I am going to bring you down a bit. Come with me into my wallowing. It’ll be over soon, but I’m going to be emo and post about my depression while I have it.

Songs like “Blue Christmas” and “Please Come Home For Christmas” have new meaning for me this year. These songs have become my anthem. Former favorites like “Sleigh Ride” are just empty words. There are parts of the world where Christmas is not white and parts where people are not thinking about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

My Christmas is blue because I can’t spend it with the love of my life. I can’t enjoy with her the warmth of the house, the pretty lights outside, the truffles that TJ is making right now, and hot cups of Starbucks Egg Nog Latte. Half of my life is gone for now.

I’ve been driving around town today, but it feels totally empty. I know the roads, but it’s all foreign to me at the same time. I don’t feel like it’s home yet. And when people say “Welcome home” to me, I feel like saying “My home is 9,000 miles away…” I’m not happy to be home. I’m not mad about it, but happiness isn’t coursing through my veins.

I’m sure once I’m used to being tin the States I will feel like I’m back home. But I know I won’t be completely happy all year. Hopefully I won’t be a downer for all of it.

-j

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It’s weird to think about this being over. I feel like I just got to Paraguay, and now I’m sitting in Peru waiting for a delayed flight (that might delay my arrival in the US), and it’s all behind me. Obviously I’m not done with Paraguay, but it’s crazy to think it’s been 14 months and some change since I got there. It’s as intertwined in my life as Richmond is now. And it’s probably going to stay that way.

I don’t like goodbyes. Partly because I don’t like saying the same thing over and over again, and partly because I don’t usually know what to say. I didn’t “officially” say goodbye to many people on Saturday night. A few key players (pastors, really close friends, my in-laws) and I was done. As I walked from church for the last time on my trip, I couldn’t help but imagine some of that sitcom music for tender moments.

It’s not really goodbye. It’s “see you later.” I will see them later, if the Lord tarries. My esposa is there. Leaving her yesterday was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. If I felt I could have managed it, I would have stayed with her until Gustavo came to take me to the airport. I hope this year flies by.

Well, I just say the pilots show up, so I’m gonna head out for now. See you later.

-j

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Last night at Colegio Privado Adonai we had the first graduation from 12th grade. I have been excited for that moment since I realized it would be. Some of the kids even have been at CPA for as long as 7th grade, a year after the school opened. There are also 6th graders who have been there since the beginning of the school, so in 6 more years there will be another awesome graduation.

It was a really nice time. Nine kids finished their high school career, and the whole time they were reminding me of my graduation over 12 years ago (what?!). They started by passing the National and Collegial flags to the best students in 11th grade, and already people started crying. There were awards given to the best students in each grade of middle and high school, and then then night focused on the seniors.

The one thing I liked the most was that each one was given a Bible and presented with a “Gift Verse” to bless their future with. Later, each one took turns dedicating a white rose to the people who to them represented their achievement. The tassel turning was a bit different; they received their symbolic diploma, and the last person to congratulate them (Oscar, the General Director of the school) flipped it from one side to the other. The evening culminated with some surprise photo montages and video dedications by each of their parents. It was a long night, but it was a good night.

I was working sound, so I didn’t get any pictures. Vivi took one of me though, doing my job.

Let’s come back in 6 years when they celebrate their first students to go all the way through!

-j

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It’s been around 3 months, and when I actually take a sec to think about it, I still can’t believe it’s real.

When I came to Paraguay, I had one goal: minister to kids through teaching them English. At the same time, God was busy setting me up. Just like he’d been setting me up since high school to get me here, once He got me here, He began setting me up for this next step in my life. I wasn’t in the country 10 minutes before conversation led to Oscar saying to me “it’s better to find your wife than to look for her.” Many, many, *many* people told me I would find my wife in Paraguay. I laughed it off and said “whatever, that’s not why I’m going.” It still isn’t why I came.

Sometimes crazy things happen. I’ve vaguely referenced this before, but God has been writing a beautiful story of love in my life that reached a new chapter this year. I had heard about this “really cute” girl named Kathy (KAHtee) since I got here, and finally in December I figured out who she was. By February I was quite interested in her, and by June I was ready to let her know. Behind the scenes of my own little musical, God had been working in her life to lead her towards me. We’ve been together for a while, and God has continued to answer prayers, both hers and mine. Some of them she tells me surprise and humble me, and I can sincerely say that God is *so* good.

