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