THE BATH OF THE BIRDS

Samuel loves his birds!

by Samuel
Right  before lunch I took a look at the birds on top of their cage, puffed up like two cuddly clouds, looking longingly at their empty bird bath.  It was plain to me what they wanted on this hot summer day: a bath.
After I set all the plates and cups, I walked over, grabbed the clay bird bath, and carried it to the sink, where I washed it and scrubbed it until it was as clean as a boy after a shower.  I then grabbed the container on the sink, and turned on the water to fill it up.  While this was filling up, I put the bird bath in its place, then turned off the water.  I carried the container and dumped it all in the now full bird bath.
As I did so, Jessie came rushing over from the cage to take his bath.  Once all the family had sat down and prayed, Sammi was over too.  They both stood on one

Jessie after admiring (actually, attacking) himself in the bike mirror

side of their bath.  Then Jessie crossed through the water to the other side followed by Sammi.  The two happy Quaker Parrots did the this a few more times, then they stayed in the middle and dunked their heads under, coming out with a small, very cute sneeze.
We looked on with laughter, watching our two fluffed up entertainers.  Then finally the two wet birds got tired of their bathing and went across the porch to a wire chair, where they napped lazily in the sun.

OLYMPICS PYRAMID

by Nathan

Nathan with some classmates at the Olympics

    About 500 excited people were watching us carefully.  Three of my big, strong friends got on their hands and knees on the dirty ground.  Two more thinner friends got on the big guys.  I climbed on top.  I almost stood up four feet above the concrete soccer field and held up a cardboard sign, but . . . my friend on the second level slipped suddenly, and I slipped and fell four feet, thudding on the hard ground in a painful heap.
I climbed up again and stood in victory, holding the big sign triumphantly

Samuel with some classmates at the Olympics

above my head.  Nobody applauded.  I looked at the sign.  It was upside down!  I quickly turned it over.  Everybody applauded loudly.  Now the victory was completely ours!

MUSIC TO MY EARS

Singing to the kids at church for Childrens' Day

Excuse me while I momentarily slip out of “missionary mode” and enter “mom mode.”  One Sunday this month I had more chances than normal to be extremely proud of my musical boys, as I heard them play their harp & guitar three different times.

#1: Together they accompanied the worship time at church.

Performing at the town's Childrens' Day party

#2: They’d been invited to be their school’s representatives at the town government’s Childrens’ Day celebration, where they played with two of Nathan’s classmates for a boisterous crowd of lots of kids. 

#3: In the afternoon they went to the Guitar/Harp Academy practice, where Nathan is mostly learning and Samuel is mostly teaching.  It’s all beautiful music to my ears!

 

 

 

GOOD WORKS

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  Ephesians 2:10
We continually struggle to know what to do and what not to do, whom to help and whom to deny, when to say “yes” and when to say “no.”  This verse fascinates me; God has prepared good works in advance for us to do.  Could it be that He’s really prepared this many for us!??!  Or are we doing some that weren’t in His plan!?  And how do we discern?  Please pray for wisdom for us to know which of the many things that plead for our time and money are the “good works” God wants us to be doing.

HUMMINGBIRD RESCUE

While preparing for kids’ club one Saturday morning at the church building we found a hummingbird clinging to a curtain, so weak it could barely move.  Dan gently gathered it up in his hat and we took it home where we tilted its tiny head onto a plate of sugar water.  Very gradually it began to take sips of the nourishing liquid.  We could see its strength slowly returning as it ate, and eventually it was able to fly to a nearby tree.  It sat there for a long time but we were delighted and relieved to see it fly back and forth from the feeder later.  We saw it taking frequent drinks throughout that day and still recognize it coming back for more a whole month later.

Obviously it was weakened — almost to death — by lack of food.  We know the same thing would happen to us if we stopped eating altogether and spend considerable money and effort keeping ourselves fed.  But what about spiritual food?  Do you nourish yourself regularly from God’s Word to keep your soul strong and healthy?  Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Mat. 4:4)

We tell Paraguayans that our occasional big gatherings with believers from town and rural villages are like barbecues — their delicious, meaty meal for special occasions.  Weekly church services are like “guiso” — their basic, standard, everyday food.  And their own times with God are like manioc — the starchy root that accompanies every meal.  We wouldn’t be very well fed if we rely on special services at church — or even just weekly sermons — to sustain us spiritually.  May your individual times in God’s Word and your corporate times of worship & study with His people be delicious, wholesome, strengthening nourishment!

BROKEN HARP STRING

We mourned with friends this month following the sudden deaths of two women only a week apart: a good friend in a rural community and our neighbor.

