We're back

I finally arrived home! Its a difference of about 70 degrees for me than yesterday. 

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Friday was a tough day, we said good bye to many of the workers we met throughout the week. One lasting memory I’ll have is face-timing on ‘what’s app’ with Clement who was staying at my house in St Joseph.. there (apparently) is a blizzard back home and Clement was able to show  all the snow at my house to the Paraguayan workers at the radio station. They were all blown away by that that snow. Clem turned the camera around and started uncontrollably laughing. If you know Clem, you know how contagious his laugh is. All of the Paraguayans couldn’t help but laugh with Clem too... it was so great. 

Joe and I conducted interviews with Marcos, a teacher at Timothy school and Norberto (Norb lost his wife Julie and son Timothy in a car accident about 6 years ago) they created Timothy School to leave a legacy for Timothy. The school serves children better than public schools with smaller classes and (as I mentioned before) is the only school accepting and working with special needs children. The school had grown so large that there is no more room, so they’re needing to build a new school. There is no money available but they are relying on God to provide. Joe and I were so blown away by this story, we needed to tell it. 

On Saturday, because so many projects were under budget, we gave them our extra $10,000 to start the fundraising!!!

Between interviews Friday morning, Joe and I helped paint the radio station with some of the locals. 

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Friday afternoon we visited a site some of our masons were working throughout the week in Cacaraya, PY. The local children presented us as a group with a sign thanking us and telling us how much they loved us. Very powerful. 

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A real treat Friday night. The hotel owners served us dinner and planned a surprise. We had a guitar and harp serenade us with local music! 

Saturday morning we packed up and took off early for a very long travel day... I probably won’t sleep until Sunday night around 4 pm when we get back to st joe! (Our flight leaves at 2am Paraguay time) 

We had a stop off at Santiama Trinidad del Parana.. a world heritage site in Southern Paraguay. The Spanish Jesuits settled this site and created an empire during the 1700s... the site was abandoned for nearly 200 years before it was turned into a tourism spot. Very cool history I didn’t know, the city was ransacked by a later Spanish King because his own priests refused to make the local people slaves. The Spanish priests treated he Guarani (local Paraguayan people) as brothers and sisters in Christ. 

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We stopped off in Encarnacion for lunch on the way to Asuncion. Encarnacion is the tourism capital of Paraguay. It sits on a large lake fed by the Parana River. Across the lake is Argentina. This week is Carnival(!) so the beach front was packed with people despite the more than 90 degree weather. Us gringos were a bit too hot to explore but we had some time to do a bit of people watching. ; )

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After another 7 hours in the bus we ended up at an awesome Meat Party (steak restaurant) before leaving for the airport! Our plane took off at 2am local time, we didn't end up in Chicago until noon on Sunday (losing 3 hours!)

It's been fun keeping this blog, Thanks again to those of you who supported me and prayed for me on this trip! <3 <3 <3

The good and the bad

Not many pictures today, sorry... the internet is very slow tonight. 

Thursday we had a bit of shock and awe as we visited and attempted to work on the tech at another nearby church, Belle Vista. This is another rural church where we planned to do some improvements. Our plan was to install ProPresenter (a presentation program) and try to wire up some audio in their church. We were so excited for work at Belle Vista because when we visited it seemed to be the place with the most to gain from our visit.

We were a little frustrated because none of the computers on site were capable of running the program (which is a low bar) and on the sound board, only 4 of the 16 channels worked! It’s amazing they actually use that board.. also very sad because it’s a poor church and there is no money to buy a new one. This is a church that had 140 children attend our children’s programming earlier in they day... these people deserve something that works.

I felt bad for their worship leader, Oscar, who was so excited for us to help.. but we just were not able to do much. We did jimmy-rig 3 extra inputs for microphones but they need to raise ~ $500 to purchase a new board. Pretty unlikely for such a poor church. Hopefully what we did will last until we visit again in a couple years.

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The rest of the day was semi-successful as we succeeded in installing ProPresenter at the higher-tech church in Obligado!

Also, we heard a story about an effort to raise money for a growing school to build on a new piece of property. It’s the only area school that accepts special needs children... they’ve grown so large that they no longer can stay in their current building. They have absolutely no money but are positive that God will provide what they need to build the school.

Joe and I feel strongly that God tonight is asking us to tell this story.. so tomorrow we’ve changed our plans to shoot video on our last work day! Pray for us and Timothy School!

