I Can't Believe This is Happening Again...

Well, we are connected with lots of people, yes, school people. We hear about their pets, their families, their vacations, etc. etc. We hear about puppies, rabbits, hamsters, and...do you want one?, kind of stuff. Oscar grew up around hundreds of animals and I grew up around pesky, little dogs that we made my dad and my brother take care of. So, the idea of "do you want a puppy?" started on Wednesday. Nicole's mom wanted to sell us Bull Terrier. I said, "NO", "Sorry", "No way", "We have Edson", "I will NOT take care of an animal when I have THREE kids to take care of". The questions, answers and discussions were "ping-pong-ing" back and forth. The kids and Oscar with their "PLEASE" and me with my "NO".
Well, sad to say, I LOST! What can I do? I have a family full of boys and boys like dogs.
We have a young Bull Terrier named Sasha, and I can't believe I am letting this happen again!

A "cut and paste" from Wikipedia

Just so you know who we saw (and met) at dinner last night...

José Luis Félix Chilavert González (born July 27, 1965 in Luque, Departamento Central) is a Paraguayan former football goalkeeper and free kick specialist. He was voted "World's Best Goalkeeper" in 1995, 1997, and 1998.
Besides being one of the best goalkeepers of his time, Chilavert was also known for his skills as a free kick specialist, and often took penalties. His pioneering of this expertise in his position made him the all-time leading scorer among professional keepers until Brazilian Rogério Ceni passed him in 2006. He scored 62 goals in his professional career, many of them crucial, including eight in international matches. Four of his international goals were scored during Paraguay's qualification for the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
Chilavert was also known for his eccentricity and at times fiery temper, which brought him his fair share of controversies; most notorious among which was being sent off for brawling with ex-Newcastle player 'Tino' Asprilla.
See his picture at: http://www.123football.com/players/c/jose-luis-chilavert/index.htm

A different setting

Pastor Dario, Marlene and family

Yesterday was Pastor's Day (a celebration for our Pastors in the Christian community of Paraguay). We had special numbers in Chapel (at school) and a different program for Pastor Baldo. The principal asked the students to bring non-perishable foods for a gift. Wow! Each kid brought a bag or two of something from the grocery story and there was at least a cartful or two of neat groceries. The kids were so excited to see their decorated gift boxes full of goodies. It was a VERY useful gift! We are thankful for the spiritual work that Pastor Baldo is doing with the teachers, students and parents.
Our church offered Pastors Pedro, Oscar and Dario (and their wives) a night out with a dinner at a Brazilian Churrasquería. We went early (at 7:45 pm) and were the 1st in the restaurant. The restaurant started filling up two hours later when we were about to leave. People eat VERY LATE in Paraguay.
A Brazilian Churrasquería has a salad/pasta buffet and the waiters come around many times to each table offering different cuts of barbequed beef, chicken, pork or sausages. They keep coming until you are extremely stuffed and politely ask them not to come back. Then, there is a dessert buffet with a very wide variety of sweets to choose from.
Once again we met up with the famous! Hahaha! Pastor Dario's wife, Marlene, looked up and said, "There's Chilavert, I went to school with him!" Chilavert is Paraguay's famous goalie in soccer. He is very popular in South America and maybe some of you soccer fans have heard of him also. Anyway, (this is something my mom would do...) Marlene went to tell him "hi" and he came over to our table, shook our hands, gave an autograph to Marlene for her kids and invited them over for an "asado" (barbeque). That was kind of fun...to meet a sports celebrity.
It was an enjoyable night out...no kids, good fellowship and bonding, especially important for keeping the unity in the different responsabilities we all have at church.

Pastor Pedro, Mary and family

Only in this country...