N&S playing for Nati's family

We took the boys and their instruments out to the village to play for the family who’d lost their wife/mom.  A harp string broke as Samuel & Nathan played.  In a poignant moment Dan shared how much their loss is like that missing string — you miss it terribly, and nothing is really the same without it, but you keep on making music anyway. Pray for these friends as they press on without Nati.

COME ALONG

(April 2011)

I wish you could ride along with us as we make trips to people scattered around the countryside.  Here are a few of those kinds of  visits we made last month.  Cram into our car, at times with more people than you would have thought possible, to the house of. . .

 

Emanuel with his mom (Sonia), grandparents, & cousin

. . . Sonia’s grandparent’s in Cerro Ybu.  Greet her parents, sister, aunt, uncle and cousin (still in high school and recently married.)  Sing, listen to Bible stories, and discuss what they mean for us today with this extended family who had never before been in a Christian meeting like this.  My memorable moment here was using the outhouse before leaving and having a big cow stick its face in the top half of the open door.

 

. . . our landlord’s mom in Lote.  Watch the kids run around playing relay races, eat ground peanuts with sugar, help fix a corn bread dish that’s baked by fire in their brick oven, hear their heartbreak for the nearby family with 10 kids whose dad is a drunk, gather lots of farm produce they give you as a thank-you and try to protect those bags from the Cebu (enormous white cows.)  Most significantly, listen to lots and lots of Bible stories and hear these friends articulate new truths they’re understanding from the Bible.

 

Victoria with her 5 youngest children, two months before her death

. . . a family with 10 kids & many health problems in Primavera.  Take their mom home from the hospital to find the oldest 5 kids gone (out picking cotton) and the youngest five being taken care of by the 8-year-old.  See their incredible poverty.  Walk through their fields and pick some manioc.  Pray with them and read a Psalm.

 

. . . some friends in Ita Angu’a.  Frantically slap at mosquitos as they attack every inch of visible skin.  Have an enjoyable visit anyway, and laugh a lot.  (For those of you who speak Paraguayan Spanish: Our friends talked about the new bathroom at their village school which doesn’t have running water.  Older (jr high & high school) kids can use it by carrying buckets of water from the well.  Dan says, “Estudian de balde!”)  Read the Bible, pray, leave encouraged.

SILLY SONGS

(April 2011)

(for Veggie Tales viewers only)

 

Samuel is remarkable at figuring out songs by ear, on both the harp & keyboard. He entered into new territory this month as he mastered some Veggie Tales Silly Songs. I’m pretty sure it was the first time “The Yodelling Veterinarian of the Alps” has ever been played on Paraguayan harp!!

 

Maybe that set the tone for the month?  A few days later we had a “Veggie Tales Silly Song Day.” Before lunch we saw 2 water buffalo being led down the road. (And of course lifted the “no singing during meals” ban to sing that everybody’s got one.) They were 40 years old and for sale.

Then – I am not kidding – 3 Cebu got into the produce we’d gathered during our visit to a rural house. Once we put our partially-eaten food in the car, they stood around licking the outside of it!  As Nathan aimed his slingshot at them from his safe spot on the roof of our car I couldn’t help but sing to myself, “Boy is aiming at Cebu, who is licking his canoe!”

MEMORABLE MUDDY MESS

(February 2011)

(Skip this one if you’re tired of “same-old” stories about adventurous road trips.  I think we may have encountered our worst-ever road conditions — at least on the “main highway” that connects Yuty to the paved road.  There were so many funny extenuating circumstances this time that it’s worth writing yet another story of our “troubled travel.”)

Making music with MK friends.

Nathan & Samuel had great fun with two missionary kid friends who came over for five daysat the end of summer vacation. Our plan was to drop them off at their respective houses and have a two-day camping trip as a family before school started.  The car was packed full — all of our camping stuff in the back, 3 boys and our collie in the back seat, and Samuel on my lap.  I reached heights of co-piloting that I’ve never considered possible, as I held a box of delicately-balanced-on-the-console homeschooling books with one arm (not to use while camping – to pass off to a colleague), had nine-year-old Samuel on my lap, read aloud AND served terere as we slid and bounced through the thick mud. 

It was possibly the worst we’d ever seen the road.  Dan pulled out stuck vehicles four different times, and it took us three hours instead of the usual 45 minutes to get to the first main town!  The boys had great attitudes as we poked along, eating their way through many of the snacks we’d brought for our camping trip and climbing on the roof of the car when we stopped behind somebody who was stuck.

