Fast, Slow and Steady

I am usually hurrying to do something, talk to someone, work on something, or whatever. I also have my minutes counted. I know what I have to do and when I have to do it. I take two or three steps at a time going up the stairs…you know, to save time and get upstairs faster. I cook large amounts of ground beef and put it in small containers in my freezer to save time and cook FAST meals in a moment’s notice. Sometimes I “drop” at 9 or 10 pm complaining (only to Oscar) that “I’m tired”. Well, I should be! I didn’t stop all day long! But still, I have to keep going and it has to be FAST.
That reminds me of my mom…it must be hereditary! When I am feeling the most tired, I think of how my mom NEVER stops. (It must be hereditary for her, too, considering that Grandpa and Grandma Pavkov had a garden and were still canning food in their 90`s.) I never saw mom tired of life. She was always running here and there. Even after 60 years she is STILL not huffing and puffing after a long walk. She’s always happy! She’s always busy! She just keeps going steady.
Sometimes I’m forced to slow down…like, walking up the stairs with a 1 ½ year old. He takes one step at a time. He stops to play with a sun beam across the wall and then finds a spider to tease and then step on. He plays peak-a-boo a few times through the rails and then goes back down two steps. All the while, I’m in a hurry. I want to get to the top. He is enjoying every slow-step he can take.
I’m a lot busier with Edson, but I am trying to SLOW DOWN and enjoy “the walk upstairs”. When I’m too busy or too tired, special people come to mind…my mom, who never quits and Edson, who takes slow steps while enjoying his surroundings.

CPA – 5

Well, the word was out! The Iglesia Nazarena Apostólica Cristiana was going to have a school backed up 100% by our church family. Finally…a dream come true…our church doors could be open…7 days a week! Most of us couldn’t even get to the end of 2002. We were excited and every day seemed to have its own miracles. God was GOOD.
We started working on the classrooms, the office, and the park area. We prayed and prayed and prayed. Some did a fast for 40 days, January 1 to February 9, (February 9th was the first day of school) asking for God’s blessing on the school project and a beginning count of 50 students. We advertised all around the neighborhood and had interviews for teachers. Most of the members in church decided to dedicate one year of free service to the Lord in what ever area they could. Some were teaching, some were cleaning and some working on the building (painting, bricklaying, etc.)…all with no pay!
Sometimes we look back and say, “How did we ever decide to do this? If we would have known everything we would come up against we wouldn’t have even started!” But, our faith was strong and we wanted a future for our kids, for our youth and for our neighborhood.
We talked with Amy (Shurance) Nenadov to come and help with the English classes. She knew Spanish well and already visited Paraguay two times before. The people loved her and we just knew she could be the perfect English teacher for the 2003 school year! She accepted God’s invitation and was here in January 2003.
We wanted our members to take an active part in something that was theirs. We thought that maybe North Americans could take an active part in teaching English or sponsoring a student to go to school. Our church neighborhood could have a close place to send their kids to school and a place to find spiritual healing. God was opening all the doors. We were blessed.

New Pictures

I just HAVE to post these cute pictures!

Edson with a black eye.

Trying on DAD'S shoes...

Edson and Gaby

CPA – 4

We went to church. We prayed. We sang. Then we were invited to give testimonies of “last night’s experience”. Some people said that they felt as if the church “died”. Another person said that it “seemed as if we were at a funeral”. Some one said that they were thinking of going to another church. Others said that they didn’t have true peace until they fully repented and “vomited” up all the negative, evil thoughts and sins that were hiding in their hearts. Some couldn’t sleep all night long until they worked things out with God.
The talk was different. The tension was gone. People were praising God and talking about freedom. What happened? Everyone was asking each other for forgiveness. We kept praying and singing and the whole evening turned into a night of celebration. The strangeness of the night before was completely covered up by a mysterious joy and peace.
The night went on and all of a sudden we realized that it was 11:00 pm. One of the last songs we sang was…Because He lives, I can face tomorrow…Little kids, only five years old, were singing at the top of their lungs along with all the rest of us. We were all in tears with our hands held high. God gave us our first miracle; forgiveness and unity.
The congregation was asked once again if we would support a Private Christian School in our church premises and the vote was a unanimous…YES!
Back home (relieved, overjoyed, forgiven and at peace) we got online to share the GOOD NEWS with family members who were already praying for this project, but God had more miracles waiting! We received an email from my sister that said “our Sunday school class raised $2000 for desks or what ever you need for the school. It’ll be in the mail soon.”
I always wonder…why didn’t that email come on Tuesday night? Why Wednesday? No, it couldn’t have come on Tuesday night, we were still arguing, unforgiving, and we had to “die” before God could bless us with true life in HIM! We spent another night crying…but this time joyful tears of victory!