Okay, another CRAZY thing that happened in our country, and probably ONLY Paraguay. The other day, Christian (who works for the government) called Oscar and asked him if our Praise and Worship team could sing at a Prayer Meeting organized in the Congress building for the whole Congress, Representatives, President, etc. Several other pastors and people singing solos were going to be there, but he wanted us to lead the music. Oscar thought it was CRAZY. I thought it was an OPPORTUNITY. Ben had SECOND THOUGHTS. David said SURE. So anyway,…we said yes!
We were given the program and practiced on Sunday. We had five songs to lead. Wow! This was getting exciting. Our practice sounded beautiful! We all imagined praising God in front of the whole law-making body of Paraguay…President Lugo included!
We dressed in our Sunday best (on Monday), and at 7.20 we left Adonai to get to the Congress building by 8.00 am to set up. The meeting was to start at 9 am.
At 9:15 am people were still running around here and there and only about 30 had occupied the beautiful, maroon-colored swivel chairs behind the sophisticated desks each with microphones, gadgets, and internet and telephone connections. Our schedule showed that we were to start singing How Great Thou Art at 9:00. I guess we were running on Paraguay time…LATE! I was saddened by the disorganization, but kept my eye on the door expecting President Lugo to come walking in any minute.
Three people finally tried to organize us or give us different instructions. We weren’t sure exactly WHO to follow. Oscar discreetly came over to tell us one thing, Pastor John told us something else, and then the lady-speaker announced something completely different. Okay, we’ll do it Paraguay way after all!
When it finally started, there were only about 5 of the “important” (Congress) people there. There were about 50 others who came to pray for the nation, but no President Lugo. (He was off to Chile to work out things with other Leftists involved in the civil disturbances of Bolivia.) Well, we prayed for him anyway. We prayed for the government leaders, the decisions they make, the people, the economy, the future, etc.
We felt important. We were sent there by God…to praise Him and lift up his name in the same place where our authorities sit making laws and decisions that affect the whole Republic of Paraguay. Things were a little disorganized, people who were invited didn’t show up…but God did...and that’s why we were there…to praise the Highest Authority of all! Amen!

Prison Ministry 4

Last chapter of prison ministry for a while...
Christian is working for the government and worked on getting our Apostolic Christian Church the resolution to work at Emboscada in a spiritual/rehabilitation-type way. The guards were not happy about that, but we somehow got through the iron gates to the Christian’s pavilion several times a week. There was still a lot of tension, but we were praying for a miracle. Crazy things were still happening and one of the worst was when our Christian friend, “Juan”, died. (I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago.) He knew and told “too much” and was a threat to the General Director and guards.
About three months after he died, in September of 2006, 16 prisoners escaped from Emboscada. The general director was fired and the jail was closed down to be rebuilt and refurbished. Everyone was relocated to other prisons. I think that was our miracle!
Since then, Oscar started going to Tacumbu, a prison in Asuncion. The ministry activities in Tacumbu are organized by a pastor named Abel. Oscar and Pastor Dario go several times a month. Since Lugo became president, Oscar says that things have been “cleaned up” and it is so much safer. Praise God! (If you haven’t been there, I could not even begin to explain to you about all the unhealthy, primitive conditions they live in and the lack of safety for inmates and visitors. Once, for example, at an alter call, Oscar brought home 2 bags full of very sharp, homemade knives and weapons. The inmates went forward in repentance and left them at the pulpit! WOW!)
At Tacumbu, some days they have prayer meetings, some days they will show a movie, and some days just a sermon and worship. If the weather is nice they have “church” outside and 500 prisoners show up. If they have church inside the chapel, about 250 fit. Not all of them are Christians. There are also other organizations, denominations and people working towards rehabilitation in Tacumbu.
Thanks, once again for your prayers!

Brandon's Baptism

Today was Brandon's baptism day. In Paraguay it was also a SPRING celebration.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Cor 5.17

Thanks for your prayers! It was a beautiful day!

Slideshow

I got my slideshow to work...I don't know how! These are pictures that have been posted on my blog already. Check it out on the side.

Prison Ministry - 3

After lots of prayer to be covered by the blood of Christ, we decided to go as a family. When we would all go, I would bake cakes or other goodies and our kids would go cell to cell passing out the homemade "treasures". They were used to eating watered-down, bean soup with little or no flavor and other stuff that does not resemble or taste like food. There were no chairs to sit on during the meeting. Usually they found one, a broken-up and tied-up plastic one for me to sit on or a log with a blanket on top. Everyone else stood, squatted down or sat on the (very dirty, wet, urine-smelling) floor. Trying to find a decent bathroom was another dilemma.
But, putting all the ugliness of the place aside, the days we spent visiting these brothers in Christ were filled with love, friendship, freedom in Christ, testimonies, and praises. God was changing their hearts, their history, and their future...and our's, too. They became soul-buddies and best friends. Each week we were able to practice the gift of giving. Our boys loved it.
We took the speakers, musical instruments, and a group from church once a month to have a “real” service. Even though they were saved, they were always moved to repentance and just simply grateful for their new lives in Christ. With tears running down their faces they would tell their stories… “It all started when I was six years old…”, or, “nobody wanted me and I was being passed around from family to family until finally, I left to live on the streets…” or, “I rummaged through the trash bins behind the mall to find something to eat....” “I started sniffing shoe glue so I wouldn’t feel cold at night, then, got in the habit of doing stronger drugs. I started stealing so I could use stronger stuff…”
Now I understood why Oscar had such strong convictions to continue working here. They weren’t even given a chance at life! We were blessed to be able to share the Word with them.

