pig like creatures, alligators, and more. It was awesome!

Then we went to find the pope. The streets were lined with people excited to see their leader. We stepped onto the street behind a chain of volunteers and waited. Then the pope came down the street in a little vehicle and everybody cheered. Then we tried to find the cathedral and the streets were so crowded. Many of them were closed off completely. On Sunday morning we went to the mass and had to tromp through a huge muddy field to get close enough to the pope to see him through binoculars. I have decided that if people worshipped Christ like they worshipped the pope, the world would be a lot better of a place!

Now we are in the middle of rural Paraguay in a small town called Yuty (said Jutew) with a SIM missionary family. It has been fun to see a different part of Paraguay and see some of their ministry. Tomorrow we will head to explore old Jesuit ruins.

PRAYER REQUESTS:
*pray that I will stay healthy from here on out
*pray that my time with Mark will be blessed and that he will learn some of what I have been doing
*pray for my 2 week vacation from classes that I will still find ways to serve and build relationships with people