Safe, Sound and Saddle Sore

Greetings Friends!

We arrived in Asuncion, Paraguay today at 1.30pm. It took us a whole lot longer than thought... We spent a total of 52 hours getting from Santiago, Chile to Asuncion. It was a total of six bus stations, four busses, three countries, two full days and a partridge in a pear tree.

The Chileans keep asking why we would drive with them to Paraguay instead of flying straight here, but the laughter and friendships we have made along the way have more than made this bus trip worth it. We are working together as a team now that we are ministering together and I think that would have been more difficult had we just shown up here.

The bus ride itself was pretty uneventful. I definitely have nothing to complain about as I have ridden on bus trips in the Philippines that made this trip look like first class. Our seats reclined, we had movies shown in screens throughout the bus, they fed us bus food (think of downgraded airline food), and we were even able to sleep with some tossing and turning.

One miracle we had was regarding our luggage. A Chilean doctor brought several suitcases full of medicines with us. In the past they have been confiscated at the border. We were all praying that they would make it through. When we were entering into Paraguay they took three of the medical bags off and asked to look through them. We produced the doctor and a letter of what we were carrying and what it would be used for. Then they saw another guy on the team and asked him what his name was. Well he shares a name with a famous soccer player and so they treated him like royalty. They waved us on and we got through with all our baggage.

The Andes were amazing! What beautiful, beautiful mountains! Argentina wasn´t too bad itself.

The students all have some working knowledge of Spanish, definitely much better than mine. I know some words but freeze when it comes to using them. I am thankful for my dictionary and for the patience of the South Americans.

After a big lunch we went to the church today to start our outreaches. Elise and Isaiah helped with the medical outreach today, taking temperatures of the patients and interviewing them before they saw the doctor. They did amazing! The other students helped prepare meals to hand out to the street vendors during a street ministry later this afternoon.

Tomorrow I will teach a short evangelism seminar and then in the evening Linda will teach on inner healing followed by a ministry time. Both of us are excited to be used.

Today is the 10 day anniversary of the Paraguay Vineyard. It is such an honor to be here. There is a party to celebrate the occasion on Saturday.

Besides some sore backs, bums and the normal cases of missional digestive issues (think either going too much or not at all) we are all fine. Ask the Lord to smite the mosquitos here. We are keeping a lot of Off on since the mosquitos here have stuff we don´t want to catch.

I need to run for now. I don´t know how much we will get to be online this week, but we will post when we can.

chow,

Chad