The Prison Ministry 2

Luis, now free and a member of our local church.

Oscar, trying to get past the guards.

Our country is corrupt! It turns out that the guards were supplying drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, and “free” escapes for the prisoners. (One guy paid the guards $1000 to go to his "daughter's 15th birthday party". He was there for a while and then when the policemen came...he was gone...free!) The new Christians were confessing horror stories of the jail’s guards and directors. There stared to be tension between the Christians and the guards as these true stories started being uncovered.
We got donations from several Christian organizations for a Christmas dinner and half of the meat “disappeared”. We were taking a collection in church for blankets and mattresses and one of the ladies at church who works for the government said that new blankets and mattresses were just sent. Oscar said that the inmates are sleeping on cement benches. There are no mattresses. Oops! Once again, we stumbled on something strange and started investigating.
Oscar would come home disgusted with “The System” and every day there was more and more tension. I was pregnant (with Edson) and wondered some days if my husband would even return. Not killed by the prisoners, but by the corrupt officials. For a while, I was living in fear and distress and told Oscar that the prison ministry has to go! He and Christian were messing around with the Mafia, for all I knew. One of these days, they would not come back to their families. (Christian's wife was also expecting a baby one month before mine.) I begged him not to go back! Oscar broke down and cried…something I rarely see…and said, “No, don’t take this ministry away from me. I LOVE those guys, Karen, they need Jesus!”
Okay, so I stopped the nagging. I had to give up my husband to the Lord. Movie scenes of those set-up accidents or crazy shootings played in my head. I was grieved, but I gave up my rights. He was the Lord's, not mine. I let him go, and I went with him many times before Edson was born, and never again said a word about him leaving this ministry he loved so much.

More about the Prison Ministry

I am going to write this for a couple of days to get it all in in short chapters. I don't like LONG blogs, so I will write a little bit each day. This is a picture of Emboscada. Going back a couple of years...

In 2005 Oscar started going to the prison in Emboscada, a place about an hour away from Asuncion. In August (2005), a group of Christians from several different denominations went there to preach to the inmates. Before this time, only the Catholic Priests had visited this prison, full of some of the worst convicts in Paraguay.
Some of the guys in this first group had kids at Colegio Privado Adonai and they invited Oscar to go with them, just to see it and preach there. He went once and ever since then, has loved working with these men and would go, sometimes, one or twice a week.
By the end of that year there were about 50 prisoners who received Christ as their personal Savior and Oscar, Christian and Carlos were visiting the prison almost every other day. Christian started organizing the group, the meetings, the discipling, etc. Carlos started working with the Buen Pastor (a women’s prison) and Oscar offered to serve once a week during the week and once a month on Sundays, taking a whole group from our church for praise and worship, a sermon and a movie.

For some reason, they had nine lady prisoners there, also, (which soon turned into a promiscuous situation), but while the ladies were there, I got involved. I met with them and prayed with them. Most of them had had a very hard life and couldn't break out of their addictive cycles. They knew most of the prisons around the country AND everyone in them. Being in jail (in and out and back in again) was the only life they new.

I went almost every other week mostly because of worry or curiosity of what Oscar was getting into. Deep down in...I was scared for him...or for me. All the while, I also knew that these people were only crying for attention, love, hugs, words of encouragement, gifts and most of all, freedom...and we had/have the answer...freedom in Christ!

Bible verses are written all over the walls of their cells.

