Saying Farewell

Today the fourth grade held a surprise party for Mrs. Belinda Van Rensburg. She is moving on to help her husband, who is a pastor and a school chaplain in another school. The children brought in food, decorated the classroom and some parents joined them to give her a good "Despedida"(send off).

Praise the Lord with dance

Yesterday afternoon I attended my first "Clausura" (end-of-year concert). It was at the Annexe school. I always enjoy going there. It radiates an atmosphere of love and happiness.

The place was packed with parents, mainly from the shanty "Chacarita" area. The Pre-school children were so excited.The theme was "Praise the Lord with dance" from the psalms. The costumes were wonderful and so colourful. The Christian songs ranged from Pop to Hip-hop and there were some well-known Hill-Song songs too.The children danced their hearts out. It was a wonderful show.

After all the fun there was the serious job of receiving their "Graduation to Primary" certificates.

Busy Bee!

Babs Owen, our Primary co-ordinator, has been snowed under with work. She has been preparing end-of-term services, writing reports, overseeing exams, preparing services for the church congregation and now she has been called away supervising a sixth grade excursion until Saturday.
"Here we go, here we go, here we go!"
Babs is tired so please pray for her. Taking kids on trips can be exhausting and there is another stressful week ahead when she returns.

Paraguayan inspection

Yesterday, as the children were in the midst of exams, the Ministry of Education sent in a team to examine our children in maths and Communication (grammar). The third, sixth and ninth grades were to be examined, without warning. It didn't matter that they were doing in-house exams, the timetable had to be adjusted to accommodate the Ministry. No matter that there is no time to administer the English exams for third and sixth grade.

The Minstry decided on two one and a half hour exams today and more tomorrow. After two weeks of exams these children are exhausted, poor things. The children in UK do not know how lucky they are!

The ninth grade tried to rise to the occasion and I caught them on the tail end of an exam, before they started their second.

Sentenced to hard labour!

For the past few days the maintenance team has been hard at work emptying the library. It has been a mammoth effort on their part but finally it is now empty and ready for the work on the floor to start.

The men are well-pleased to have done that job, amidst their annual "painting of the Forth bridge", at least that is what redecoration of the school seems like. No sooner do they finish then it needs doing again. We really appreciate them for the way that they care for our school so well.

All packed up and ready to go!

On Monday we received the warning that the library would be moved lock, stock and barrel this Friday (today!). Human panic set in....HOW does one move thousands of books? Easy..... Trust in the Lord and it will happen. Nothing is impossible with Him.

Giovanni and I worked all week to get things ready. It was impossible to box everything so the plan was for a team of cleaners, maintenance guys and anybody else who could help, to move everything into the first form room. This is the first stage.

The second stage is to lay a new floor and the third stage is to move everything back again.

After that who knows? Sorting books into their Dewey numbers forever and a day. One cannot expect the maintenance guys to keep them in order. Our final task was to disconnect our computers ready to be stored. There were tons of cables. I was worried about having to put it all together again later, especially the network box. I painstakingly numbered every socket and every cable so that we can match them up again.

It was all a labour of love, but now we are ready to move. (In between times I have been delivering and marking exams. Life is never dull here!!!).

All packed up and ready to move.

3...2...1...Start!

My Sixth grade group

This has been a hard year for sixth grade. I have taught half the class English. They have had to work at break neck speed to come up to scratch ready for the end of year exams. They have been a wonderful group to work with. They are so motivated and very competitive. We have had lots of fun but they have studied well and they have made good progress all round.

Here we are all relaxing after the difficult Grammar exam.

Ear defenders needed!

Today the Primary students were having a ball at their annual music extravaganza.

The music teacher encourages the students to form bands from as young as third grade. We now have some very good musicians and a few drum bangers! Music of every kind is a very important part of the culture here.

Other children performed their folklore dances.

It all made a good break from the pressure of examinations, which continue for another 2 weeks after this.

Off to the Chaco

This morning the fifth form secondary students were up bright and early ready to go to the Chaco to see how the other half live and to have a character building experience. They will be digging wells and latrines.

The group is being led by Mags Southern and by Tim Curtis, a Bible translator, whose translation centre is in Rio Verde.

Avid readers

This year we have been encouraging the children to read more books in English. I have just been checking all the reading ability of the children in the Primary department. The majority have made a tremendous improvement, especially those who have books in English at home and those who regularly use our library for borrowing books.Today the children were rewarded for completing their reading cards. I quickly popped into the second grade to snap their delight at receiving new bookmarks and reading certificates.

Trinity exams

At the moment we have a visitor from Trinity College in London university. She is examining the students' spoken English. Here you can see some of the secondary students waiting to go in to be examined. There has been some panic today as some had forgotten to prepare over the weekend, so they were cramming and testing each other whislt waiting to enter.

Mayoral elections

Today has been a glorious sunny day. As I walked to church this morning I was aware that there were more people on the streets than usual for a Sunday morning. As I passed the school I remembered that it was election day. The school looked busy as people entered to vote in the local municipal elections. There has been a steady turn out of voters all day after an intense week of electioneering by the various political parties, who are all promising the earth.

Predictions are that in some areas the ballot is unexpectedly very close. The polls closed at 5.00 p.m. so now the television is totally focussed on the awaited results. (Time to watch a DVD.)

We love you Marcos!

This morning there was great excitement when we arrived at school. The fifth and sixth grades and several secondary grades had recieved an invitation for a special treat. Marcos Witt, the famous singer/evangelist was on a visit from the United States. He is loved by young and old alike here in Paraguay. He graciously offered to do a free concert for the Youth of Asuncion. Our school received tickets. I love to listen to Marcos and I have several of his CDs, so I went along "to help out."

The concert was held in the new Pentecostal temple in Asuncion. It currently seats 12,000. It was almost full of young people (and one much older!) this morning, There are plans to increase the capacity of the church to 20,000, God willing.

I have seen Marcos Witt a couple of times before when he has visited Paraguay. This was a little different as it was specifically geared towards reaching the young people. Marcos is middle-aged but he has tremendous energy and he soon had us all praising and dancing for the Lord. The children and students loved the songs. Marcos always gives a good message.

Today he shared his personal testimony. He then invited the children to ask Jesus to come into their lives, to ask forgiveness and to move forward with Jesus. For many this was a first time experience. It was lovely to see the children, heads bowed as the Holy Spirit came among them.

All in all it was a great way to begin a week.

Totally engrossed

This is a sight which really encouraged me the other day. I caught one of our third graders in the library during a play break. He was totally absorbed in a book. Which book? It was his Bible! I had to tear him away from it when the bell sounded for the return to lessons.