Pictures, at last!

Thanks to the hard work of one of the Mavericks, Monte/Craig, who stayed a few extra days, I now have all the pictures on a computer that actually works like a real computer! SO, here are the much anticipated pictures you´ve all been waiting for. Also if you´re friends with Sarah on facebook you can see an album there too. But these are really the highlights.


This was Sarah´s birthday cake. It was chocolate with chocolate icing and dulce de leche inbetween the layers. Que rico! The only candles in the house were the 6 from pricila´s last birthday and the 8 from joel´s last birthday, hence we decided that 68 was a good age.










Here we are at Itipu, which I may have spelled wrong but anyway, it´s the dam on the river between brazil and paraguay, which supplies loads of power to both nations. Anyway, it´s one of the 7 wonders of the modern world, officially, so it was worth the hour tour. Which was free. This picture is actually just of the overflow gates, for the rare occasions when it rains too much. The actual hydroelectric part was kind of hard to take a picture of, since it was so big. But we did go right past it and it was pretty cool.







Here´s where the REAL action on the trip was... the Brazilian Churiscura restaurant (which I am quite certain I spelled wrong) IN BRAZIL!! This is a very trendy type of restaurant in the US right now, but how many people can say they´ve been to one IN BRAZIL!! I felt a little stupid taking a picture of the guy who was slicing my meat, but they´re used to it; it´s a total tourist trap, just across a less-than-secure border and only miles from the National Park. Needless to say, the food was great. I am actually fairly proud of my achivement...I ate part of 7 different animals in one meal! (Cow, Pig, Lamb, Chicken, Fish, Crab, and Quail. I also had some sausage which though I´m not sure if that included other animals,I´m kind of hoping not)

OK lest we turn this into some sort of food blog, on to the real business of our trip! Iguazu falls. This is a picture of our first glimpse of the water falls. The trail winds down from the road to the water level with pleanty of scenic veiws along the way.










Like this one! how beuatiful! and the back ground ain´t bad either!














I thought this sign was funny because it´s a classic example of bad translation. We got what it meant, and probably no one else found it as amusing as I did... oh well. Hey maybe they intentionally made a lousy translation because they knew people like me would like to take a picture of it... who knows.


















More of the falls. Great stuff! We enjoyed the walk down to the bottom and it had lots of great views along the way. Definately worthy of National Park status. I just wish we didn´t have to illegally enter the country as undocumented aliens to enjoy it. oh well. I enjoyed that part too.







Water water everywhere!





More views... Que Lindo!



Yep. That water´s a fallin´...







Ok that´s the last one for now. we took hundreds more, but there are such things as storage limits... anway...


This is the mural the kids painted on the last day of our program. They had a great time painting it, although we got mixed responses from the adults. It mostly amounted to a pat on the head and a "nice little kids,¨ It´s in a class room that doesn´t really get used except for storage, and is actually already hidden behind some benches, but the kids enjoyed it. For them, this is their Gospel, their Bible even, since most of the kids couldn´t read. On the left we have the "plan of salvation" braclets, which isn´t my favorite concept of all time, but it was helpful in keeping the kids interested. On the other wall we asked the kids to draw things that reminded them of God´s love, the theme being God is Love. Then Sarah and I sketched out some outlines for them to paint. It worked out pretty well, with the exception of our New Jerusalem has a slight polution problem... and we still lack animals in the garden. But anyway, I was excited. I saw some kids on sunday showing it to some others who hadn´t been there, and that made it all worth while.










This group of people is essentially the team we will be working with in the Nueva Asuncion project. On the left is "Saraita" whose name is Sara but since Sarah is also Sarah, we call her Saraita. She is the oldest daughter of the Sosa family, who I´ll come back to in a minute. Standing on the other side of us is Francesca and Sergio, the family who live in Nueva Asuncion. They are very hospitable and have a great attitude and they appear to also have a great heart for their community and for the work of the Kingdom. In front of Sergio is Otelia, the mother of the Sosa family. Next to Sergio is Danny Sosa, and then Christian Ventura, the guy who lets us live in his back yard (among other things...) Next to him is Adelio Sosa, and on the right is Valentine Sosa. Valentine and Otelia have 5 kids and pastor the Tres De Mayo Church of the Nazarene. They are going to be the ones leading the services and we will be working with them a lot in Nueva Asuncion. Adelio plays guitar, Sara sings, Danny is great with kids an all of them are hard workers. It´s going to be great working with them. Now all we have to do is negotiate the two hours worth of city buses between our place and Nueva Asuncion! I´m working on finding it on google maps, when I do I´ll let you know.

OK thats it for now! We´ll be glad to field your questions below in the section marked "comments!