The Potter

1st place poem in Wayne County Schools Literary Contest 1986
written by Karen Schley from Chippewa High School,

Sculptor of vessels,
Creator of my soul,
Mold me, suberb Potter,
into the very image that
only Your omnipotent hands
can cast.
Reconstruct the weakness
in the walls
of my thoughts and attitudes.
Place me back into the center
of Your wheel of life.
Fire the numerous impurities
out of my delicate structure
so that I may be
a pure element of
Your esteemed design.

I found this...after 22 years! I thought it was kind of cute. I still have the trophy.

Caught up in a book

I don't have time to blog. I don't have time to email. I don't have time to cook or clean. I don't have time to just "waste"...you know this...I have been writing about this way too often.
Well...Brandon was not fully understanding the "complicated" English language in the book his grade is reading and asked me to re-read to him the first four chapters so he could get it right. Tomorrow was a test day on this book and even though they were reading it in and out of class he just wasn't into it.
I was a little bit annoyed because of all things I had to do or wanted to do. I didn't really want to pick up a school book and start reading it. But, over the years, Brandon has proved to be a quality-time person and I knew how much this meant to him. So, I started dramatizing the story outloud...Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. We read the first four chapters together, talked about it, he wrote down some notes and a day later came home with an "A" at the top of the test paper. He was excited. I was impressed.
BUT...the worst part was, now I couldn't put the book down. I read to chapter 9 that first night and would have gone on, but I knew it was too late. I gave the book back to Brandon and told him to take it away from me since I didn't have time to read it. He took it back to school and for a week left it there or read it there or whatever.
Last night was "family night" and they wanted to watch a movie with us. I was totally not interested in their movie so Brandon brought me the book. I sat down to read it and read, and read and read. I read more than a 100 pages till 11 pm and tossed the book on the floor remembering my early-morning committments at the sound of an alarm. I took the book down to Brandon while reading the next couple of pages. He said, "mom, I can leave it at home with you. We aren't reading it right now anyway." I said, "no, no, no...please take it with you or I will not do what I need to do today."
So, here I am, caught up in a book...this mystery, this novel. It's kind of fun, though, to sneak off and read it even though dishes need to be washed and clothes need to be folded. I haven't had this kind of entertainment for a while, I guess it's okay.

The Prison Ministry

Pictures from the prison that Oscar visits. This is their "chapel". I've never been to this prison, but I think that the Canadian Work Team and some others (Rod, Erik, Dan?) were here.

Reasons I haven't been blogging...

1. A flare-up a school requiring intentional prayer and conversation.
2. Extremely low temperatures making the task of bread-making a priority to warm the house up a bit.
3. An adventurous science project...making a plant and animal cells out of jello and other yummy candies that look like chloroplasts and ribosomes, etc.
4. A women's conference and tea at IBA on a cold, rainy afternoon.
5. An extremely, active 22 month old kid who must explore and discover everything. Why isn't he satisfied with just books anymore?
6. Tuesday's teaching day at Adonai.
7. Baking a quick crazy cake for a friend's birthday and spending time with her while the MEN in our lives were off watching the Paraguay-Venezuela soccer game. (Oscar was at his bible study, the boys and Jose Luis were at Pastor Pedro's house watching the game.)...till 11 pm! Oh, and...Yes...Lugo and Hugo were celebrating as best buddies.
Hopefully, the rest of this week will be a little less challenging.

A Real Good Thing...

I woke up singing this song this morning. I don't know why, other than I heard it several times the other day on our family outing. But, I really like the words of the chorus...

When we don't get what we deserve

That's a real good thing, a real good thing

When we get what we don't deserve

That's a real good thing, a real good thing

By the way...Edson is still not over his cold and the weather is not helping. We jumped from 100ºF to 50ºF overnight!

Where did my time go?

I spent my "blogging" time reading other blogs and facebooks this morning, but I do have time for a short one.
Monday we took a family day off to see Tobatí, a city in the "mountains", an hour and a half away from Asuncion. We were terribly disappointed. The "beautiful" dry, rocky mountains had large brick factories in front of them blocking the view to all the wonders of creation. We had a picnic lunch in the town's plaza and only Edson's screams of delight on the huge, colorful playground made our "scenic" trip worth while. But...it was family time! Good, quality time! Tereré time! And...the best hits of Newsboys came along with us.
No pictures, nope, I didn't want to remember this desert site in my beautiful memories of Paraguay.