The bus from Asuncion dropped us on the side of the road
(literally!) - this is us waiting for Rafael waiting to pick us up
This church really blessed us by hosting us for nearly a week at a beautiful farm retreat half hour out of town. Filadelfia reminds me of an Afrikaans farming town in the Karoo, very dusty and small town vibe... they even slaughtered a lamb one day and braaied it for us!
Extreme amounts of dust and dirt all the time... It took me a few days to clear out my lungs! But great community atmosphere with everyone knowing everyone. We had a bus rented for us driven by Rafael, good thing as we were at least half an hour outside of town along very dusty roads far from everywhere really!
Us being transported by Rafael!
That evening we lead the church youth meeting where many got touched and many young people got to see first hand that it is cool to know Jesus! During the following week we had many youth start coming to church on fire for God after seeing the young guys on our team who are wildly in love with Jesus, but totally cool and not nerdy at all. Our guys are good role models for the youth :)
Taylor preaching up a storm with Liney translating
On Sunday we lead the church service, it was wild with the presence of the Lord, we had a fire tunnel where we form a tunnel and the congregation walks between us and we pray and prophesy over them. This is quite "out there" for many people, but especially for a German Mennonite Church who are traditionally a bit stuck in their ways! They loved it and were stretched outside of their comfort zones which was good.
In the afternoon we ministered to indigenous kids in a village nearby. There was a lot of witchcraft for us to pray against in this village. We started by just playing with the kids before leading them in a simple service. For those who have contact with kids, I found it interesting that kids don't know how to do puzzles, they have no concept of connecting the pieces (even for simple puzzles and definitely age appropriate for them) in a logical order. It was a little challenging to explain to them what to do as they don't speak Spanish, they speak Guarani, a tribal language. It's amazing what you can communicate through sign language though!
In the afternoon we ministered to indigenous kids in a village nearby. There was a lot of witchcraft for us to pray against in this village. We started by just playing with the kids before leading them in a simple service. For those who have contact with kids, I found it interesting that kids don't know how to do puzzles, they have no concept of connecting the pieces (even for simple puzzles and definitely age appropriate for them) in a logical order. It was a little challenging to explain to them what to do as they don't speak Spanish, they speak Guarani, a tribal language. It's amazing what you can communicate through sign language though!
Me helping the kids do puzzles
This was a great albeit busy time (to be expected considering we were ministering with a German church!). A definite highlight was spending time with Hedi who is a missionary in Sudan. She was home in Paraguay visiting (she's Paraguayan). There is a movie about her (called Mama Shekinah) which is worth watching, she´s on the same level as Heidi Baker, seriously.
Taylor having fun with the kids - hard to say who's having more fun!!
On Tuesday we visited a kids daycare in the morning, followed by lunch at Hedi 's with her sharing about her time in Somalia and Sudan. I felt so priviledged to be sitting at her feet learning from her, she really is a general in the faith. In the afternoon we hosted a block party for village kids in a local village. We prayed for people in their homes and invited the kids to come play at the square where we were having the block party.
A highlight was leading a transexual person we met to the Lord. This was a very spiritually dark village with quite a bit of weird stuff going on. Afterwards when the pastor came by to see how we were getting on he shared that the kids are very spiritually aware, they will come to you if you are filled with love but equally if you're not they'll know. At that time I had a bunch of kids hanging on me who had not let me out of their sight all afternoon so good to know they think I have love in my heart :) In the evening Errado (the foreman of the house where we were staying) had slaughtered a sheep for us that day which he braaied for dinner. Delicious!
Fun being had all around
A highlight was leading a transexual person we met to the Lord. This was a very spiritually dark village with quite a bit of weird stuff going on. Afterwards when the pastor came by to see how we were getting on he shared that the kids are very spiritually aware, they will come to you if you are filled with love but equally if you're not they'll know. At that time I had a bunch of kids hanging on me who had not let me out of their sight all afternoon so good to know they think I have love in my heart :) In the evening Errado (the foreman of the house where we were staying) had slaughtered a sheep for us that day which he braaied for dinner. Delicious!
Errado braaing the lamb he'd slaughtered for us
On Wednesday a group of us went to serve the church by cleaning their church, it was SUPER dusty and dirty as it had been empty for 3 years!! The church had bought what used to be a shop and were now converting it into a youth hangout centre connected with the church. Lunch at the pastor's house for one last visit then back home to pack up and clean.
Our boys looking proud of themselves after sweeping out the room!
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