Cuatro

 ¿Que tal?   

 Sunday, November 29, 2020 

What a day! Yesterday we brought Stuart’s back to Campo Nueve and had convert meeting in the evening. Stuart and Cindy and I spent the night in the guest house at Karlins and they took us with them to church in the morning. I was impressed that at least one of the missionary vehicles here was manual.  Church started at 9.The youth sang 2 songs and then we proceeded with the service. It was being translated for me until Tiago decided that his mom didn’t need to hear any more for awhile so I tried to follow along with the Bible verses and pick out the few words I knew. When it came time for the baptism there wasn’t enough room up front so Jacob, Walter, Arlin and Dennis went up 2 by 2. We closed with a rambunctious ‘When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder’ if I remember correctly. By the end of the service, a lot of people were sniffling, most likely remembering their own baptisms or simply out of happiness for these boys, some of whom have overcome more difficult trials than the others.  

While the women prepared food and while we were waiting for an hour close to lunch time, we gathered in a few circles to drink terere. There was a bunch of youth there today. Youth being interpreted as age 12ish and up. There are 3 girls who are members, Leidi, Evelyn, and Katrina, and Peter, Dennis, Walter, and Arlin are the guys. (Listed for reference sake. I’m hoping I’ll get to talk about them again sometime.) Peter and Dennis and Katrina’s family lived in Whitemouth for awhile so they all know English very well and are happy to translate for me. Leidi and Arlin are siblings and 2 of their older brothers were also there with us, as well as their younger brother who’s name I forget but I think is he’s often called Chiquito which would mean small or tiny. We moved our chairs around a lot, trying to find the best shade and they all had a grand old time teasing each other while I tried to catch on to everything. Same as with every youth group, this one has at least one clown, at least one singer, at least one avid ball player. Speaking of ball. Eventually we ate lunch and after sitting around for awhile longer, we played ball. We may have tried very hard to find shade while drinking terere, but while playing volleyball we were in full sun. And it was hot. Apparently the lovely manual truck said it was around 40°C but nothing can hinder playing ball. These kids just started playing ball in the last few months, but you wouldn’t know it by watching them. And the ball looks and feels more like a basketball then the ones we soft Americans are used to.  Well all good things come to an end. I had a lot of fun even if I was very far out of my comfort zone, and probably the laughingstock of a lot of them. The ones who spoke English were really good with talking to me and explaining what was happening, and Leidi was really good with talking slowly to me, in words I understood. But when Eric’s left around 2, my mind was too full to take in another 2 or 3 hours of it so I went back to Karlins with them, where we just chilled the rest of the day. I listened to some of Jaden and Joelle’s wedding in Lonetree.  

 

Monday, November 30, 2020 

The plan for this morning was to meet at a cool bakery for breakfast. It did happen. The reason I said was is because I’m writing this many days later that ‘today.’ The reason I say cool is that this bakery IIS part of a flour mill and is big and has lots of windows so you can see the workers doing their baking and also it has the most delicious Dulce de Leche donuts and Maracuyá (passion fruit) juice. We chilled at Karlin’s the rest of the morning, helping Cindy make Mexican food for our lunch. After eating the deliciousness, we took departed, leaving Stuarts with Karlins. We made a few stops before leaving Campo Nueve including a fabric store and the ice cream department of Lactolanda. Lactolanda is the dairy (processing?) place where most of our dairy products are from and I must say they have the most delicious Dulce de Leche soft ice cream I’ve ever had. As you can tell I am quite much of a Dulce de Leche fan. We took the scenic, back route home and after that I don’t remember what we did. We were most likely tired from a lively weekend, and probably stopped for asaditos for supper and went to bed.    

 

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

 Nothing very much of general interest happened today. Rachelle and I decided it was time to sew since she had a few dresses that needed sewing and I just bought a bunch of fabric. So she did some in the morning and I joined her in the afternoon.   

 

Wednesday, December 2, 2020 

More school, more sewing. Bible study with Felicita in the afternoon. I can understand a lot more than I could at last week’s Bible study. I’m in the midst of catching on to the conjugations of verbs right now, if I’d apply myself a wee bit harder I think it would be no problem.  Dad and Mom officially booked tickets to come see me! They’ve always wanted to come see Eric’s in Paraguay and were kinda counting on it when Covid hit. Now that I’m here, it warrants quarantining back home for 2 weeks afterwards. It helps that Nik is quite enthused about running skid steer if it would snow. Anyways, they arrive here early next Thursday!   

 

Thursday, December 3, 2020   

I woke to the sound of a vicious fight taking place above me. Rain thundered down on my tin roof in attempt to wake all who slumbered and to out do its rivalries, Thunder and Lightening. Thunder did its best to drown out all other thoughts and make sure Lightening didn't steal the spotlight like so often it does. I must say, Lightening didn't try very hard in this fight, or maybe that's because I was hard pressed to open my eyes and even more so to go outside. The three failed miserably, if the main motive of their fight was to keep me awake. I am rather fond of rain and I just pulled my blanket tighter against the cold and went back to sleep.  The storm raged on. It barraged us on and off all morning. It turned the power off, let it come back on again and then, just in time for school, decided to withdraw it from us again. We started our school day using headlamps and a few candles. 

