Christmas: Love, Hope, and Prayer!

Christmas is soon approaching! I know it is more than 60 days away, but here at the school we are done in less than a month! With the upcoming holiday we have Christmas concerts, final projects, and the celebration of Christ's birth! With Christmas and God's gift to us come reminders of God's love for all of us. Love for my students, for the new Paraguayan politicians, for the other teachers, for the broken homes, for the simple acts of kindness and for the small children on the streets getting any money they can to bring back many to their alcoholic or drug addict parents. The wonderful thing is that when God looks at the Paraguay, His love surpasses the dirt, grime, pain, corruption and reveals the true beauty that God sees.

With Christmas also come the gifts. While none of us can give as great of a gift as God gave to us, in His memory we can give gifts that bless people and can continue to give. Many of the wonderful classroom blessings in the states are hard to find here or are very expensive. Therefore I would like to present the option to give a gift this Christmas that keeps on giving in the lives of my students. If this interests you please look to the right on this page to see more information. Of course the most important thing that will continue to bless my students is to continue to pray for these students, their parents, our school, and Paraguay. Paraguay is a land of pain and hurt and with Christmas comes a hope. Even in the smallest prayer great things can happen.

This week has gone very well and my students are eagerly finishing up chapters this week and starting into their last chapters before break! This Friday we have Family Adventure Day and my fourth graders are competing with the tenths graders to see which grades can bring in the most money for the PTA. Our booth is based on “Minute to Win It”! One game is shooting soccer goals and the other is Yoyo on a string. The purple team is very optimistic that we can win this competition! In art club we are hard at work decorating for the Christmas Concert. It is harder than you think trying to make lots of Christmas decorations without snow and other North American customs!

Prayer Requests:
- Many of the requests are listed above!
- Also please pray for the other teachers, many of the new ones are getting very homesick and all of us need to strength and energy to finish strong for this semester!
- Please pray for the health in Paraguay as the heat increases so do a lot of the bugs and diseases here!

Firsts:
- First time going to the movies in Paraguay! While the advertisements were in Spanish the movie was in English except for Spanish subtitles. We had a blast!

- First time our kitchen and dining area flooding from thewater that filled our balcony and flowed under our door! This was a bonding experience for me and my roommate at midnight as we squeegeed the water from the rooms down tiny holes on our balcony. What a great half an hour work out to get it to a satisfactory state (i.e. we couldn’t get any more out/we were falling asleep).