Pictures from the Trip

Today I want to share some pictures from my trip.

First, here are some pictures from the retreat.

This is the long hike up the hill to the camp where we stayed.  It was about 105 degrees as we climbed the hill.  But the camp was sooooo beautiful as you will see.

These are the worship leaders for the retreat.  Perla, Jorge,  Adolfo, and Lydia.  The music was excellent.

Just as a side note, Sue selected this camp because it had air conditioning and a nice pool.  However, the air conditioning in the chapel did not work while we were there so inside the temperature was about 98 instead of 103.  :-)

Here is the gorgeous view from our camp.  The river at the horizon is a beautiful river but the polution in it is awful.  When animals are slaughtered all of the garbage and remains have been just tossed into the lake.  However, there are people now trying to clean up the lake.  I was warned many times never to swim in any bodies of water in Paraguay except our pool.

What a great pool.  So cool and shaded.  We had a lot of fun here playing games and cooling down.

Here are many of the teachers and helpers from the New Horizon school with their beautiful bookmarks, from Debbie Hardin at Fairview.  Many of them not only took the bookmarks for themselves but for friends and family as well.  They also all received a beautiful card from my mother and just loved the pictures.

This is one of the activities during the training.  I shared with the teachers that one way God can work in us so that we live all our lives for Him is to focus on how beautiful He is.  So I asked the teachers to draw pictures on this long roll of paper, symbols of what is beautiful and amazing about our God.

This is the front of the chapel, built by the Korean church, where we had our sessions.

This is at the Korean church in Asuncion where we had the Assemblea, the conference of all the leaders in the Methodist Church in Paraguay.  It was a great day of testimonies of faith, discussions about the financial position of the church, the ordination of new pastors, and more.  The woman pictured here is Carla who is the director of the ministry to children throughout the Paraguayan church.  I am going to meet with her Monday evening to share about ministry with children.  I am very excited about.  Ask me about he air conditioning when I return.  :-)

On Saturday we had Sunday School.  Okay, I know that is confusing, but once a month the church has a fast all morning with a 4 hour worship service ending in communion.  On these days, Sunday School is held on Saturday.  So... we shared with the kids about communion.  And on this day, the children had their first communion ever.  Then afterward I made balloon animals for the kids.  There were about 60 or 70 kids present.  It was a lot of fun.  I love being with the kids.

This is me serving communion to the kids.  What beautiful smiles they have.

Here many of the kids are singing songs and worshipping God.  And you can see sprinkled throughout this place the youth and adults who give so generously to love on the children.

After Sunday School, Sue took me on a trip to downtown Asuncion to buy a few gifts for my family and tour the city.  Here are flags of Paraguay and the different areas of the city.

Finally, we went to a museum during this tour and saw many plaques about the wars that have been fought, statues of famous government leaders and priests, and beautiful architecture, but what struck me the most were these two soldiers guarding the door.  They never moved the whole time we were there.







Thank you all for your prayers for me and the people of Paraguay.  You all are a blessing from God to me.