Radio Alternativa 92.7

Today was our first day at the local radio station, Radio Alternativa 92.7.

We had an early start to the day, we met at 6:30am to do devotions before splitting into four groups to do our specialized work. The radio station is just a few blocks from the hotel, so we were able to walk. 

Radio Alternativa

Radio Alternativa

It was pretty hectic this morning, We have another group at the radio station putting in a new sidewalk and sound panels so it took a while to get us tech guys started. 

We did decide today to build Alternativa a website. It was challenging to say the least! There is a young man who is obviously very tech savvy but doesn't speak any English at all. We also did not have a translator for the first hour, so we took turns typing in Google Translate to communicate. 

Teaching Paraguayans how to build websites. #languagebarrier

Teaching Paraguayans how to build websites. #languagebarrier

After about an hour we did get a translator, but her English was pretty dicey. We had issues with words like 'Embed Code' and 'widget' but I think they're excited to start working on their own site. 

In total we spent about 2.5 hours in that room (too bad smells don't translate over pictures) a few others joined us to continue the training after that photo was taken. 

Our goal is to launch their new site 927alternativa.com by Thursday! I want them to be able to design the site and figure out how it'll function so they'll be happy with it. The older gentleman asked some great questions about best practices too!

Radio Alternativa host during broadcast

Radio Alternativa host during broadcast

I need to give my partner Joe some serious credit! He is turning out to be a great photographer! He's been manning a camera since we've been here... this is one of the photos he took for Radio Alternativa's new website. It's such a blessing to have him on this trip!

Here's an interesting tidbit:

We were told today that area churches and the surrounding community (advertised on the radio) have been invited to come to a two-hour class about using a sound board. That we're supposed to teach. And it's tonight!

We thought we were going to be doing only specialized training with the churches and radio station... we didn't know we were supposed to plan for teaching a formal class! That was definitely jumbled up in translation. 

We took the afternoon to prepare for this class... Joe and I will be splitting some of the material, but pray for us. Hopefully it's not a train wreck. 

Sunday - a day of relaxation!

Good afternoon from Paraguay! The local temperature today feels like 94 degrees. 

Today we have a bit more downtime before we begin more intensive technical work at the local churches and radio station tomorrow. It's a much needed day of relaxation after two full days of travel. 

This morning we started our Sunday by visiting a smaller congregation in Belle Vista, Paraguay. The congregation had an older and more low tech vibe than the church in Obligato we visited on Saturday night.

Church at Belle Vista on Sunday.

Church at Belle Vista on Sunday.

The Belle Vista church was one of the churches we’ll work on this week. I think it’s a newer and smaller congregation- they have (what we’d consider in the US) many more technical issues to work through. However it was still a great hour of worship! The people here are very docile and friendly. They are (or at least seem to be) happy to see us! 

This church needs some serious upgrades to their projection... it was interesting to see the person running the slides on the screen switching between projecting text on a Microsoft Word document to Powerpoint slides.. One of the things we brought was ProPresenter (which would allow them to use just one program) and when we told them we could install it and train them, they seemed very excited. We also will help them with some wiring... the current sound situation is a bit of a disaster. Their tech guy told us through an interpreter that they "needed help urgently" in the tech department. 

Joe and I are planning to spend one of our afternoons at Belle Vista cleaning up some of those issues and training. Its a relief to know that our help is direly needed!

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We've been tooling around in this awesome, vintage van! We fit all 21 (including the driver) of us in this bad boy. I'd say it's probably circa early 1970s. That baby purred! I’d say we averaged about 20mph the whole trip. 

Lots of children playing in the Parana River

Lots of children playing in the Parana River

After church we went to a really cool restaurant down on the Parana river, which we're told is the 2nd largest river in Latin America, next to the Amazon River. The Parana divides Paraguay from Argentina... so the land you see on the other side is a different country. Norberto (basically our guide, he's a missionary down here) told me they patrol the waterway during the week but not on Sundays (which doesn't sound so secure) so we didn't see them. 

We spent about two hours down on the beach or on the patio... We even built up the courage to strip down to our shorts and swim up to our necks in the river! It had some serious current when you got out far. No piranhas in Parana, so that's good too. 

We've arrived.

Sorry I haven’t posted at all until now. We’ve just got settled into our final hotel destination for the week. The hotel in Obligato. So hello from Paraguay! Our planned 5-hour bus ride to Obligato from Asuncion ended up being about 9.5 hours... so we're a little bit behind!

