Last Update

Well, we are in our last week of our time here in Paraguay, and before we know it we'll be on a plane heading north. So before we go, I thought it would be good to write one last update to fill you all in on how our last few months have gone, as well as explain some of my ideas and feelings regarding finishing this big experience, leaving this place and getting readjusted to life at home in the U.S. I'll try not to get too sentimental on all of you...

For the most part, we have been living in the normal routine, with a few travels and visitors mixed in. Soon after I wrote the last time, at the end of February (jeesh, that was a while ago!), we took two weeks to travel to Argentina and Uruguay. We went for several reasons. First, we had to buy new Paraguayan visas, and that had to be done in Argentina. Next, we wanted to visit and connect with a friend, Corin Wenger, who we had met at orientation, and who was living and working in Buenos Aires with Mennonite Mission Network. Finally, as part of the Radical Journey program, we had to have a team retreat where we could reflect and talk about the experience, and the topics of faith and service in general.

After a very long bus ride, we spent a week in Buenos Aires with Corin. We all (5!) stayed with his very hospitable host family, the family of Sergio and Mabel Flores, and spent the week getting to know their family, sight-seeing the city, and connecting with two mennonite church congregations in the city. We also used Argentina's lovely black market of U.S. dollars to our advantage to buy our visas for cheap. One of the two churches that we connected with in Buenos Aires is pastored by Corin's host dad and located in one of the more sketchy parts of town. Seeing this church was inspiring as it is really a beacon of hope and a witness of the gospel to this difficult neighborhood. This is shown in the fact that the church has never been a victim of the violence present in the area, and that the other co-pastor, now a passionate and dedicated pastor, used to be a drug dealer (or something like that). The other church we connected to had a large youth group, and we enjoyed getting to know some of these great youth and traveling around the city with them.

We then took a boat over the widest river in the world (it looks just like a bay into the ocean, but all the water is in fact fresh and flowing out) into Uruguay and began week two. We went first to Montevideo, but then continued on to a coastal state named Rocha. The first few days we stayed in a small apartment in a coastal city and just enjoyed the natural beauty of the area, our own cooking, and the touristy things. One of the highlights was going to a beautiful national park which had forests, beaches, a pack of sea lions, and a peculiar hippy town (look up Cabo Polonio - it was seriously one of the stranger towns I had ever been in). We then went up the coast a bit to another small, less touristy, coastal village where we would have our retreat. We rented a tiny cabin from a guy that lived in a shack next door (don't worry, he loves it there) with windows overlooking the ocean. It was a great place to enjoy more natural beauty and the ocean, and to talk, reflect, and pray as a group.

We then came back to Asuncion and got back into the rhythm of things again. Austin's family visited not long after that, and they spent some time with our team. It was great to see them, as they are long time family friends. Corin came for two weeks at the end of April to visit and work at Alto Refugio, and stayed with my host family as we had a little extra space. I enjoyed having some more american company and getting to know him even more. Just a few weeks ago my parents and sister came to visit for eight days. It was a wonderful getting to see them and getting to show them around Paraguay. They visited my host family a few times, our home church, my work, our pastor's family, and then we did some other fun things that don't have much to do with my year here, but are still great for getting to know Paraguay. These include: going to Ciudad del Este and the Iguazu waterfalls, visiting Mercado Cuatro, visiting a music education program called Sonidos de la Tierra, walking around to the famous spots downtown, meeting up with Brenda Perez who lived in our neighborhood last year, and going to the house of Wes and Ester Schmidt, who are some relatives of my dad to eat supper and get to know them a little bit. We stayed with some former colleagues of my dad, Arlo and Kathy Kasper, who live in Asuncion in a complex that has a few guest rooms for rent. It was great having my family here, and now I think they understand much more of what my year was like, who the people are that we're spending time with, etc.

At work, I continue to feel very privileged to be working with such great coworkers, many of whom are new, and to be able to be serving the patients that come. There have been a few stretches of time that we have been sent to the hotel to do big painting projects, which I'm never really thrilled about, but I suppose that during those times we are helping the organization in the best way that we can. It just kind of sucks doing such boring and annoying jobs such as scraping and sanding walls and not being able to be around Paraguayans that much. Also in those times it feels like we're not helping AIDS patients at all. But Austin and I often work together on these projects, so we keep each other company. At Alto Refugio, they are trying to make a shift to make all of the people that receive help be part of Bible study/faith formation groups. At first we weren't sure if this was good, as we see helping people with things such food, daycare, meds, and clothes are good in and of themselves, and we were worried that putting limits on who receives what could reduce the people that get help. But the leaders realize, and I think that they're right, that many patients just come to depend on and take advantage of the aid they receive, and that without some internal shift or transformation in the patients, their lives will stay mostly the same. Plus, Alto Refugio was started more as a ministry, and then began to help the patients in other ways such as food and clothing. They are making this transition gradually, but it sounds like it is going very well. The small groups are filling up, and the people are quite receptive to the changes.

One of the parts of our life here in Paraguay that I am growing to love the most is life in the church. For one, the people are great, and I feel so blessed to be able to get to know quite a few people on a somewhat deeper level, just from seeing them a few times a week for a year. This especially applies for the youth. It is very gratifying to be able to walk around our neighborhood, including the poorer parts, or the huge park by our neighborhood and meet people we know from church and chat a little.

