Hello family and friends. I am now more than a month into my mission to Paraguay. I can confidently say that being here for one month has been the most challenging undertaking of my life. Living away from home, having a language barrier, and experiencing extreme poverty all hit me for the first time at the same time. After this experience, probably not many things will seem all that difficult in comparison.
This past weekend, I went on a two-day mission trip with one of my friends from the parish here. We worked with a huge mission organization here in Paraguay named Techo (Spanish for roof or ceiling). Roughly six-hundred college-aged kids met in Asunción on Friday night, and these kids were separated out into fifteen groups, with each group going to a different poor neighborhood in the greater Asunción area. Then, each of these fifteen sites built eight houses for families who had previously been living in very run-down and precarious houses. So in total, Techo built 120 houses last weekend. Below are some pictures of the house that my group built for a twenty-two-year-old single mother and her three-year-old daughter. Although it is still a very small house (10x20 feet) with no plumbing or electricity, it is an enormous improvement from the house where the family lived before. In the first photo you can see the old house behind me.
I continue to work at the after school program five days a week for the kids that live on the dump. I have become the secondary math teacher at the program because this is the subject that requires the least Spanish. Despite the lack of Spanish required in math, you’d be surprised how hard it is to teach the simplification of improper fractions to kids who don’t speak your language. In the past two weeks, I have gone on two field trips with the kids. These field trips are probably the most important activity that the after school program has to offer. Apart from these field trips, the kids from the neighborhood on the landfill never leave the proximity of their houses. With grades four, five, and six, we visited the national zoo, and with the middle-schoolers, we went to a different Franciscan house in the interior of the country for an extremely crazy night. These field trips allow the kids to experience something beyond the walk back and forth to and from school, and the trips show the students the world of those who have money. Ideally, the field trips reveal to the kids of how much better the quality of their lives could be if they could just break free from the bondage of the poverty. Having a vision for a better life is the first step.
Seeing poverty on such a large scale has certainly engaged my faith in God. I am far too optimistic to believe that living in this type of misery could ever be the plan for the entire life of a person, let alone the lives of the 1.2 billion people worldwide who subsist off of $1.25 or less daily. These people are meant for more. “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh” (Luke 6:20-21).
Thank you all so much for reading. Also, thank you to the many people who sent me emails and messages checking up on me. I’m really happy to know that people back home are keeping me and the people I serve their prayers. I miss you all very much.
Peace and goodness,
Jack
