It starts each year in late August — a little tinge of anxiety, builds to nausea by mid-September, and full-blown loathing by October — seven months of miserable heat.

We are now in our second day of rolling power outages and have many more to come. I could live with the heat, even without AC, but without fans and a way to keep the fridge cool, it is pretty tough.

I should not complain. At least we have AC in our trucks these days.

I always thought, at some point I would get use to the heat. I thought I would eventually not wake up each night sweating. I thought planning meals and bedtime around power outages would get easier.

Well, they don’t. Don’t get me wrong. I love living and working here in Paraguay! But I could stand a little more cool weather.

Enjoy your winter up north!

Good Reinforcement

You know those national tests that we take in the U.S. — the ones that estimate students’ academic level compared to other students around the country? Well, we don’t have those here in Paraguay.

I am always asking Angelica, how she measure the academic level of the students at the Susanna Wesley School? This is something that has frustrated me for years. We often hear stories of how the one or two kids who continue their education in town seem to excel, but that has never been enough for me. I want a way to gauge the kids academically and in other ways.

I still don’t have that, but a local pastor’s wife is now working in the public school in the closest town. The pastor told Angelica that the students who come from The Susanna Wesley School are set apart from the rest of the students. They are more advanced academically but also much better behaved.

This did not just happen by circumstance. The quality of the kids that finish the school are a culmination of a lot of preparation by Angelica and a lot of dedication by the teachers. Because of y’all, we are able to really touch these kids’ lives.

We feel honored to have been a part of this with so many other people.

Maybe Something New

We are always exploring new ideas.

This year, it was getting the clinic starte, hopefully to be up and running by next year.
We also visited almost every church in Paraguay over the past year.

Now we are thinking of adding more home visits. We have done this in the past, but would like to do it on a larger scale. The Paraguayans that partner with us at the school and the agriculture project do such a good job, it frees us up to pursue other ministries.

We don’t really know how it will work out yet. We know we would like to use some of the youth who we work with in Asuncion. It would have to be done in Guarani. We have even thought about helping the “Campasinos “ (country people) start small groups of believers.

We feel that God has done great things down here in Paraguay — that he has equipped many people to share the Gospel. We don’t want to just rest on what we have
accomplished in the past, but we want to constantly look for new ways to share Christ.

Paraguayan Fact

In the summer, everyone goes shirtless.