                                                              

As if things weren’t bad enough, our dog Lana had a seizure-like attack while crammed on the floor of the backseat.  She has these occasionally.  They are pitiful to watch from a distance when she’s miserably sick somewhere in our back yard, but the poor Back Seat Boys were right on top of this one, including the seeming gallons of saliva she drools as a result.  Things were now officially a mess inside and outside.

We eventually got our friends dropped off and had one last memorable moment on the already-unforgettable trip.  Playing after church that morning, Samuel had hurt his toe.  I figured he’d just stubbed it, but just in case we had our doctor colleague take a look at it when we dropped off his son.  He thought it might be broken.  When we finally got to Villarrica, after 9 at night, we went to have it x-rayed.  I was very amused that nobody washed Samuel’s mud-coated foot off.  The x-ray technician seemed to have no qualms about putting the muddy mess on the shiny clean glass plate which was on the immaculately pristine table covered with a spotless white cloth.  It’s a good thing xrays penetrate thick red mud!  And the doctor didn’t seem to mind, either.  They said it wasn’t broken, but it sure entertained us for the next week with its changing colors.  (Once he washed his foot off!)

Obviously we didn’t make it to our camp site that night, but had a great time once we finally got there.  It was a more primitive spot than where we’ve stayed before (no electricity or running water — but some of the people in our church live like that all the time!)  We shared the spot with some very nice torch-juggling, jewelry-making Argentinian gypsies . . . but that’s another story.  Our trip home was less eventful than the trip there.  How could it not be!?

Diverse Delights

DIVERSE DELIGHTS

There are very few things that give me as much pleasure as watching kids’ happy faces as they sing to and about God.  Their little bodies dance around showing how tall & wide His love is, they “grow” as they read their Bible & pray and “shrink” as they forget to, they clap and stomp and act out doing chores as they praise God . . . all with faces that beam such delight I can’t capture it in words.  Really, I think watching them may be the highlight of my career.

It has been fantastic to welcome back our South African friend Terence who was in Paraguay back when Samuel was born.  He has returned (with his wife, this time!) to again help out with finances in our office for a few months, and we had the special privilege of having them come home with us for a few days.  They’ve now experienced turkey & cranberries, whiffleball, biscuits and gravy & Paraguayan fishing.  They were so gracious that they didn’t even mind when our “short cut” home was hours longer than the direct route, or that they had to leave in the wee hours of the morning to catch a bus back to Asuncion.

We’re also enjoying hosting Stephen Cha, a Korean Canadian, who has the unique privilege of being the first person to have to climb out of the window of a bus to get to our house.  Dan set off late at night to get him off the bus when it appeared that they might not make it home.  A few minutes later the bus driver asked Stephen for Dan’s number and called to ask if he could bring him some dinner!  Unfortunately Dan had already left town.  He got to the bus and found it quite stuck, fallen in the ditch in such a way that the door was blocked shut.  Stephen and the only remaining passenger on the bus climbed out of the window and came back to town with Dan.  The driver, ticket-taker and son stayed on the bus and were still there when Dan called them the next afternoon to see if they’d gotten unstuck!!  Can you believe it has rained almost 12 inches since Stephen arrived a couple of days ago!?!

We had a wonderful 3-day “trip of threes” this month, including:

3 visits with 3 special friends: a missionary colleague, our “substitute grandma” Ema & her grandson (thanks for your months of prayers for her during her sickness.  She has almost fully recovered and they now live near relatives a few hours away.), and our former Guarani teacher Andy Bowen and his family.

3 family books to read on the road.  We finished one, read another in its entirety, and started a third.  We LOVE reading together!  Actually, we got so wrapped up reading one of our books that we drove right through Ema’s little town without realizing it!!  (In our defense, it was our first time on the newly-paved road that went through a different part of town.)

3 amazing meals.  Lizet Bowen fed us Indian food for supper, doughnuts for breakfast and Ethiopian food for lunch.  WOW.

3 new acquaintances.  We had lunch with some other friends of the Bowens, a South African married to a Canadian who grew up in Paraguay.  Add them to the mix of a Bolivian married to an American who grew up in Kenya, and we had quite an international group!

A 3-instrument serenade.  Nathan & Dan on guitar play with Samuel on the harp to form (thinks their “unbiased” mom) an impressive little music group.  They played a couple of serenades on our trip, despite a broken string from leaving the harp in the hot car.  I am now an official part of their group on just one song, as I sing about a Guarani boy who falls out of a tree and dies.  Not a very cheerful contribution to the band, I’m afraid, but it’s a very popular Paraguayan song!