Ellen in Paraguay

All the events of my life for the past week or so are tied together by the common thread that I was freezing cold for the duration of all of them. There is no respite from the cold here except being in a store or riding in a car, things I do with little frequency. I think I used to have a somewhat romantic notion of the poor people here; when you see the women outside washing clothes in the sunshine and the kids playing soccer barefoot on the warm earth, they look free and happy. Yesterday when I saw the kids playing outside barefoot it just made me sink further into my layers of clothing. A lady at church told me that it has never been like this before, and usually winter consists of maybe two or three days of cold. Which is actually no consolation to me, since this is the only winter in Paraguay that I know. But it is obvious to me that this is not normal, or they would have started building houses and wearing clothes better suited to survive this cold. Today I am leaving for church camp in Formosa, Argentina, where it is NOT uncommon to have cold, rainy weather. I am really scared of spending 4 days just suffering from the cold and not being able to sleep or shower.
I remember returning home from college 4 years ago in April and just when we thought it might start to warm up, there would be another snowfall and cold spell. I was almost depressed after more than 6 months of white ground, and I had to take hope from God’s promise to know (better than the rainbow one as far as I’m concerned) that there would ALWAYS be a change in seasons: seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, so I didn’t have to worry that it would stay winter forever. The great thing about Paraguay is that hope is always in sight. As soon as a tree looses its leaves, there are immediately new green buds pushing through. Yesterday, which I think was the coldest day of the year, I was still able to sit outside with the strong morning sunshine warming my face. I will never be able to complain about weather again, hot or cold, humid or rainy. I will just have to be thankful for such things as indoor heating, thermo fleece, and air conditioning.