Because He Lives – Music: Bill Gaither, Words: Bill & Gloria Gaither

God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.

Chorus: Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.

How sweet to hold a newborn baby,
And feel the pride and joy he gives.
But greater still the calm assurance,
This child can face uncertain days because He lives.

And then one day I'll cross the river,
I'll fight life's final war with pain.
And then as death gives way to victory,
I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives.

Oscar’s birthday or Mother’s Day

May 15th is a difficult day to celebrate…there are two important people involved, Oscar and me. Mother’s Day is ALWAYS May 15th and so is Oscar’s birthday. Who do we celebrate? Mom or Dad? Dad also gets his “day” in June…so what should we do? Technically we should both get two days out of the year to be the center of attention, our birthdays and mother’s or father’s day. We can’t take either of them from each other.
Mother’s Day here in Paraguay is a national holiday so there was no school. It was wonderful to sleep in on a Thursday. In the middle of the week we got a break! Yeah! Oscar always thinks…I mean says…that the holiday is for HIM because of his birthday. So, that is where the conflict comes in. Let’s be fair, here!
This year we celebrated “Mother’s Day” at noon and Oscar’s Birthday in the evening. I cooked MY favorite…a very small pasta buffet for lunch and Oscar cooked HIS favorite…asado (barbecue) for dinner. We had some friends over and it seemed like Christmas…Family, food and fun!
But, the food celebration is not the most important, of course. It’s who we are! Oscar is an extra special husband and father. He is always so helpful and always thinking of others. He often carries a heavy load in the church and school ministry, but always has time to make jokes. He has a good attitude about life. It’s fun to ALWAYS be at home on his birthday!
I know that the kids love and respect me. Yeah, we have those teenage arguments or battles every once in a while, but we all know they couldn’t do without me…just yet. So, I claim a good portion of the holiday, also.
I guess we’ll continue to SHARE the holiday and just keep on celebrating both MOM AND DAD!

CPA-3

The meeting was scheduled, the date we were all hoping for finally arrived, and…unfortunately...there was tension. All of a sudden our hopes and dreams turned sour. At that meeting there were arguments. There were fights. Incredible “fiery darts” were being thrown back and forth. The leadership was confused. We lost focus of the goals the school would accomplish. The school project was hardly even mentioned. There were other issues the Lord had to deal with first. We left the meeting crying, empty, sad, angry, hateful, and depressed. Our hope, our vision and our dream came crashing to the ground. What went wrong?
The next day, I dragged myself to an English class. I was hurt and confused. Some of us felt so strongly about this project, it was hard to believe what had happened the night before. To hide my tears I showed my class a movie, The Prince of Egypt. I couldn’t believe how the Lord used that so familiar story to revive my faith and believe in Him.
Moses went through the whole ordeal of getting the Israelites out of Egypt and after so many ups and downs they finally got to the Red Sea. In this one scene, all the people are scared. They have worried looks on their faces and they are about to go crazy! The Egyptians are behind them and a huge body of water before them. Moses looks back and forth at the approaching army and then back to the Red Sea. He holds up his staff, looks up to heaven and thinks back to what God once told him at the fiery bush…with this rod you will do MY WONDERS! Instantly the sea opens up and all the people cross over….you know the rest of the story.
Anyway, I prayed to God, "what IS this ROD that you have left us that we can use to do YOUR WONDERS?" The Lord put on my heart two words: prayer and faith. That is what we needed to do HIS WONDERS!
I was renewed. I was ready to cross that Red Sea.
I came home from school and we had meeting after meeting with different pastors and our elder. Our vision and our goals were once again shared and discussed. Others came and went that afternoon, but a different voice was being heard, the voice of the Spirit.

Edson's Daily Exercises

Morning exercises...
Good thing my jeans have snaps!
Hold...1,2,3,4

Mommy's boy...dress up time!

Family

Cute Edson!

Cute Oscar!