What’s amazing about how He worked with us is that He told us the same thing using two different scriptures several months apart and without much interaction between Kathy and I. After she told me how the Lord answered her prayers for direction, I realized that I had mentioned to God that it would be really cool if He used the same story to answer her. He did me one better. In April he told me what was going to happen using scripture more from the male perspective, and in August He told Kathy what was going to happen using scripture from the female perspective. Both scriptures complementarily write the story of the beginning of our life together.

Please continue to pray for us as we have a LOT to figure out and not a whole lot of time in which to do the figuring. There are various documents, forms, and sets of paperwork that will need to get done by the time we get married, and I want to help her get as much done as possible while I’m still here. It’ll all turn out fine; God has been immensely faithful. Of course He has….I guess what I mean to say is that He has immensely surprised me with the goodness and abundance of His faithfulness.

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!

-j

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I didn’t think it would be possible to buy a legitimate one, but thanks to some help from Steven I found the only official Apple dealer in Asunción. The lucky part is that it’s across the street from the American embassy, so now I know where I will need to go for paperwork.

I found out that in the mall you can buy real iPods too. I happened upon a store that had a pretty big Apple screen, and they also carry Macbooks and iPods. I went there first because I knew how to get there from my house. But let me back up a bit more.

I left my house expecting to walk to the stop for the bus I knew would take me to the mall. As I left my house, a bus slowed down and beeped at me. I waved it off thinking the driver was asking if I wanted to get on. Then I looked closer and it wasn’t a bus that should be driving down my road. Turned out to be my friend Nestor, who is a driver for one of the lines in town. The second peculiarity was that there was no windshield in this bus. He was driving it from a paint shop to a glass shop to fix that problem, and we happened to find ourselves together at the same time. So he said he’d take me to the mall.

We didn’t quite arrive at the mall like I had expected, but it’s not interesting enough to write about. We did walk a lot though. The place I mentioned in the mall wanted $250 for their 16G iPod. I was like “um…it’s 180 on Mac’s website.” I called the official dealer and asked their price, and it was $209. I understand that they have to pay import taxes and stuff. Needless to say, we hopped on a bus and went to the dealer, and turns out I don’t have to pay their taxes so I got it for $190.

To give my American friends an idea of how far that goes here, I think I spent on one gadget nearly a month’s salary of most of the people here. Let me take this opportunity to remind you how good we have it in North America and ask you to think about how much we take for granted.

-j

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I am mad I can’t put thumbtacks in the image to show you exactly where, but this is close.

Where I live…

I live roughly in the middle. There is an intersection where the road that goes through the middle bends slightly to the left, and on the right a side street bends towards the right. I live in the longer house just above that intersection. Across the street, shrouded by trees, you can barely make out Kathy’s house. To the upper left of middle you can see our school and church. The roof looks really bright, almost white, and if you look close you can see the soccer court. The land goes from that corner up to where the buildings that sort of jut up and left end. It’s a big triangle.

So now you know where to stalk me.

-j

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As a person of size, this post should come as no surprise. There are several foods that I am looking forward to having again as soon as possible:

• pepperoni pizza
• various pies, including apple and lemon
• real frosting (I suppose I could get used to the egg and sugar one, but it ain’t butter cream
• a constant supply of American peanut butter
• international foods from several countries at easy disposal
• Ham. Like a real Christmas ham ham.
• Doritos
• McDonalds, Hardees, and/or Burger King breakfast foods
• nachos

Obviously all of the foods I miss are terrible for you. I can eat lots of healthy foods here like fruits for cheap and good meats. Here are some things I will definitely miss:

• ham and cheese empanadas
• Blanca and Karen’s sopa
• the freshest cheeses ever
• dulce de guayaba
• dulce de leche
• good yerba for not $10 a bag
• Paraguayan asado
• chorizo Ochsi
• everything from the corner store Ña Teresa

I guess a guy can’t have it all.

-j

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It’s really hard to believe I’ve passed my year mark. I’ve changed so much, grown, stretched, shrunk a bit in some ways. I have 3 weeks left of class. The first day of what would be the fourth week is the day of my exams, and then I’m done. These weeks will fly by so fast I’ll hardly notice it until it’s done.

In a way I’m glad. It’s been a really busy time, and it’ll be nice to start the vacation. But I’ll miss the kids. I actually love each one, and the love is new every day. It also means I have less than 2 months to spend with Kathy. That’ll be the hardest thing – leaving her behind for a while. We will be counting on our faith a lot more than we are now, come the new year.