Our bus taking a break somewhere in the middle of Paraguay.&nbsp;

Our bus taking a break somewhere in the middle of Paraguay. 

The travel has been very draining. Yesterday we Flew literally all day long. We had two six-hour flights. I never understood why sitting around all day can be so painful. If I was sitting around all day at home, it would be a very special treat. 

We did have some highlights traveling down to South America. 

We had a layover at the airport in Panama. Flying in was pretty rad, there was all sorts of ship traffic waiting for passage through the canal when we flew over.

We killed about an hour in Panama. Ate a $9 bologna sandwich, pretty standard airport time. 

I will say that when we were in the airport it did defiantly feel like we’d left the US. There was a lot of Foreign Fashion. Foreign Fashion is subtle, yet pronounced. I ran into this phenomenon whilst in Asia as well. Old people probably have no idea this is a thing. It’s like fashion in the United States, and clearly is trying to emulate fashion in the United States but misses the mark. As a general rule: take a popular trend in the US and add steroids. So if a jacket with a few visible zippers is trendy in the US, people in other countries will rock with a jacket with 25-30 zippers all over the place and (of course) no actual pockets. None of this stuff is made well either, it’s just China knockoffs. 

The smell in Panama was an olfactory version of foreign fashion. It smelled similar to a Clair’s in the mall, almost like bubble gum- but bubble gum made in China. You can tell it’s cheaply produced. A cheaply produced smell. I’m not sure, but I think it’s perfume. 

So each one of our two flights was a completely  opposite experience. The first flight I was on was about as painful as it gets, was like 5 rows from the back smooshed between the window and one of the larger travelers with us on the plane. 

The second six hour flight was seriously an embarrassment of riches... aisle seat. Nobody in the middle. And we were the first row behind 1st class. I’m very thankful for that second flight. I needed that. 

Man Sleeping.&nbsp;

Man Sleeping. 

Once we got off the plane in Asuncion it was almost midnight, it took about an hour to purchase visas and get our luggage. We have lots of luggage. We were joking that the Asunción airport smelled like a mix of cigarettes, body odor and urinal cakes. 

But it was warm!! It felt like just a beautiful summer night. 

We boarded our bus and y the time we showed up at the hotel it was 1:30am.

The hotel is our spot for just one night but it was a pretty nifty spot it had this sort of Ernest Hemingway Cuban vibe to it. But it definitely was not a western hotel. The lady working there was drinking a cocktail on the porch outside when we showed up. 

Joe at the Hotel in Asuncion.&nbsp;

Joe at the Hotel in Asuncion. 

There wasn’t any English at this spot. We got our skeleton key and the lady had to point us all in the direction of our room individually. There was no signage and no method for which section or floor a number would put you on. For example, rooms 93-99 were on the fourth floor, 87-92 on the third, 40-49 on the second and 1-8 on the ground floor. Absolute chaos. 

Hotel Key #1

Hotel Key #1

We opened our room door to find a very, very modest room. Most of the stuff seemed 20 years old and sort of dirty, but were troopers. After a quick panic attack about whether or not there was AC, we settled in.

Terrible night sleep. The mattress wasn’t good and we were pretty positive cockroaches were around but the worst pet was this one-inch thick pillow! Honestly, a better pillow would have made all the difference. 

After a quick breakfast this morning we hopped onto the bus.. which again was about 20 years old but for the most part pretty comfortable. We napped and relaxed for the whole 9 hours and just soaked in the summer breeze.: )

We're in transit!

Well we've finally begun our trip!

Some of you probably think I'm already in Paraguay! This is not the case. I feel like an idiot because I was all packed and ready to go at the Church on Wednesday at 7pm. I waited for about 30 minutes.. thinking everyone else was running late.. but I was one day early. We actually left today, THURSDAY, at 7pm. 

None-the-less it is Thursday. And we have left. 

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It was about 32 degrees fahrenheit when we left St. Joseph... It'll be about 32 degrees celsius when we get to Paraguay! 

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This is Joe

You'll probably see a lot of Joe on the trip. He's my roommate at all our destinations and he's also a tech guy who I'll be working with at the radio station when we arrive in Paraguay. Joe is a great, humble guy... a great man and loving father. I'm very much looking forward to the time we're going to spend together on this trip. 

We are all prayed up and ready for a day of travel that will go from 5am-midnight tomorrow!