Santiago and Priscilla were on our list for the afternoon. They’re friends (early 30’s ish I’d say) who live about an hour from us in a nice new house. The house is very modern with white paint on the walls and a few round windows. They make their living selling produce from their market garden. Santiago seems to be someone who is very capable of making things work. He has found a way to grow lettuce during summer when everyone else says you can’t grow lettuce in summer here.  

I believe this is a bit of a typical Paraguay story, but I’ll still make a big deal out of it so you can get the feeling. We arrived mid afternoon and were greeted warmly. We sat and chatted for awhile and then they asked if we’d like to stay for supper, they’d toast us some rabbit. Well of course! So the men go start the grill and the rabbits get pulled out of the freezer to thaw and we keep on talking. Another lady and her kids stop in for awhile and talks about a sort of orphanage her and her husband run. Tiago seems to think this is a good time to show off how he can walk. He can take a few steps at home but usually it’s too much work when you have enough big people to carry you around. My attention wanes from the convesations after awhile and I chastise myself because I didn’t think we had been there long. Eventually I check the time and it’s after 6. The other lady leaves, the grill is started but the rabbits need to fully before they can be cooked. The grill is an amazing thing. It’s a big brick thing in the corner of the porch with a tray for the fire that can be moved up or down with a sort of a pulley situation. Later on, the rabbits will be skewered and the skewers will rotate them over the fire while they cook. It is now at least 7 and the rabbits still aren’t ready to be cooked. We move outside from our seats inside and I try to ease my bit of boredom by doing Highlights picture finds with Ellie and Aubrey. Santiago’s don’t have children yet so the girls are also a bit bored. Around 8 the rabbits are finally ready to be skewered so Santiago and Eric rub them in a sort of seasoning salt and get them started. Although I’ve dreamed of it, I’ve never done rotisserie meat and I was a bit surprised at how fast these were rotating. At the rate those things were speeding around and with the height of the fire, I thought those things would never get done. It did take awhile. Meanwhile Priscilla made mandioca for supper. She made rice, and then started on chipawasu, a sort of cornbread. We sat outside and watched bugs or helped and generally tried to keep ourselves happy while we waited for supper. We were all hungry but no one was in any hurry. Around 10, the meat was finally ready, so we gathered around the table some on the floor, some a few feet away from the table as the table is a round table, about 3ft in diameter. Sin problema. After prayer, Santiago cuts up the meat and piles it onto our plates. We grownups each get a bit of each part. The main part or backbone or I’m not even sure what it is, a rack of tiny ribs, and ease try the part that stretches from the legs to the stomach and enabled the poor creature to jump properly. That part was very thin and crispy and tasty. The skin also was quite delicious. Well, by the time we’re done eating its around 11. Rachelle helps with dishes and I play ‘Captain May I’ with the girls to try to keep them occupied and slightly quieted than they had been. By now we are all overtired and some of us are going a bit crazy from trying but not being able to understand the conversation, or from having been there for 6 or 8 hours without other playmates. And I was doing what I never thought I’d do. My thoughts were on the next days school work and I was hoping we could have some school but I knew that we had an hour drive to home and this was not going to be conducive to a good morning of school.  Once we were in the vehicle, it was decided that we’d spend night in a nearby motel. The decision was met by some groans and some cheers of excitement. I was one who was rather fond of the idea as it took care of my school dilemma for tomorrow. The hotel had 2 rooms available for us but they weren’t very close together. Christina and I had the room on the second floor together so we got to make our own rules and we did a little bit of exploring before going to bed. The place was amazing. The pool had a fountain in it and was sparkling clean. There were trees and plants everywhere, creating a very peaceful atmosphere. 

 

 Friday, December 4, 2020 

Christina and I were up a bit earlier than the other room so we picked up our meager belongings (we hadn’t realized we were going to spend the night so we didn’t have much along with us) and went outside to explore in the daylight. They had a bit of a garden to walk in in the back yard so we strolled down there. We were standing by one of the fishponds when a man came up and started feeding the fish. Soon he gave the food to us and let us finish feeding them. The pond was full of little minnows (I think,) some tilapia, and we even saw a bunch of catfish trying to get all the food. After breakfast (lots of options and apparently other hotels have even bigger selections) we got some bread crusts from the kitchen staff and went to see the bigger fishponds. The water was quite muddy in these ones so it was a bit hard to see but apparently the fish were quite a bit larger than the ones in the first pond. They said they fish and eat from these ponds.  We eventually made our way towards home and after lunch, those of us who needed to trekked out to the school room to try to get something done. We started by practicing most of our  Christmas program, and got most of our scheduled Friday work done in under 2 hours.  

 

And that brings me to today.  

Saturday, December 5, 2020 

We all slept in and eventually had breakfast lazily started our day. Due to rain and a bit of sickness, we didn’t clean church yard this morning and Bible Study with Juan is cancelled for this afternoon. I’m feeling kind of ashamed to say that I sewed 2 dresses for myself this week but it has been raining quite much so we haven’t been going away very much. 

 I’m going to quick do spell check and maybe ask Rachelle about some things that I tried writing about that I don’t know enough about. And then I’ll send this off and you can get on with your day and don’t have to keep anxiously waiting for this diary.  Ciao ciao,  Adorae