Crossing the Fence

Although it's been a few days since I last posted, lots has been happening in my South American world. Someone asked which way the drains go in southern hemisphere and I can say that after numerous tests it is counter clockwise. I'm pretty curious which way water spins as it drains in North America, I can't remember.
This past week has been full of sweat, dirt and a whole lot of terere (cold tea type drink which gets past around a circle like a peace pipe). The whole missionX team has been placed into Paraguayan homes for the week. It's a time to struggle with Spanish, experience and fumble our way through the culture and eat some great Paraguayan food. I've included a picture of our (me and Steve McCoy's) hosts for the week. We were placed on a small farm in a house that couldn't have been any more latin than the pictures (think Nacho Libre). We've really grown to love our family. The father of the household is a interesting character who throws German into his Spanish and supposedly has a strong German Brazilian accent. He is often found without a shirt or covered from head to toe in dirt as he comes off the field. He's alot of fun and most of our interacting consists of laughing. Most of the days have been spend working with the missionaries running a DVBS for the kids in the area. It's been really nice to be find my niche in doing the "grunt" work in order to set the national Spanish speakers up for ministry. We handed out flyers, set up the stage, sound system, blew up the balloons and watched as people from the church walk in to lead the singing and teaching. We started the week with about 60-70 kids the first afternoon and today we concluded the DVBS with 125 kids. It was alot of fun!
One of the biggest accomplishments which Steve and are very proud of is the fence we built. On one of the mornings nothing was happening with the missionaries so we stuck around the farm. I miraculously communicated to our "dad" that we wanted to work. He showed us shovel and some logs which were to be the fence posts and made some marks on the ground. One of his sons turned to us and in a fancy game of charades communicated that we were about to sweat alot. Not letting that discourage me I turned and walked towards the first mark in the ground as I thought back to my days at the valley: "I've dug lots of holes in Canada, how bad can this be." Well, I can say that before this I have never dug a fence hole with a shovel nor have I done it under the blistering South American sun. Digging the holes to the depth of the shovel handle seemed to take forever but in the end Steve and I looked back and high fived each other at the "sweet" fence that we had built. Yes we sweated a ton, and yea the fence wasn't the best quality but we put in our best effort and hopefully it'll hold the animals in. I would love to put a warranty on it, but I'm not sure when I'll be back to uphold a commitment like that. This experience is quickly coming to a close. Tomorrow morning we start the journey home, from one town to the next to the capital to the plane. The highlight so far has been spending time with the missionaries picking their brains and asking the hard questions which they so patiently answer. It's been quite something to do devotions out on the porch as the sun rises over the farmers fields. It's been quite something to worship with the South American believers under the night sky. It's quite something to be sweating in January. And it'll be quite something walking out of the Winnipeg Airport into winter.