Ellen in Paraguay

Easter break has kind of been like spring break last year, where I planned lots of work but ended up doing none of it. Last weekend I went with the “evangelism team” to a village clear across the other side of the country on the border to Brazil, about a 5-hour drive. Hernandarias has only one paved road and lots of kids born to very young mothers it seemed. When I arrived it was very windy and our car and our selves were immediately covered in red dust. A few hours later it rained a little and the floors got covered in red mud. I really liked eastern Paraguay because it is a little higher and closer to the ocean, cooler and fresher than Asunción almost to a degree of perfection. I fell in love with Paraguay again as we drove through the beautiful countryside, just in time for my 6-month anniversary with this place. On the way we stopped and bought the best chipa I ever had (a kind-of cheesy bagel made with mandioca flour) but then returning we had even better chipa! I learned that chipa and homemade bread are Easter foods in Paraguay. It seems to me that the “special holiday foods” here are the same as what we eat every day, besides maybe the fruit cake at Christmas.
I had an awesome weekend, probably because I got a lot of attention and made lots of friends. Some girls took me for a walk around the town (the highlights of the tour were the paved road, the high school one girl attended, and the two grocery stores) and told me that everyone knew each other, there was lots of gossip, they liked to cross the border to buy clothes in Brazil, and they all wanted to move to the city. I think small towns are the same everywhere in the world. The first friend I made was a 17-year old who had just broken up with her boyfriend and moved back into her parent’s house. The first night I stayed at town counselor’s house whose wife worked 24-hour shifts as a guard at a women’s prison, because the pastor’s house had no electricity. I would think a civil servant and a security guard would be a sufficient income, but their house was cluttered with car parts and plastic swimming pools, which the wife said they planned to cart to Asunción one day to sell. You know how sometimes things have “tricks,” like a light switch that you need to flick in a certain way to turn on or a door you have to close just so? It seemed to me like everything in this house, which was really a garage, had a trick. Yet in spite of this and the constant dirtiness I felt strangely comfortable. At the pastor’s house the second night, I went outside to wash my feet before going to bed, and ended up staying outside for two hours more talking with the pastor’s wife and her 20-year old sister who lived with them because she had a baby a few years ago. She wanted to dictate a letter to me, but she was very surprised when I wrote with “unconnected” letters. I told her about Google Earth and how their town could be seen from space. She told me about how before she and her husband were separated and how he was a drunkard and a womanizer. They lived only two houses away from the church and I thought this was because he was the pastor, but actually it was because they lived so close that she started attending the church. Her husband started attending two years after her, but the first few times he sneaked around the block so his friends wouldn’t see him enter. I thoroughly enjoyed staying up late and sharing our life stories, but I felt sorry for Elsa who was getting up at 4:30 in the morning to do her laundry!
I always really enjoy my visits to the country, but I am also glad that I live in a bigger city. In the country the preferred language is Guarani, or at least a very strong mixture of Spanish and Guarani. Another thing is that the kids are so bored that it is difficult to sit down and read because they will follow you everywhere and ask you to make elephant sounds. But it was good because they taught me a lot of Guarani. Today I am leaving for church camp at Rancho Alegre, Happy Ranch! I am in charge of games and am very excited to play “Biblgo” my version of a Bible trivia game, and capture the flag. The camp schedule is basically the same as western camp except that dinner is at 9 in the evening. Happy Easter everyone! As silly as the Easter bunny might seem in North America, it makes even less sense here where we are getting into fall time. Also, I thought yesterday about how strange it will be for me to say “Santa Claus,” now that santa is the word I use to describe the Bible or God’s Spirit, and how Santa Claus kind of makes Christmas the opposite of holy. But everything is opposite here, instead of chocolate I will be eating cheesy chipa and homemade bread.