I feel like I’ve done what I came here to do. I suppose the principals would really be able to tell me if I did, but at least *I* think so. I’ve seen what I wanted to see, worked hard, learned Spanish, grown closer to God, and even found the rest of my life (though she was a surprise). So I will go home December 20th content that I fulfilled my calling for this past year, but I will be leaving my heart here. I’m almost certain it won’t be the last year I spend in Paraguay.

-j

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I have visited the Chaco, I’ve been to San Pedro, and I’ve rerun through Asunción. What was left was visit the south and hit up a few more things in the east. I got that chance when the high schoolers went on exactly the trip I wanted to take before I left.

We left on a Tuesday night around 1am and headed south to Yacyretá to check out their hydroelectric dam. It was OK, but I knew there was a bigger one later on. Dams are noisy inside! After eating lunch there, we headed towards the Jesuit Ruins of Trinidad. It’s a sad history of indigenous persecution that the people who work there don’t want you to know.

From there, we went to the place where Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil meet, at the intersections of the Itaipú and Paraná rivers. Each country has a monument of some stort marking the spot (of course Argentina has to have a hotel and stuff). I think Paraguay’s still working on theirs.

That night we headed towards Ciudad Del Este. We couldn’t get across to Brazil to visit Iguazu Falls, so we went to this really sweet waterfall called Salto Monday (Moan-da-u, more or less). My joke was calling it Salto Lunes because Lunes is Monday in Spanish, but the word is Guarani for “stolen water”. I actually preferred it to Iguazu, but I’ve also been to Iguazu twice. For lunch we invaded a McDonalds (yay!). After that, we went to the Itaipú Hydroelectric Dam, the second largest in the world (China finished theirs in 2006). There’s also a zoo and Guarani museum that’s near the dam, so we went there. Their 10 point buck was very friendly. At the end of a very long day, we went to a really cool retreat center about an hour away.

The retreat deserves its own post, but I’ll keep it shorter. It had been raining for a few days when we got there. The road was cobbled, but only to a point. The bus couldn’t get through because of mud and overhead wires, so we had to hoof it, carrying our stuff, in the dark with no shoes (waay too muddy for shoes). We finally got there, had some dinner, and went to sleep. The first night in 3 that we were able to be in a bed.

The next day we were going to try another place, but because of the rain we stayed at the retreat center for a while. We went to downtown Ciudad Del Este to do some shopping. I didn’t want any fake movies, video games, or MP3 players (seeing an “iPod” made me sick), so I didn’t buy anything. I know there’s more there, but I didn’t need shoes or clothes, and our time was limited. I don’t think I missed anything though. We headed back to the retreat for lunch, but because of the rain again, we had to walk back, only this time it was the full 8km from where our bus was stationing itself. Some of us found a taxi, others found a local bus, and the rest walked. They realized later that was a terrible idea. Around 5 we decided to take off for good.

We went to Itaipu one more time for their illumination. It was cool, but not as Disney as I expected it to be. Then we invaded McDonalds once more because we had the dinner money left, and then FINALLY at 11 we started the bus to come home. We arrived at the school around 6:30 and I’m sure most of us slept all day.

I think I know all of the country that I intended to know. I’m glad I went. I can almost leave content in December.

-j

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I’m on the final lap, the last quarter, less than three months left. There remain 6 weeks of school, one of which will probably be fully review time. I’m three weeks shy of my anniversary and I can hardly believe it.

The time has gone so quickly. When this adventure started, I thought 14 months was a really long time. It is, at the beginning. Now not so much. A lot has happened. God’s changed me in many ways, some expected and anticipated, some a complete surprise.

People ask if I’m excited to go home. In a way, I suppose. It will be nice to see the family again, spend Christmas cold (as it should be…heh), start paying off my loans. But I will be leaving behind a lot. I have 100 sons and daughters that I will not get to watch grow up. I have another part of my spiritual family that I will be leaving behind. I’ve made amazing friends that I don’t really want to say good-bye to.

I haven’t spent much time thinking about saying good-bye yet, but I feel it around the corner. I’m just going to focus on my job, getting these kids ready to move to the next level of English. Maybe at the end of November I will start thinking about leaving.

Many ask when I’ll be back. All I can say for now is I’m looking firmly at the 21st of December as the earliest. I haven’t bought my ticket yet, but I should be home for Christmas. See you then!

-j

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