Cute...Brandon and Gaby

CPA-2

We had a church building that our own Paraguayan, people built with our own hands. The Sunday school rooms, though, were built through many donations from the North American churches. We had rooms for a school. They were small, but our hearts were on fire. We knew it would work. Our kids could go to our very own school!
We started writing up our project. Zully Dominguez (teacher) and Marcos Garcia (secretary) helped out with so many details. Zully’s dad worked in the Ministerio de Education and helped the paperwork move along…to get the project approved and accredited by the Ministry of Education. We asked for permission to open an elementary school from kindergarten to 6th grade keeping in mind the grade level of our own church kids. It could have taken months. We just had to wait!
The paperwork was turned in October 2002. We had a meeting at church around that time to actually document the church’s approval of the school project. We wanted to be backed up 100% by the church (the members). First of all we thought that the church should be prayerfully responsible for the school and secondly, if things would happen to go wrong, no one person would be to blame…the church body would work things out together. Everyone was excited. It seemed as if our dream…to have the church open all 7 days of the week…would finally come true.

CPA -1

In these COLEGIO PRIVADO ADONAI updates I want to share with you how the school came around to being what it is today. It is much easier to tell the stories individually, but hopefully I will be able to tell about God’s leading and our journey through this beautiful project.
Let’s go way back to 2000. Oscar and I were working in the church – full time…and loosing members. Different city attractions took our youth to other places. We were left with seven families at church and even they were not regular church goers. We went canvassing around the neighborhood with two other couples and their families, weekly visits with those interested in the gospel, kid’s programs, and Bible courses. We had prayer meetings, late night vigils and other activities, but nothing seemed to “work”.
We had this idea that the church should be opened all seven days of the week. We could drive past any church; Catholic, Evangelic, Mormon, whatever, and see it locked…no one around. How sad! Huge buildings representing the spiritual side of us…and they are empty, cold, and locked. Where do you go if you need spiritual help? How do we get into a locked up building? We prayed for a project that could allow our church to be opened all week long to give spiritual help to anyone at anytime.
At that time Brandon was in 2nd grade and Gabriel in kindergarten. I was helping out in the English classes in their school one day a week. The principal, Sara, is a very strong believer and she said to me. “Here in Paraguay the government allows private, Christian schools and it is easy to open them. Every church should have a private, Christian school in its neighborhood.” I thought about that over and over again. Oscar and I started to pray about it and…that little spark was lit. In the little neighborhood school that my kids were in, there were about 80 students. That’s around 50 to 80 families that could be evangelized. I also volunteered to play guitar in their chapel services and was so impressed to see these beautiful, eager faces ready to worship and hear God’s word.
I kept thinking that we could reach them (the students) with the Gospel and work with their parents. The “church” could be opened seven days a week! We would have them 5 days a week, not only in Sunday school, to preach to them, teach them, do devotions with them, give them a purpose in live and pray with them. It seemed like a dream. It seemed perfect. What could go wrong? We started praying about it at church and people became excited. We could offer jobs to our members; the youth could prepare themselves as teachers or administrators. We could have youth from the states come to help in the English department. What an opportunity in every way!
We set the project before the Lord. The members started to pray and many of us started to see what documents, paper work, or other things needed to be done to start this new project. We weren’t sure about anything. We didn’t even know what we were getting into. We just had a desire to reach out and provide Salvation to our kids, the youth, and the neighborhood. We “jumped” a huge step of faith.

News

This whole week went by soooooo fast.
After our “Monday Morning Missionary Meetings”, I did some grocery shopping and came home to house duties. Tuesday was my day at school, but it was Teacher’s Day…we didn’t have class. (In the picture you can see the Guarani teacher, English teacher, Math and Science teachers.) We had nice parties all day, a school program, and a dinner out with all the teachers and workers at school. (Some people took spouses and there were about 42 there.) It was really nice. We are happy with our group of teachers this year and see many changes (especially in the 3rd grade – hyperactive group).
Wednesday was actually “Teacher’s Day” so there was no school. I spent the morning preparing for a very special guest (Vivi) who was planning on spending lunch and the afternoon with me. And, since I am a “quality time” person, I dropped EVERYTHING to be with her…even blogging.
Ben told us that afternoon that they actually WERE going to have the little party for our orphan friend Hugo and so we quickly prepared sandwiches, cookies, etc for this little guy’s (15 years) party (at Ben and Vivi’s). Hugo has been around for about 4 years. He is on a scholarship at school and has a wonderful outgoing personality. That night we had a prayer meeting first. Hugo went around the neighborhood inviting other friends (about 5) to come to his birthday party, too. Hugo has a light blue hat on. He's the shortest one of his 15 year old friends.
Thursday was a HOLIDAY! There were going to be sports activities at church but a light, steady rain kept us at home…cooking, studying, reading, and sleeping….a good break from the rush of weekdays.
Today we are back on track…the early morning schedule, regular school day, blogging day, answering emails day, etc.