TrewsNews

It was back to work yesterday. We had two great weeks holiday with some fine people. Last night was a bar-be-be-que for all the Project Paraguay teams, nearly all from Northern Ireland. We met some folk who had been in Concepcion, like Rachel and Noel from Donegal and Diane and Debbie from Derryloran.

We have been having great craic with Hannah Collins and her lot from Dollingstown. They took the entire service on Sunday to give us a break, and excellent they were too. We've been cooking for them sometimes in the evenings and having such a laugh. We also went out to see the other group from St. Marks Parish Portadown, they are building a retreat centre about 30 miles outside Asunción. It's an isolated rural location (the middle of nowhere), and they seem to be suffering from food poisoning a bit and severe mossie bites. But the work they are doing is fantastic.

A few days ago a group of 30 arrived from Northern Ireland, only 3 of their cases arrived! While they are all here Varig, the Brazilian airline they travelled on is in collapse . All the Varig flights have been cancelled and the team had an 18 hour wait in Sao Paulo trying to get another flight. Virtually any flight arriving into Asuncion has had luggage delayed by 24 hours. Great fun when you are going 500km north with only the clothes you arrived in!

The winter break starts on Monday 10th. We really need it. It's been a 13 week term and pretty busy with school and church to organize. We're looking forward to these holidays. Lots of people are coming out from Ireland over the next three weeks. Today sees our good friend Hannah Collins arrive with a team from her church, St. Saviours. They will be working for two weeks doing a children's holiday club and painting a mural on a foster home run by friends of ours. Other groups are coming our with Project Paraguay to work on building projects, children's clubs and medical work in Concepcion and an area outside Asuncion. It will be great to have some more Northern Irish accents around the place.