TrewsNews

This week we're taking part in a prayer marathon - non-stop prayer for 24 hours over 7 days. The Spanish speaking congregation have converted a room in the cathedral into a special prayer room with comfortable seating and things to help focus our prayers. It is part of a worldwide 24-7 prayer initiative , and 16 groups worldwide praying at this time. Members of the Spanish congregation, English congregation and pupils from the school are all taking part to pray for Paraguay, our churches, school and needs worldwide. Eileen took a turn this morning and found it really rewarding. Both of us have more slots later in the week. There has been a fantastic response with all the hour long slots being filled each day. We look forward to hearing how it develops.

This winter has been a strange one. We'd hardly had any cold weather at all, temperatures stayed in the mid 30s through all of July. Then last week it dropped, we had 4 degrees in the mornings and the maximum was 13. This week it is back to 36. This is more like mid summer weather temperatures. Last Saturday Eileen had the toy library again and 50 children came along to play with good educationally stimulating toys - something they would never get the chance to anywhere else. The children who come are street children, they get a shower and some breakfast then have time to play. They just love it. In church we are planning some shared lunches, aiming to invite some new teachers who recently came to the American school. Then later we hope to have another Alpha course. We pray we might make the contacts and be able to invite new people to church and the course.

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.

Sweden 1 -0 Paraguay.  We are out of the world cup.   Very subdued atmosphere here, everyone hoped they would do better. 

Our latest prayer letter has just been put online. We appreciate your prayers for our work in Asuncion. Please print it out and stick it on your prayer fridge. You can click on image below to download it in PDF format.

The Paraguay v England match on Saturday saw everyone glued to their televisions. The Paraguayans were dissapointed they did not at least draw with England as they played well in the second half. The English were dissapointed they did not play better. On Friday we took a photo and sent it to the BBC World Cup website. They published it : BBC SPORT | Football | World Cup 2006 | Your World Cup photos - 10 June

At this moment the students are all in the assembly hall watching the start of of the World Cup 2006. Excitement is building here as tomorrow sees the England vs Paraguay match. Paraguayans are totally mad about football - the shopping centres will be packed with people watching it on the big screen. The BBC are in town and a number of English friends will likely be on Match of the Day tonight, they like to film the ex-pats abroad. I'll post some photos when I get a chance.

It was the funeral of Esmerelda today. First we went to the Memorial Funeral Home where her coffin had been since yesterday. Funerals here are the day after the death and many of her family and friends had not gone home at all. Then we followed the hearse on a 45 minute journey out of Asuncion to a large modern cemetery. Many of the families and students from our school where there along with students from another school she'd taught in. It was quite an emotional funeral, many of her family were in floods of tears and crying out or wailing. Being buried the next day the grief is short lived, but intense. They reckon she died of a pulmonary embolism - she'd had a broken foot and a blood clot caused a heart attack. It was totally unexpected. She was a faithful Christian and not married, so we all take comfort that she is now in heaven. The photo of her was taken at the Franklin Graham Children's festival 2005 at which she was a dancer.

When we arrived at school today we heard one of our teachers had died of a heart attack. Prof Esmerelda taught home economics, she was 37.

Here is a little video of the students' trip.

Here are some photos of the Chaco trip. This trip of final year students followed one of 1st year students (5th form) earlier in the week. They started digging the water storage well beside the church in Santa Fe community, the guys in our team carried on the digging to about 2 metres. The ground was very hard and digging was pretty hard work. We broke a pick axe and a shovel trying to remove the earth. Some of the local community will finish the digging to 3 metres and then line the inside walls with bricks. Guttering will direct rainwater from the church roof into the well. This water provides a clean source of water for the dry season - it will not evaporate and being covered reduces the risk from the Dengue mosquito that breads in open water. The girls painted the classrooms of the local school and it provides a really bright and stimulating environment for the children. The community was very appreciative of the help and it is good to think that the work the students did wi...

The school trip to the Chaco sets off early tomorrow morning. On this camp we are going to dig a well to store water during the dry season. This evening it's a trip to the supermarket to buy some toilet roll, mossie repellent, and batteries. There are lots if mossies, spiders and snakes at the minute! It's also a chance to encourage the young people to make real commitments to Christ, so please pray for us.

Yesterday was Labour Day, a day off, so we had a fun day at home filled with painting, dressing up, lego building, Horrid Henry books, Angelina Ballerina books, microwave popcorn (sen't from home!) and the new Wallace and Gromit movie! (cost: £9.50 in Asuncion). Elijah spent the day scared to go up the stairs in case the were-rabbit was there! Today was back to normal school with Stephen starting to prepare for a school trip to the Chaco next week. The weather has turned cold so the duvets and jumpers are bact out in force.

Last July a team from Ireland came out to visit us and start work on a church extension at Zeballous Cue, an Anglican Parish on the outskirts of Asuncion. It was a community that suffered much in the Supermarket fire disaster in 2004. The extension was recently finished. The team were delighted to see the finished results of the work they helped to start.

We started back to school after a week's holiday. We had a very relaxing week that included a fishing trip where we actually caught one. Easter Sunday was good. The highlight was the kid’s illustration. We have a hollow stone that kind of looks like a tomb and it was used as a display at the front of church. Using a Playmoboil figure as Jesus we rolled toilet paper around it to represent the burial clothes. Just before placing Jesus wrapped body in the tomb I slipped the figure out. Hannah, being one of the women, came forward first to look in the tomb. She looks in, then turns and announces totally spontaneously, "He is not here, he is alive!". The boys came up next to examine the wrapped body. When they did not see the Playmobil figure they said in genuine surprise, "He's not here! Did you take him, did you do magic?” We think they understood the point. Afterwards we saw many of the street kids the Spanish speaking church is ministering to. Our church bought a ...

This morning Eileen went to the Toy Library run by the Teacher Training Faculty attached to St. Andrew's school. They bring loads of craft, toys, games, and dressing up clothes to the church hall and children from the nearby shanty town communities come along to play and simply have fun. These children literally have nothing - they are othen dressed almost in rags and normally play with rubbish. So to give them a chance to play with educationally stimuluting toys is really worth giving up a Saturday morning for. Some of the same children are coming along to the Spanish speaking congregation on Sundays. They are given breakfast and go to the Sunday School. If they want they can have a change of clothes and their filthy clothes are washed. It is such a great work the Faculty and church are doing for these kids. Really the kind of service Jesus would do.

Today was a half day in school - the Easter holidays start. We have all of Holy Week off. We finished with an Easter Service where each year in primary did a reading or drama. It was a great service - Patrick gave talk on how the disciples saw what, for them, was a tragedy on Good Friday turned into a victory on Easter Sunday. This is something God can do for each of us when we allow the Cross to bring a change in each of our lives. Next week we are just taking it easy and getting some little jobs done around the house or head out of the city for a picnic.