Home again.

I'm back in Beautiful British Columbia, but here are some final pics from my last week in paraguay....

check facebook for more in the days to come.....

Araguay Paraguay

This day was a rest day, which included a trip to Araguay where the main street is lined with ceramics of every kind. It was so colorfully stimulating, and among some of the more gaudy, cheesy pieces were some beautifully handcrafted pots, wall hangings, lamps, figurines etc. The people here are very into figurines...lawn ornaments and little things you put on a shelf in your house. Well here was the place to get them!!!

Painted mushroom anyone??

The last week of my life...

These pictures represent what's happened in the last week of my life :) I've realized that maybe i needed to paint without getting paid to really enjoy it! It is amazing how when you are a part of something God has put together, it doesn't matter what you are doing so much, you just work as hard as you can, this just happens to be painting.

So this is the center we are working at. ALTO REFUGIO means High Refuge, and that is what God is in our lives and what this center is to so many people suffering with AIDS here. It really is an amazing ministry!!

Inside the centers' main area where we eat lunch every day. the red is what we were painting most of the pillars, including the wall around the sign reading SOLIDARIDAD which means coming together, or working together sort of getting strength together as a community. Below, mom is improvising with taping a brush to a pole...we've had to improvise a little bit with the tools here, but thank goodness we brought some of our own brushes!!!

One of the perks is that we are right beside and ice cream shop! Ice cream cones for 25 cents!! A sign I am in the right place ;) We enjoy them pretty much every day...And below me painting door and frame. One of my least favorite days was painting these ALL day, and its oil paint so i got really light headed and it burned my eyes....so that was a down side, but by the end i realized you just choose to do something to make you happy. We really do choose our attitudes sometimes....So that was the past week. LONG days, sometimes 13 or 14 hours of working, and 38-40 degrees!! Oh yes, that is above zero ;)

well here we are from left to right mom, me, my double chin and grandpa!!

We have arrived just in time for Mango season! They are SOOO good, Mango's for breakfast, lunch, dinner, in juice, for snack, fruit salad..i'm not sick of them yet, and more drop every day in the back yard :)
One of the two mango trees in Auntie Joanne's yard.

Enjoying the fruit.

And this my friends is my new best buddy! Reina :) She is the one i'm teaching how to fetch...today she forgot again, but she'll get it. I wouldn't say she's the brightest bulb on the tree, but she is great and i love her!

A new Adventure!!

Hola from Paraguay South America!!!!

Some of you may know i'm here and some may not, so i thought i'd write a little blurb on what's been going on with me. I have an Aunt who lives here in Asuncion Paraguay as a missionary. For a long time i've wanted to visit her and i've just never made the opportunity happen, but now it just sort of fell in my lap. Two days a week my Aunt works at an AIDS center called Alto Refugio (High Refuge). This is an amazing ministry started by a couple who are Canadian's but who both grew up here and raised their own family here as well. The center offers meals, support groups, counselling, meds, clothing, aids education, hospital visits, and above all a family environment filled with love for an often rejected and shunned group of people. My mom arranged a while ago to come and help them paint the center and I just couldn't let this opportunity go! I feel so honored to be able to help them in this way as...me...with a skill that is so natural. I have never thought i would use painting in this way...its great!! It's even more amazing to be here with my grandpa and my mom...three generations together coming to visit family and help out! So tomorow we officially start working and then it will be a couple of weeks of endless painting :)

So far the excitment that has happened has come in the form of almost missing flights, having bags not arrive with us on our flight, very full buses, a gecko flying out at me from an air conditioner, and teaching the dog how to fetch :) I'm sure there will be more stories to come, maybe with more detail! Anyone wan't to quickly give me a spanish lesson? I'm feeling way out of my element in that way here...i'm determined to learn some here, and more when i get home. For now,

Feliz Anyo Nuevo Everybody!!!