Also the religious side of church has become a lot more meaningful for me over the last few months. This was kind of surprising as I was skeptical and critical of a lot of their conservative theologies and practices towards the beginning, and I never imagined that I would be able to accept fully, let alone believe, what they believed. Well, I guess experiences like this change that. I still have problems with some of the ways they do things and some of the things they believe, but my view has changed drastically. I have seen and heard about God working in the lives of our congregation and other congregations in a way that I had thought didn't happen anymore, such as physical healing miracles, or the coming of the Holy Spirit into their presence in dramatic and beautiful ways. At the beginning, I would have said that they were just seeking an emotional high every Sunday, and that was all that they were getting. Or that the miracles were just coincidences. But I have come to believe that often times they are genuine works of the spirit of God. They are seeking God with all of their hearts, and it turns out that it's true that everyone that "seeks, finds" (Mathew 7,8). I also wasn't sure about their theology of evangelism, as my idea of evangelism had been long ruined by some groups of "evangelicals" in the US. But I have been reminded that sharing the life-giving news of the Gospel is one of the most important things we do in this life. It just has to be done in a wholistic and loving way. 
One thought that I've had regarding these things: if many of these beliefs and practices were present in the early church, why are they not now? These are things that shouldn't necessarily change with the changing times. If we believe and respect the things that happened in the book of Acts, I think we would be silly to say we don't respect and believe these things that are happening today. This said, this church situation here is far from perfect, and there are still many things that I respect more about the Mennonite church in the US. Both churches have their strengths and flaws, and I feel so blessed to have been able to connect deeply with both of them. It has been a time of much learning for me.

Some other things worth mentioning:

Austin and I were able to make it out to the Chaco for a long weekend a month or two ago. We drove with the administrators from work, Elsa and Bertram Heim, to Filadelfia and then stayed with John and Susi Schmidt, more of my dad's relatives. Filadelfia is another weird city. It is the main city in one of the three main Mennonite Colonies in the Chaco, Fernheim. I've heard someone say that Filadelfia reminds them of the 1950's, and that every day is like a Sunday afternoon. The streets are all dirt (so the rain they received before we got there meant five inches of mud everywhere) and you can hear Low German spoken all over town. There are various indigenous tribes in the area, and so they, as well as some latin paraguayans also make up part of the demographic. 
 We had a great time meeting with several sets of relatives that live there and in the surrounding areas, eating tons of delicious German Mennonite food, exploring the city a bit on antique bicycles, going to the town's museum, and relaxing in one of the most "tranquilo" places I've been to in a while. We also went to a rodeo/fair with Elsa and Beto in the Neuland Colony, a colony started mainly by WWII widows. It was great to finally get out to this place that we've heard so much about and that's a significant part to the global Mennonite history.

The story in Asuncion and really all of Paraguay right now is all the flooding that is taking place in the big rivers in the country. You have maybe heard or seen pictures of Iguazu Falls which have flooded several times. (Our family got lucky to go when they were back down close to normal). But the flooding of the Paraguay River which runs by Asuncion has made thousands and thousands of people evacuate their houses and move inland. I don't know the latest numbers of how many people have to move, but I don't think the number 30,000 would be outrageous for just Asuncion. The problem is that tons of poor people make their houses on the free public land bordering the rivers that are prone to flooding, and then when the river rises 20 feet, as I believe it has, they all have to move. Friends from church, relatives of both of my host parents, and co-workers at Alto Refugio have all had to move due to the flooding. We have visited some of the government aided refuges/camps several times, and they are kind of depressing, knowing that some people will have to stay there for a half year or longer in the plywood houses and mud. We went with Edulia Klassen a few times this last week to play with the kids that live there and give them a snack. These were very good experiences, even though they were a little hectic when so many kids ended up showing up.

Now, about going home...

As was expected, I am both excited to go home and sad to leave this place. I am excited about being with my family and friends again in a familiar place and in a familiar culture. I'm looking forward to starting college, which should be a much easier experience than this was, at least on social and emotional levels. I am excited about continuing with some of the interests that I have put aside for a year. I'm also looking forward to smaller things like North American seasons, good food, and easier access to internet. However, I am pretty sad about leaving all of the people that I got to know this year. The realization has hit me that I might be saying goodbye for good to a lot of people, and I'm not sure how to deal with that. Even if I ever do come back, which I don't know that I will, I won't see everyone again. I'm sad about leaving the beautiful earth and interesting cultures that are to be found in Paraguay. I will also miss my work at Alto Refugio, a place where I see God working so often. It will be strange to be back in a culture where I am not a minority, where I am fluent in the main language, where I am not surrounded by so much poverty, and where I am not challenged and confused in my thinking quite so much. I'm not exactly sure how I will fit into and readjust to the US lifestyle. I hope I don't just become the person that I was before coming here, but instead that I am more compassionate, loving, patient, and passionate about serving God and others. I also hope that I can find a way to connect with the latino community in Goshen and use my weird Paraguayan Spanish.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this experience as a whole, and I suppose I will never understand completely what the outcomes are that come from it, but I think it was a very positive experience. It's kind of like judging a year of your life - there are ups and downs, a ton of different threads of experiences that come and go and you can't sum it all up at once. There were parts when it was not fun at all, and there were times when I loved it. I probably grew as a person, even though I often felt less sure of myself and more confused than normal. I will maybe do another blog with a more complete assessment of this year, along with thoughts on reorientation, when I get back, although I could probably just talk in person to most of you that are reading this, so we'll see.

Anyways, thanks to all of you that read this and my other blogs this year for taking the time to keep up with what I was up to here in Paraguay. I apologize for the long gaps there were between updates, and for not actually communicating very well what we were doing. I can't wait to see you all when I get back, and to hear about how all of your years went while I was gone.

Benjamin